by Tiffany Ralph
Like my reviews? Read them a week earlier over at GamesAreEvil.com.Alright, sit down. No, shut up. You’re going to learn a bit about supply and demand, whether or not you asked for it. Economies are made and broken by this shit. It’s serious business. So serious, we’re going to play a game about it.
Bam! It’s electric.
[Have you noticed I take all the box art pictures at the same angle? It’s like I’m trying to be artistic or something.]
No really, it’s a game about power company management.
Yes, that’s a game. Of course it’s fun. What? No, I’m not having a one-sided conversation with myse– yeah, okay I am. I’m out of intros. Sue me.
Power Grid! It’s a game about building a – wait, you guessed it – power grid! Players take on the role of a power company CEO? Board? I don’t know who runs companies, but that guy. You play as that guy. You try and build the most effective power company on whichever map you decide to play on. To do this, you need to buy power plants, buy resources to fuel those plants, build substations in cities, and then burn your resources to power those cities. This will in turn earn you money, which you can then use to do it all over again. At the end of the game, the player that can provide power to the most cities on the last round is the winner. Two to six players can play this delightful reason to curse your loved ones, and gameplay takes around two hours. Right, game outlined. Let’s get to the fucking meat.
See the map? That one, below this sentence.
[I’m so freaking meta today.]
Does it look familiar? It should, it’s very similar to the love and loath of my life,
Ticket to Ride’s map. That’s most likely because
Power Grid is a networking game, somewhat like the train game queen. The biggest difference is that you build inside of cities, not to cities, though you still have to pay for the routing there. You also have to make sure that all of your cities are connected via a single network. You can pay to pass through another player’s town, but that can get expensive – fast, and money doesn’t grow on trees in this game. Money has to be earned, by building fixtures in cities and then getting power to them with your power plants. You have to buy these power plants at an auction, competing against your opponents, who very likely want the same ones you’re bidding on. Oh, and you can’t spend all your hard earned dough on that perfect plant, oh no. You have to save some cash so you can buy fuel to use in it. Fuel, which is limited by what’s made available at the end of each round. Think the rich will automatically come out on top? Think again. The player with the most stations on the board goes last when it comes to buying more fuel and building new stations. See how this all can get a bit interesting, now?
Let’s start from the beginning and work our way forward through one turn. Imagine you’re playing
Power Grid with your older brother and your delightful sister-in-law. We’ll name them Tom and Crystal, because I’m lazy and that’s what my brother and sister-in-law’s names are. You’re in the beginning of your whatever-th turn and you’re in solidly last place. You’re not too worried about this, though, as that means while you don’t get first pick at new power plants, you do get first stab at buying resources and building stations. Alright, got that pictured in your mind? Good.
You’re the green player. You have three plants currently, and two run solidly on coal, which is getting expensive. It’s getting expensive because your opponents also have coal plants, but more importantly, at the end of each round only 5 new coal resources are added to the bank. Sources have gotten low.
[Map change! This is the Spain/Portugal map, which features a no-Nuclear Portugal, because they’re backwards. Anyway, coal is the little brown cubes. There’s only seven.]
Looking at the market, you can see that trash (the yellow pieces) is getting cheaper every round. If you stick with the two coal plants you currently have, and your one wind turbine plant, you’ll need five pieces of coal. Because you’re in last, you’ll get to buy coal first, but at about seven dollars a piece, that’s going to be expensive. You really want to try and save money so you can build stations further north or to the east, which should eventually get you more money. Also, keep in mind that in future turns, there’s likely to be less coal available, so getting a different plant that uses different fuel would be best. You can also see above that oil (black cylinders) isn’t doing much better than coal, even though it starts a bit cheaper. Uranium (red pieces) is more sparse, but generally nuclear plants only need one piece every round, so they can be more cost effective in the long run.
After scoping out your resource situation, you take a look at what power plants are available in the market. You won’t get to start the bidding, that’s the first player’s job, who for this story will be Crystal. She, like most everyone else at the table, wants to get off of fossil fuels. The most obvious plant for her is the one shes starts the bidding with. The minimum she can start the bidding is displayed in the plant’s upper left corner – 30 dollars. Not a bad deal, if she can get it for that, as it burns three trash to power six cities.
[Only the top row of plants is available for purchase during the first two steps of play. The majority of the game takes place during these steps, though, so we’ll just focus on that.]
