Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Tuesday 15th February - Power Grid Comment

I have kept this entry for Richard’s comment I can’t work out how to move it to another post now that I have got the pics.

posted by Colin @ 10:10 AM   2 comments

2 Comments:

At 5:57 PM, Blogger Richard Minson said...

I have to admit I had been wanting to play Power Grid ( or to give it the more eloquent German name - Funkenschlag!! - sounds like something you might call a woman of ‘Easy Morals’ to me ) for quite a while. Anyway I was grateful to Garry for choosing it.

As Colin says in his write-up it took us a while to go through the rules, mainly as there were a few points of ambiguity we needed to discuss. For instance is the winner the person who can ‘supply the most cities’ dependant on both the cities he has and the number of cities his power stations can supply, or just the number of cities his power stations can supply irrespective of the number of cities he has ( we decided on the former ).

Additionally as we were only 4 players the provinces at the northern end of the German map we were playing on were taken out of play – restricting the map to what was required for 4 players

Anyway we eventually started to play, and with play he rules began to make sense, even some rudimentary strategy began emerge. It was obviously advantageous to be the first person to build cities, resources and sometimes to be the last person to purchase a Power Station in a round ( You tend – though not always – to be able to pick up the better Power Stations at base cost if you go last ) – so there is a degree of turn order manipulation that goes one. However as the turn order is dependant on the number of cities you have ( worst players – the one with the least cities tends to purchase cities & commodities first and auction power stations last ) – that means you are probably coming last anyway – do it acts as an equalisation mechanism.

Anyway the game started with Colin and Steve completing for City sites in the Ruhr area, whilst I build in the northeast ( and eventually southeast ) and Garry build in the Centre and southwest.

Care ( as I found out ) also needs to be taken on being the first player to purchase over seven cities as this allows others to purchase 2nd cities at city sites on the next round. Being the first player to go over 7 you end up having the most cities and being the last to build on the next round so tend to get cut out of the best sites. My being the first to go over 7 cities cut me out of the Ruhr area ( which are cheaper to link ) I had been eyeing up -–so I ended up building more cities on the south west.

On the Power Plant front I started very ecologically sound with wind farms and garbage incinerators – but eventually had to get into less ozone friendly fuels.

Unfortunately time restrictions prevented us finishing the full game – but we declared Garry the winner as he was currently ahead on the I can supply this many cities criteria.

All in all a very good game and something that I want to play again and that has gone onto my I’ve got to get a copy list.

 
At 10:41 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I really liked this game, although halfway through the first 50min 'turn' I was doubting my purchase.

There were just a few things in the rules that needed clarification for mechanisms that seemed a bit fiddly but weren't once we had an understanding of what was going on.

Even though we stopped before the end and I was in the lead I think that was more luck than anything else, once everyone has worked out a strategy I'm sure I'll get a good thrashing!

 

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