Days of Wonder's Ticket to Ride series is well established as a 'gateway game' for introducing new players to modern board games. More recently, Stonemaier Game's Wingspan has proven to be a breakout success thanks to the charm of its ornithological theme and artwork. Fly-A-Way from Playlogue Creations and Tuber Productions manages to elicit elements of both: it's a route-building game combined with an ornithological theme and attractive pictures of birds.
Designed by Quek Oon Hong, Nguyen Huy Hung, Lynette Lee, Iris Tang and Simon Vincent, Fly-A-Way is played on a map of Asia. There are always three active bird cards and these each show, with grid references, the starting point and destination for that species' migration. Markers are placed out for these. On their turns, the 2-4 players are laying out pieces along migration paths - similar in effect to laying track in Ticket to Ride and similar train games like On the Underground (Ludicreations) and Maglev Metro (Bezier Games). You score a point for every link of yours that's used by the bird species in completing its migration but it's only the player who places the piece that completes the migration path who scores the points on the card and gains its special abilities...
Players have quite a lot of flexibility over where on the board they place out their links except that they must always be adjacent to another of their links. That means you can place two of your links adjacent to each other anywhere on the board but you cannot add a single link other than to one of your own. Given that there's a huge advantage in being the player who lays the last link which completes a migration path, you'll find there's much jockeying for position as players deliberately try to avoid making placements that leave an opponent in immediate striking distance of completion.
Every turn players draw a 'Wing It' action card and a 'Fowl Play' card. The Wing It cards will always be helpful but the Fowl Play cards have a negative effect, tho' you may be lucky and find the specific effect is inapplicable to you, particularly at the start of the game. The Fowl Play cards can upset your plans, for example, by demanding that you remove previously placed links, tho' they can mostly be overridden by playing action cards of sufficient 'squawk' value. We've found in our plays at Board's Eye View, however, that it's judicious use of Wing It action cards held in reserve that enables players to nab the bird cards - typically by allowing additional links to be placed out over and above the usual maximum of three.
Once players have begun to collect bird cards the game accelerates. That's because the links remain in place when new bird cards are added, so it's often much easier to complete subsequent migration paths. The bird card powers can also give a big boost to players and that was the one gripe that has come up in our plays: the bird card powers function as the complete opposite of a catch-up mechanic because they give extra help to a player already in the lead... That can be frustrating if you're behind and haven't managed to hang onto Wing It cards that give you extra link placements, but we're happy to report that it hasn't put anyone off from playing this appealing and beautifully presented game.