Fly-a-Way – The Unboxinating!
Today’s game is Fly-a-Way, a recently received Kickstarter from a small gaming company in Singapore called Playlogue. This is their first game so congrats to them for a really nice Freshman offering.
Number One: Parts! You get a really large map covering Eastern Russia/China down to Northern Australia, several decks of cards, route markers in the shape of feathers, bird score markers, smaller boards for sorting your card decks and instructions (plus a quick set up guide which is thoughtful). The quality of everything is really high from the cards to the wooden chits. Even your playing board is buff – you could grab that board in its folded up form and whack a game burglar over the head and you are more likely to thwart the thief than bust up the board. PLUS! The package arrived swaddled in bubble wrap with plastic printed box corner protectors. Playlogue built a game that can take a beating but they also wanted it to arrive in the best condition possible. Heck, my delivery peeps could have done all their usual shenanigans plus some and I’m confident the game would have arrived in pristine condition. Plus points for that.
Number Two: Bird cards – let’s talk about this oversized deck of cards. They are a heavy weight stock with a semi-gloss finish and a linen texture which keeps them from slipping or sticking to each other. This deck is some of the best quality cards I have handled and they shuffle and bridge really well despite being about 20% bigger than a standard deck of cards. I could shuffle and bridge these for days and they wouldn’t wear out. And they just feel nice. The artwork is keen and you get some bonus bird facts to boot (learning and playing!).
Number Three: Next I want to talk about this large migration map. The game play has you marking out the migration routes from beginning point to ending point…which any birder can tell you can sometimes span countries. That’s a lot of area to keep track of but the map is gridded out to make locating a particular spot easier. When you pick up the Mandarin Duck card to place the beginning and end migration route markers, the card will give you the locations (begin in North Korea and end in Southern China), but also the coordinates to find those locations on the map (F6 and I7 if you were curious). As someone whose East Asian geography isn’t top notch I appreciate the help.
Number Four: A lot of sites compare Fly-a-Way to Wingspan and I can see where they are coming from. First, Wingspan is SUPER popular so maybe the sites are hoping that some of that Wingspan Awesome rubs off on this game. Or maybe it’s because the Fly-a-Way cards (your “bird” deck as it were) have some of the same information about birds as the Wingspan cards do. The Fly-a-Way team partnered with BirdLife International (Asia) for consultation and research (BirdLife is even credited on the box front) and you can see that come through in the game; it feels “birdy” in the same way Wingspan does. Fly-a-Way doesn’t play like Wingspan at all so if you pick up this game in hopes of Wingspan 2: Asian Birds you are going to be really disappointed. Instead you use the little feather chits to create migration routes for the birds currently face up in your roosting area (there are only 3 at a time). So less Wingspan in play and more Ticket to Ride. Chicken to Ride if you will.
Number Five: We played a round after Unboxinating so I’m not sure this is fair for the theme but it is pertinent to the game: Those nice wood feather chits that you use to mark routes? Are Really! Skittery! Ticket to Ride also has this problem somewhat but in TtR you put the trains down and they stay there. Several of the play dynamics in Fly-a-Way have you picking up your route chits after they have been placed and let me tell you; a careless hand will set those flying. Heh. Maybe it’s actually thematic now that I think on it.
Lastly :
