Pan Am: Travel the world in about 60 minutes

We’ve made it to the ninth month of 2020, folks! Pat yourselves on the back. It’s been a busy two months for me, as I’ve been moving and undertaking some home projects in between organizing boxes and boxes of board games. I am seriously never, ever moving again. 

In all honesty, I haven’t had much bandwidth or time to play a heavy game recently. I’m hoping to get back into that soon. In the meantime, a shorter game I’ve been truly enjoying is Pan Am, which plays in about 60 minutes. 

It has all the elements I enjoy: worker-placement, bidding and route building (and blocking!), all packaged in a gorgeous game. And for a company that hasn’t existed for almost 30 years, that iconic logo immediately transports you to the golden age of flying. And with my personal travel in short supply these days, it’s fun to travel the world via the beautiful destination cards that the game comes with. 

In Pan Am, players are competing to build a network of air travel. They’re bidding for airport landing rights, purchasing planes that fly longer ranges, claiming routes, and buying Pan Am stock. You’re also trying to create favorable routes in order for Pan Am to purchase them at a profit so you can invest in growth for your company. 

The game plays for seven rounds, and at the start of each round, an event card is drawn. These events tweak the rules for the round and affect the stock price of Pan Am. The goal of the game is to have the most Pan Am stock, and while it’s good to purchase the stock early while the price is still low, you usually don’t have enough income to do so. 

For our 2P game, you start with 5 engineers (this number varies based on player count), and you take turns placing one engineer on action locations on the board. Some of these locations have numbers on it, so placing your engineer indicates your bid for that action. Another player on a future turn can outbid you by placing their engineer on a higher-valued spot in that location. Your engineer is then returned to you to place somewhere else, or at a higher-valued spot in that original location on your turn. All the locations with a bid can only have one winner on it when resolving.

Other locations, like routes, resolve in placement order and don’t require a bid. This makes claiming routes especially tight as your opponent may want to build before you and foil your plans. To build a route between two cities, you’ll need landing rights either by having an airport in one of the cities you’re connecting, having the city’s destination card in your hand, discarding a card in your hand from the same region as one of the cities you’re connecting, or discarding two cards from the same region that’s different than the one you’re connecting. Lastly, you’ll need a plane from your fleet that can fly the route between the two cities. You place the plane on that route and then your income increases by how long the route was. 

I absolutely love the bidding mechanism of this game. Even though I’ve only played this game as a 2P, it makes all your actions extremely tight and tense. Players might be fighting for that one destination card that satisfies the route they want to build, or maybe you’ll spend your action to be the first to build a route this round. You have to keep an eye out for what your opponents are planning!

The last location that hasn’t been mentioned is Directives. This allows players to draw a directive card, which gives them a one-time or end-game bonus and can be powerful when played during the right phase. This location also allows your engineer to get Priority Access during the next round, meaning you’ll get to place your pawn first before the first player takes their turn.

Once everyone places their engineers, you resolve each location in order, paying your bid if you need to. If you’re unable to pay your bid, you have to sell back any Pan Am stock you have at half price to gain some money for the bid. 

The last phase of each round is the Pan Am phase. This is where Pan Am expands along one of its route, hopefully hitting a route you’ve already built so you can sell it to them. When you sell them a route, you get a payout based on how large it is and your plane is returned to your fleet. Your income, however, does go down, but the nice profit bump is well worth it. Players then get their income and move onto the next round. The player with the most Pan Am stock after seven rounds wins.

Pan Am is super enjoyable, and the artwork is just delightful to look at. The game is widely available at Target for about $30. And while I personally am not flying anywhere in the near future, I can dream of faraway locations to visit while playing this game.