PDX Board Game Preview

This is a preview copy sent to us for our early opinions. No money exchanged hands. Some art, rules or components will change in the final game.

PDX comes from the same designer of Alpenglow, an economic route building game all about skiing. A game I am very keen to try. Designer Sean Wittmeyer has now come back with a game all about managing an Airline. PDX is a game set at Portland International Airport and combines engine building, worker placement, and set collection within a contract fulfilment setup. Some of my favourite mechanics. I was very keen to try this and found the theme quite intriguing too. The game is coming to crowdfunding soon. This is a prototype copy. You can find more details about the game here.

The game is all set around players competing as rival airlines, trying to complete the most routes as possible, all the while building new offices and fulfilling advertising contracts. The game is incredibly well put together and has a lovely flow to it. It is all about setting up turns with an ingenious worker placement rule.

Players will take turns placing a single worker to either gain resources, acquire destination tickets or planes, construct new office buildings, develop hangars, or fulfil advertising contracts. The process flows seamlessly, requiring you to build the most efficient engine to maximize your turns. Fans of games like Brass Birmingham will see similarities, within a more simple framework, but the bones are there.

Beyond placing your single worker, some action spaces, including all the buildings you can construct, offer additional resources by allowing you to place one of your two suitcases. These suitcases function like extra workers but cannot be used until the next turn. It's all about planning ahead, considering what you might need in future turns, and finding the best ways to use these suitcases as often as possible to turn one worker placement action into a potential maximum of three.

In the early stages of the game, when you'll be doing a lot of building and acquiring resources, this will be very valuable and happen frequently. In the later stages, it may slow down a bit on some turns as you learn to increase your efficiency, but that's okay. Your focus will shift from acquiring buildings and resources to using them for scheduling and implementing flights!

After acquiring a destination tile from the main terminal and adding it to your player mat, you can pay the matching resources shown on the tile to place it into one of your three starting hangars. You must ensure you can meet the destination's requirements. There are short, medium, and long haul flights. You begin with three gates suitable only for short haul. However, you can use the build action to upgrade these to reach further destinations. Then, by using the Lease action, you can acquire the plane at the front of the runway and add it to your hangar. The planes can be small, medium, or large. Large planes can fly anywhere, but small planes can only fly short haul, and medium planes can fly short and medium haul only. As a free action at any point, you can move a previously acquired destination tile from your board into one of the three gates. Then, at the end of your turn, you can schedule a flight by moving a plane from your hangar to one of your three gates.

At the start of your next turn, you can land a plane by moving each plane at a gate to the next destination tile. You can then collect one of the resource icons displayed on the token, along with a bonus action, a wild resource, or an advertising token, as indicated by the icon on each destination token. If this is the final destination token in the flight path, return the plane and set the tokens aside. This plane has completed its journey and will move to the back of the queue on the runway, ready for other players to use. If you have more destinations in your path, the plane will wait there for your next turn. You can run three, four, or five destinations from each gate, depending on whether it is a short, medium, or long haul.

Completing flights in this manner is the primary way to earn points in the game. Each token displays a score in the top right corner, and at the end of the game, you will total all completed flights and add it to your score. Additionally, you will earn points for every completed advertising campaign you have run, which usually ranges from one to three. You achieve this by acquiring the tokens needed for each ad campaign through completing flights. For instance, you can obtain the palm tree resource for a long-haul flight to Johannesburg or the football resource for a short flight to Redmond-Bend.

There are always a few of these advertising cards on display, and once you have the right resources collected from completed flights, you can send a worker to the appropriate spot to exchange the tokens for the card and earn significant end-game points.

The final and most interesting way to score points is from constructing buildings. When you take the building action, you can upgrade your gates, add a fourth gate with extra resource holding spaces, or construct a building. When you choose the construct building option, you can place it into the main airport terminal to gain a wild resource, or you can place it into one of the three spaces you have on your own playing board above your concourse. They are extra spaces for your or any player's worker to go to gain extra resources and a place Suitcase action. But also, the icons shown here will act as multipliers at the end of the game.

For instance, if the red player below completes their flight to Heathrow, they will earn three points from their office buildings. This is because the blue symbol chosen on the buildings is also shown on the Heathrow flight, along with the purple symbol that appears on one of their offices. As you begin to complete multiple flights, which you will do in this game, these multipliers can really add up!

Therefore, when you are acquiring new destinations to fly to, you need to consider six things. What resources are needed to assign it to one of your gates? What resources do you have or can easily obtain? What type of flight is it, and what size gates do you have? What type of plane will be needed to fly to it, and which planes do you have or have easy access to? What resources will this destination provide you, both for acquiring future destinations and fulfilling advertising contracts? And finally, most importantly, do the icons on this destination match the office buildings you have for significant end-game scoring?

PDX has that rare “everything clicks” feel, where the theme is doing real work rather than just decorating the box. You’re rival airlines at Portland International, trying to run the smartest operation: pick up destinations, sort your resources, lease planes, upgrade gates, build offices, and squeeze points out of advertising along the way. The design’s calling card is the single-worker placement system, which forces you to think in efficient sequences instead of sprawling turns. But then the opportunity to use your suitcases to turn this to three. You’re rarely going to be doing ten things at once, but you are constantly setting up the next turn so it feels like you might!

The suitcase mechanic is the little spark that makes the whole engine purr. Some spaces and buildings let you drop one of your suitcases for extra goodies, but you don’t get to use those suitcases until next turn, so you are always planning ahead and building momentum. Fans of economic route building and “build it, then profit from it” games will likely see why the Brass Birmingham comparison comes up, even if PDX is running a cleaner, more straightforward framework. It is a lot simpler, quicker, and easier to learn and teach, but similar vibes will be felt!

That said, this probably isn’t one for people who want breezy, instinctive choices. Picking destinations is a full-on decision stack: what it costs, what it pays you, whether your gates and planes can handle it, how it helps contracts, and whether the icons line up with your office buildings for those spicy multipliers. That’s the fun, if you like a game that rewards long-term plotting, but it could feel like a lot if you prefer quick turns and simple priorities. Also, I can imagine later turns stretching a bit if players start trying to wring every last drop out of suitcase timing and route optimisation.

But as you only ever have one worker to place, and a maximum of two suitcases to gather, even the longest procrastination cannot make this drag too long.

Pros

• The single-worker and Suitcase worker placement is elegant and forces genuinely interesting sequencing.

• Flights feel like a proper operational system, not just “pay, score, repeat.”

• Scoring variety (routes, ads, building multipliers) rewards different kinds of planning.

  
  

Cons

• Destination choices can feel like a checklist, especially for newer players.

• Late-game turns may slow if the table leans toward heavy optimisation.

• If you do not enjoy multi-layered efficiency puzzles, it may feel like work.

  
  

PDX sounds like a smart, satisfying airline-builder that turns careful planning into real payoffs, with enough intertwined systems to keep you grinning when your little operation finally hums. If you enjoy games that require careful forward planning, then this may be something for you to check out. Just do not be surprised if you finish a game and immediately start plotting your next route like a terminal gremlin. Either way, it’s got plenty of runway, and it really knows how to land a good time. I will be following this game on crowdfunding with great interest.