1930: The Golden Age of Airlines

I really liked my first impression of 1930: The Golden Age of Airlines. It has that familiar, tight feel of a Rio Grande title: economic development, satisfying escalation, and plenty of depth without drowning in complexity. Among a group that likes racing, trains, and related economic games, it had already stood out as something pleasantly fresh.

In our exploratory four-player game, we followed the manual to the letter, with no FAQ, house rules, or other corrective interventions. For five rounds, the game developed wonderfully: companies grew, options opened up, and the economic picture seemed to build at a great pace. But the sixth round left us hanging. Every company maxed everything out, the ending lost all tension, and the winner emerged almost at random. For a four-hour game, that is unacceptable.

The problem was not that the mechanisms fail to work, but that certain parts push far too clearly toward specific moves. The first move feels obligatorily like a tech up for the player’s main company, while in Canada, even if all four players do it, the fourth player cannot find a way to cross 26 in income. Later we saw the same pattern with orange: get in first, then write down some +30-something result. We want to try changing the tech track so that, in the first box of each colour, expanding allows only one gate in the new colour and the other in a lower one; anyone wanting a double expand can wait for the second box.

There are other points worth testing as well. The cost of the extra upgrade is, honestly, a joke — it probably needs to come down. We also want to see bidding for turn order, especially in the first round: if you do not take the 23 and merely end up to the right of the first player, the disadvantage seems enormous. Finally, dividends should not merely stop being capped at the 176+ level: after 225, which is difficult to reach anyway, it would make sense for them to rise a little more, perhaps by 3 or 4 dollars per step rather than 2.

Despite the disappointing ending, I do not want to write it off. We liked 1930 as a package of mechanisms precisely because it made us sit down after the game and seriously discuss how we could improve it for our own group. But the obvious question remains: did nobody ever play it with four players and see what happens in the final round? Since even the designer suggests fewer rounds as a house rule, our next flight will probably need less time — and a few careful repairs before take-off.