I was going to put this in finer things, but I'll start off with Pan Am and then open it up to other discussion!
Tabletop gaming, from D&D on graph paper to Terraforming Mars, all the way to easy, fun card games like Smash Up, is one of my favorite hobbies. I recently got the game "Pan Am" and I liked it quite a bit. The mechanics are fairly simple, and after about 15 minutes, my crew basically had a decent grasp on it.
In Pan Am, you build small airline routes and hope that Pan Am buys out each route; you then can use the money to invest in more routes/airports/flight rights/airplanes, or you can buy stock in Pan Am. The goal is to earn the most stock.
Throughout the game, Pan Am will have a propensity to push into the Pacific rather than South America, Europe, etc., so it helps to fight for those routes. The game occurs over 7 turns, with each turn introducing some slight, historical flavor.
It sometimes is a little Eurogamey, but you can fix that by choosing to be competitive, which I appreciate. The biggest downside is that the airliners tend to have silly names (Cruiser, Clipper, etc.) instead of, say, DC3, B707, etc. Non av-geeks won't care, though.
Anyone else played it? I give it
⭐⭐⭐⭐☆Also, my favorite game is Terraforming Mars, which, being a air & space site, is one I'll talk about later. That game is a blast and gives you so many ways to deliciously screw people over!
Pictured: Pan Am at my place.