Tips nowboarding

Tips

• Look for opportunities to swap passengers with other players. It's often more efficient to transfer a passenger instead of delivering it to the final destination yourself, especially as the distance increases. Communicate with your teammates and watch for times when several players can meet at the same airport to conduct layovers (DEN has the most connections and is centrally located, so it often work well). Try to coordinate so you can deliver multiple passengers to one location, or along the route.

• Stay near your special routes. It's much more efficient for the green ATL player to move passengers between ORD - ATL (3 moves via the special route) compared with another player doing the same journey (6 moves via ORD - JFK - ATL, 7 moves via ORD - DEN - ATL, etc.). If the green player is on the other side of the board, it means nobody is using the shortcut and it will take another player at least twice as long to move that same passenger. Try not to end up in a dead-end, when you use a common route but end up in a location where you don't have the connecting route and have to backtrack to leave - that can use up multiple turns.

• Avoid flying an empty plane. After you deliver a passenger and there are others waiting, see if it makes sense to load any passengers and carry them to your next airport (even if it's not their final destination). It can sometimes be beneficial to carry a passenger in the wrong direction if that allows you to transfer the passenger to another player who also has empty seats, or if the passenger is nearing 4 anger (since moving them will reset the anger to 0).

• Hold passengers between rounds to avoid anger. If you end your turn at an airport with waiting passengers, load them into your plane, even if you will be flying in a different direction during the next round. You can deplane these passengers at the start of your next turn before moving.

• When purchasing, prefer speed/seat upgrades over alliances. Speed is generally more flexible than an additional alliance and gives additional movement every turn for the remainder of the game. Although a well-timed alliance purchase can be incredibly helpful, you might never need that alliance again (especially if another player already owns the alliance).

🧩 Too hard? Make the game easier

• Play without time pressure. There's a game option to double or disable the timer.

• Play with fewer players. The map is smaller for 2 - 3 players, and the general pace of the game is slower because fewer new passengers arrive each round. Coordination and communication also become much easier with just 1 or 2 other people.

• Play with both starting upgrades. There's a game option to start your plane with both a seat and a speed upgrade, making everything easier right from the start.

• Watch a real-time game of knowledgeable players. See how they discuss strategy and how they transfer/deliver passengers.

🍰 Too easy? Increase the difficulty

• Play with a larger map. There's a game option to add JFK, SEA airports even when playing with 2 - 3 players.

• Play with VIPs. You can choose the normal VIPs (from the physical board game) and/or the BGA Community VIPs (which are generally more challenging).

• Play with even more VIPs. There's a game option to have increased or doubled number of VIPs.

• Add self-imposed restrictions ("nobody can buy the ORD alliance this game").