Game Highlight: Airlines Europe
Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 8:20AM 
Eek! Can't believe there are only five days left of The Gathering.
One of the new games being played during this event: Alan Moon's AIRLINES EUROPE. Published by Rio Grande this year, the game is a revamp of Alan's AIRLINES game. AIRLINES is one of Alan's earliest games, published by ABACUSSPIELE and in print before his successful TICKET TO RIDE and UNION PACIFIC games.
See the BoardGameGeek entry for a good summary and comparison to Airlines.
I like Union Pacific, but I like Airlines Europe even more. Super easy to learn (I can SO see families enjoying this), yet complex enough with its choice of potential gameplay strategies to make it interesting on multiple plays. Granted, I've only had a chance to play it once so far but it's a game I'd like to own. Plus the little airplanes (112 of them) are darned cute.
My only complaint: I found the red and orange planes tough to tell apart sometimes when they were jumbled together...BUT that could have just been the lighting.