Power Grid [Board Game]

Short Version:

This game is great. You build cities on a map of Germany or the US, connecting adjacent cities to each other along power lines. Then, you buy power plants of various sorts (coal, oil, nuclear, wind, fusion, garbage) that power a certain number of your cities for a resource cost (coal, oil, etc.). Finally, you pay resources (which you also buy) to use your power plant (or power plants, you can have up to 3) and get paid based on how many cities you have that are receiving power. You repeat this progression (though not in the order described -read below for full details).

Basically, this game is sort of a blend of Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride, with some added twists. It plays with 2 to 6 players, with the game adapting somewhat with more or fewer players. I'd guess it's not for kids younger than 10, but it is hard to say. The game is somewhat complex in strategy, but pretty basic in number of rules. It plays in about 2 hours. The board looks great, the pieces are of excellent quality, and there is quite a lot of room for strategy (no die rolling, so not much depends on chance). This is my favorite Rio Grande Game and pretty close to my favorite game of all (Pirate's Cove might still be the top).

Longer Version:

Each turn, you first bid with other players for different power plants. Each plant has advantages: they cost less in their initial bid, they power more cities (from 1 to 7 cities), they cost fewer resources to power cities, they use a resource that other players aren't using, or they take no resources at all to power cities (wind power and fusion power -there is only one fusion power, the most expensive plant in the game). After every player has had a chance to initiate bidding on a power plant, you move on to the next step of the turn.

Next, you buy resources that you will use to feed your power plants. There are six resources types: uranium, garbage, coal, oil. Wind-based power plants and the one fusion-based power plant cost no resources. The cost of resources varies on a sliding scale depending how many were purchased by players in prior turns. The resources also regenerate from turn to turn.

Next, you build cities using money (called Elektro). The cities cost a set amount, and you pay both for the cost to build in a city and for the cost to build power lines to that city. There are no actual power line pieces, you just look at the connecting line on the board between cities and it tells you what it costs to connect those two cities.

Finally, you fuel your power plants with resources, which generates power for your cities. Based on how many cities are receiving power, you get Elektro. After all players have built cities, the turn now ends.

That's the overview, but there are several nuances to Powergrid that add a lot of strategy. First, the more cities you build the lower in turn order you go each round. So if you have the most cities, the other players have a chance to take actions before you. They might build cities where you wanted to build them. Or they might buy resources, which causes them to be more scarce on your chance to buy them (thus you pay more for them).

Second, you don't want to build too fast or you won't be able to outbid other players when buying new and improved power plants, which can be very expensive depending on bidding.

Third, as you build more cities, the game changes somewhat, moving from "stage 1" to "stage 2" and finally to "stage 3." In each stage, resources regenerate faster (or slower), players are able to share cities (so instead of one player controlling a city, in stage 2 two players can control one, and three players can in stage 3).

This game also changes based on the number of players. With 2, you use less of the map, whereas with 6 you use the whole board. The victory conditions also change (the number of cities you have built triggers the end of the game, with various factors affecting who actually wins).

In sum, this is a great game. Very much like Ticket to Ride in general feel, but with the added resources idea of Settlers of Catan plus the bidding aspect of games like High Society or Cleopatra. It's an excellent game, and very well made.

This is a great game. It is fairly long and has a steep learning curve so it will likely take you at least three hours the first time. Don't be discouraged, it'll go faster once you get the hang of it. I recommend assigning jobs for players based on where they sit; one to restock the resources, one to reset the turn order and so on. This will go faster than trying to remember and do everything as a group. And the time to play will fly by, I highly recommended it.

But alas someone would probably sue. It's a simple enought concept of a game.. connect towns in your power grid, power them..(if you feel like it).. get paid for the ones you power, buy resources and available power plants... rinse repeate.

However.. the fact that there are limited resources and limited plants that you can buy... and the fact that you get to bid for things and try to cut people out of certain area's of the map... make it a fantastically interesting and challenging game. It's very well tuned to avoid one person getting a compelling lead and using it to snowball to winning later on, but that doesn't mean that if one person plays well and gets a lead early on that they can't maintain it throught hard work. Beware getting locked into one resource and getting stuck in one area of the map... getting out of that will be expensive...