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1, 2, 3....Let's Have a Fare War

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There Will Be Games

Not sure if this falls in the category of Eurotrash or Ameritrash...

 I'd say given the randomness, conflict and other things...it's Ameritrash...

 Air Baron is an older Avalon Hill game released in the mid 90's. It is nominally about running an airline but in many ways it feels more like a wargame. Income is determined by drawing a token from a cup (or whatever). The winner is the person that has a combination of money and market share that equals or exceeds the amount required based on the number of players in the game.

A round consists of the number of players turns. It begins by drawing out each players turn order marker, the order of drawing determines the turn order for that round. I like this idea because it gives a variable turn order for each round which is helpful for some of the aspects of the game.

A turn consists of the following steps:
1. Determine fare war status. Fare wars gives you a bonus when you are attacking an opponents spoke and gives you a bonus in defense. It also allows you to attack multiple times as long as you keep winning and have the cash to do so. But you draw no income (except for government money) while you are in fare wars, so use it carefully.
2. Collect government contract income, if you have it. You get this regardless of fare wars or inflation (I don't remember if you still get it during a strike).
3. Draw two income tokens. These occur in any order your choosing. This is important because there are some event tokens. If you draw an income token, pay the owner of that token the amount on the token. If you a draw a hub, everyone with a spoke in that hub gets $3. If someone has a majority, they get the small number. if someone has all the spokes, they get the large number. If you draw an event, follow the instructions of that event. The events in the game are crash, inflation, fuel hike, strike, jumbo profits, local competetor and government contract. The crash means that you roll two dice and pay that amount to the bank. Inflation means all subsequent income draws pay on $1 regardless of type. Fuel hike means that every pays 10% of their market share. If they can pay this they have to scale back. Strike means that you do not collect any income unless you settle. If you settle, you move the marker up one level (making it more expensive to settle the next time). If you don't settle, next turn you move the marker down and it costs less to settle. Jumbo profits means that everyone collects $5 for each jumbo they own. Local competetor cancels any income draw but you have to use it by the end of the round. Government contract puts the government contract up for bid and moves the value up $1. The winner of the bidding gets the government contract.

Then you can do ONE of the following actions:
1. Buy a domestic or foreign spoke. Pay the income value of the token (or the lower value on a foreign spoke). Put the token in the cup (or whatever) and put your marker on the spoke. If that spoke gives you a majority of the spokes in a hub, put your big marker on the hub and mark your market share accordingly.
2. Buy an SST and a foreign spoke. The SST lets you keep the foreign spoke even if you lose all the airports in its hub.
3. Buy the SST. You can place it on a foreign spoke later if you own it, or buy and place.
4. Buy a Jumbo Jet and deploy or leave it undeployed. If there are still Jumbo Profit Markets, place one in the cup (or whatever). If you deploy the Jumbo, you get double the income on that marker if it is drawn. There is a limited number of Jumbos that can be in a hub.
5. Deploy or undeploy a Jumbo Jet.
6. Take over an unowned spoke. Pay double the income to the bank. If you are in fare wars, you can do this multiple times.
7. Attempt to take over an opponents spoke. There are modifiers based on fare wars, adjusted controlled hubs (where you own all the spokes), foreign spokes attached to the hub. You can also use an undeployed Jumbo Jet to give you a modifier. Roll the dice and adjust based on the modifiers. If you are in fare wars, you can keep doing this until you lose.

The game ends when someone gets enough market share and money to suit the victory conditions.

This is one of my favorite games although as I said in the beginning, sometimes it feels more like a wargame than an economic game. Fare wars provides one of the interesting decisions in the game because you do lose the income while in fare wars (which sucks if the foreign spoke that pays 40 comes up) but it does allow you to take large chunks of the map as long as your money holds. The game does allow loans, but you can only take them during your turn (and the beginning of it at that). Since there are disasters, it's a good idea to keep some cash on hand. The game is about is about the right length but can drag if you aren't getting money.

If you don't like games with conflict, this is probably not the game for you.

There Will Be Games
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