A Preview of PDX, a Game Landing on Crowdfunding Soon.

You have finally done it. You are in charge of Portland's newest airline. In PDX the newest game from Waterworks players must build out their concourse to expand for larger planes, and gather all the resources they need to build the best air routes for their airlines. PDX is a worker placement game where players seek to build out the best airline out of the Portland International Airport. PDX is coming to Kickstarter on February 24th, do go ahead and hit that "notify me" button there.

PDX Components

Setup

There are a ton of pieces in this game. but they are broken down in to a few categories and they are organized very well. This means that they are not messy! Each player gets a player board that represents their airline's concourse at PDX. There is a shared terminal board in the middle that will contain all the items that players will buy for their airlines like routes, offices, airplanes, and ad campaigns. Since PDX is a worker placement game there are also four office spots for peoples workers to go and unlock actions.

The components for PDX are well designed with great iconography that helps out game play. I had the upgraded components in my review copy and the wooden tokens were great and I really loved the palate of colors that they used for the game.

The game setup is straightforward with the way they designed the terminal board (the shared market). The service office tokens, destinations, air planes, and ad campaigns all get shuffled and placed on the terminal board and then the game is ready to go.

Game Play

There are four phases to each players turn and each one is about placing or triggering worker actions. The four parts of each turn are landing planes, reclaiming suitcases, moving your worker, and scheduling flights.

The first part of a players turn is to land your planes. This is when you move your plane token to the next destination in its route and perform the action on the ticket. The airplanes act as another worker token in this respect. Since players don't have routes or planes on the first turn they skip this on the first turn. Routes score points for players and are a part of the game engine they are building in PDX.

The fact that the game takes less time than flying from PDX to SEA makes it really appealing to the causal gamer

The second phase is reclaim suitcases. Players may choose to activate the action(s) where they have their suitcase worker on the terminal board. The first one has the build/upgrade action plus the suitcase action (you may place a suitcase on any of the four actions for a future turn). The second allows players to grab destinations and add them to the destination reserve on their player board until they can place them in a route. Then there are the last two spots leasing a plane and ad campaigns.

The third action is to place your worker. Each player starts with one worker and 2 suitcases. Players choose one of the four service terminal action spots for their worker and perform the action immediately. Unlike the suitcases this worker performs the action on the current turn. The workers can also be placed on on the service offices that you or other players have built. If a player plays a worker onto their own service office they gain the tokens listed and place a suitcase on one of the four terminal action spots. If a player chooses to play their worker onto another players office then in addition to the current player gaining tokens and placing a suit case the player whose office that was used may also place a suitcase.

PDX

The game is all about getting service tokens that allow you to build your routes. To get those tokens you place your worker on any service or private office spot on your player board other players player boards or the shared board. Players may build the offices (up to 3) on their player board) by using the build action. Then when you place your worker on any of the offices you collect the tokens listed and place a suitcase, if its an other players office then they will also place a suitcase.

Once players have started paying service tokens for to build routes then you need to get a plane for the route. As a players plane lands at each new destination (every turn they move down one) they perform the action or collect a token at the beginning of their turn. These tokens can then be used to buy ad campaign cards. Players have only 6 slots to hold any tokens so players have to look ahead to see whats coming so they do not waste tokens.

I really enjoy the artwork and design of PDX. Its a great looking game and its iconography really make the game smooth.

Buying an ad campaign is done with activity tokens that are gained from the landing plane action on a players route. Ad campaigns are worth points at the end of the game. so the economy there is going to be developing a players concourse then gaining service tokens to build routes and landing planes on the routes to gain activity tokens to buy ad campaigns.

Scoring in PDX is not a point salad its less complicated than that. The ad campaigns and routes have point values on them and then players score for each icon on the assigned routes that match on the private offices. If a player's private office had a stamp and a chair then the player would count all the stamps and chairs on their assigned routes and score 1 point each. Players do not score points for unassigned routes or tokens in supply. So players should look to maximize their spend of tokens towards the end of the game. The game ends when 2 of the 8 route stacks on the terminal board are depleted.

PDX Player Board

Thoughts

I really enjoy the artwork and design of PDX. Its a great looking game and its iconography really make the game smooth. I think that it was a very cool decision to give players only one worker to start with. It lets players focus on one thing at a time in the beginning of the game. Then as players start placing suitcases and putting planes on routes things ramp up and that makes the game flow so well.

There is a single player variant for the game that has a pair of dice doing the work of the opponent. Its a good way to learn the rules of the game but not nearly as satisfying as playing with the full complement of 4 players. We will see where PDX takes us especially with the Extra Legroom expansion they are working on.

PDX Setup

The nature of how the game ramps up and the beautiful design make this a great entry point for people new to worker placement games. It also has enough engine building and decision space to make it fun for more experienced players. The fact that the game takes less time than flying from PDX to SEA makes it really appealing to the causal gamer and great for a week night game that's not going to keep you up to late. PDX is coming to Kickstarter on February 24th, 2026. Also checkout some of the other awesome games that Waterworks games has put out.

Players: 1-4

Year Published: 2026

Recommended Ages: 10+

Time to Play: 15 minutes per player

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Bert's Tabletop games was provided a pre production copy of PDX by WaterWorks Games for the preview purposes. The game shown in this preview may vary from the final version of the game.