Crystal opens the bidding at 30 bucks and you politely up the price with a bid of 31 – bidding goes clockwise around the table, not by player rank. Tom, the asshole that he is, bumps the price up to 35 immediately. Too rich for your blood, especially considering you want to build more power stations this turn and you’d still have to buy resources, so after Crystal counters with 36, you pass. Tom lets her have it, if nothing else but for the safety of their marriage. A new plant is drawn from the deck and placed in numerical order in the market. It’s a hydrogen plant, minimum bid of 50, and gets placed on the bottom row, out of everyone’s reach. Tom, as the player in second place, puts a bid on the uranium plant that just got bumped up to the top row for the minimum 34 dollars. You counter with 35, as one uranium is cheap compared to anything else you’d need to power what is available in the market. He knows this as well, though, and counters your counter. This goes back and forth until you’ve bid everything you can reasonably afford and still he’s got you bested. You’re forced to pass in bitter rage, doubting every time you covered for him sneaking out of the house in the 10th grade. You wonder if you told your mother now, could she still ground him? Maybe if you told his wife..
Pondering of past indiscretions and possible punishments seizes as the next power plant is revealed – it is another wind turbine plant. 27 dollars minimum bid, enough power for three cities each round, and as you’re the last player to bid, no one will be competing against you for it. That is luck of the draw, my friends, as while you’ll still keep your coal plants and just replace your pathetic one city wind turbine, you just got very cheap power for two additional cities.
[At my power company, we like to balance out destroying the world’s oxygen supply by depending on it for some of our business.]
Because you managed to get a plant for cheaper than you were originally planning on, you can relax a bit about the coal problem. Double lucky, you’re in last place, which means you get to buy your resources first. You can also be a bit of a bitch and buy more coal than you actually need, storing the extra for future turns and keep your opponents from getting what they need for cheap. Each plant can store up to twice of what it consumes, translating to you buying all seven remaining coal pieces and laughing maniacally as your brother starts to curse your arrival into this world. Serves him right after that move he pulled on the first date you ever brought home. Strip searches are not mandatory.
After Crystal buys her trash and Tom his uranium, once again you get to go first at something. Now you get to build your stations in cities, branching out to where ever you can afford to reach from your already existing network. During the first step of the game, only one player can occupy a city at a time, and it each city costs 10 dollars for that first player. After the second step begins, two players can establish themselves in a town, the second to set-up shop putting down 15 dollars. If the third step happens, then three players can build stations in cities, with the third spot going for 20 bucks. Getting to cities is what really differs pricing, as different lengths of connections between towns cost different amounts – and any natural obstacles can also vary the price.
The build phase is all said and done when everyone builds whatever they can afford, reach, or just want to build. After that you all burn whatever resources you have available in your plants to provide power to however many cities you can afford to power in your network. It’s entirely possible that you build more power stations in cities than you can afford to power. Possible, but not always wise. Owning the most stations is what determines turn order, so unless you want to get first bid on power plants, being in first place isn’t always a good thing.
Power Grid is a game that tries to help the underdog the best it can, which turns out to be pretty good. Having the most stations on the map and being able to power them all will definitely make you the richest player for a turn or two, but when you’re locked out of valuable resources by your vindictive opponents, that’s of little aid later in the game.
[This picture isn’t part of the pretend game you’re imagining. It’s just the only one I took with money in it.]
Because
Power Grid is a game with a crude but very effective economic system, paper money is sadly a requirement. Some people like to swap out the
Monopoly-esque cash for more solid objects like poker chips or cards, but paper money can be okay. It makes sense for
Power Grid that play money be apart of the game, and because the economy is based entirely on the direct actions of your opponents, I feel comfortable recommending a game that includes it. This isn’t to say I recommend
Monopoly. I don’t. Don’t buy that game.
Buy Power Grid.
The only bit of luck in the entire game is in the draw deck for the power plants. That’s it. And even then, you’re not limited to its whim every turn. The market changes every round and players can directly affect it. There are no dice determining if you land on Park Place or Boardwalk. There’s just your sister-in-law who’s nine months pregnant and purposefully building straight down the Mississippi to block you from spreading to the west coast. You love her, and the niece she’s carrying, but you will cut her if she takes the last open city out of the east. In games like
Monopoly, it’s no one’s fault but Lady Luck’s for your poverty and that’s just plain cruel to teach someone, of any age. That’s not how this world works and that’s not how good games should play. It’s no surprise then that Power Grid ranks number seven on BoardGameGeek’s top games list, nearly ten years after its initial release. This game is good, solid and smart. It belongs on every gamer’s shelve.
More Board?Maps, maps, maps. There are a slew of
Power Grid maps. Spain, China, North and South Korea, Germany, France, just.. there are maps. Hunt them down and get them. There are also different card expansions and promo packs that give way cool plants like the Flux Generator and theme park.
If the idea of simulated economy games interest you but you’re not feeling electricity, try
Le Havre which is a game about running a dock/pier. It’s got a bit of worker placement, a bit of resource management, a bit of economy, lots of salty sea air.
And for anyone that cares, no, there is no new baby yet and my brother’s “BABY IS COMING” button privileges have been revoked. From now on only the baby herself may press that button, or the doctor that delivers her, because I’m not getting up at 4am for nothing again.
