Session Report – 18th February 2005

Players: Mark K, Phil, Nige, Mark G, Garry

This week, we finally played Friedemann Friese’s Power Grid, a game I had put off buying as I already had the first edition of Funkenschlag. We quite liked the earlier version but it suffered from being a bit long, a bit fiddly and the components (especially the board) were not up to the usual German standard. I’m happy to say Power Grid addresses all these criticisms and is an excellent game. Each player represents a power company who is aiming to buy power stations and resources to supply electricity to a network of cities. Each game round is split into 5 phases: Firstly, turn order is determined for the round (basically determined by who has connected their network to most cities, with ties broken by size of power plant). Then a series of power plant auctions take place where everyone has the opportunity to purchase one power plant. The third phase involves buying resources to be used in your plants, then each player can spend money to expand their network into new cities. Finally, players receive income for the cities they choose to supply power to and some housekeeping takes place ready for the next round. Once a player has a network connected to 15 cities (in the 5 player game), whoever is able to supply power to the most cities at the end of that round wins, with ties being broken by who is left with most cash. Our game was extremely close. We all stayed pretty tightly bunched early on. Then I struck out to a bit of a lead, trying to get a bit of an income advantage. However, the game does not favour the leading player as buying resources and network expansion are done in reverse turn order allowing those players who are trailing to complete these phases more cheaply. This meant that everyone stayed in touch. I thought I had my plan all worked out going into the penultimate turn but a momentary lapse, involving me purchasing two resources more than I needed, cost me the game. If I had not purchased these, I would have been able to afford to connect up to a seventeenth city, but I was 6 Elektros short. This meant I was tied with Phil on sixteen cities (all of which we could supply power to) and he had 27 Elektros cash left to my 15, allowing him to win on the tiebreak. He did play very well though. Nige and Mark G also were able to supply 15 cities on that turn, showing just how close it was. The game felt much improved over Funkenschlag. It took just over 2 hours to play (the original took us well over 2 hours to complete step 1) and the pre-printed routes between cities got around the fiddly route-drawing part of the original without me feeling it lost anything. This is a very worthwhile business game that I thoroughly recommend.

Result: Phil 16 (+27 Elektros), Garry 16 (+15), Nige 15 (+10), Mark G 15 (+5), Mark K 13

Ratings: Phil 7, Garry 8, Nige 7, Mark G 7, Mark K 7