August 6th Gaming Day at Garrys - Powergrid

Powergrid2
Originally uploaded by coljen.

OK Jo, what’s it to be? The game he chose is a game I like quite a lot and always goes down well with everyone, Powergrid. Here is a brief description from BGG.
The latest cooperative publishing effort from 2F and Rio Grande Games, removes the crayon aspect from network building in the original edition while retaining the fluctuating commodities market like McMulti and an auction round intensity reminiscent of Princes of Florence. The object of the game is to supply the most cities with power when someone's network gains a predetermined size. In this new edition, players mark pre-existing routes between cities for connection, and then vie against other players to purchase the power plants that you use to supply the power. However, as plants are purchased, newer more efficient plants become available so you're effectively allowing others to access to superior equipment merely by purchasing at all. Additionally, players must acquire the raw materials, like coal, oil, garbage, or uranium, to power said plants (except for the highly valuable 'renewable energy' wind/solar plants), making it a constant struggle to upgrade your plants for maximum efficiency while still retaining enough wealth to quickly expand your network to get the cheapest routes.
So we set up the board and pieces and chose the regions to play in. Some interesting decisions before we start, playing the Germany map Jo chose the region with Essen in it....... had to do it. Garry said Iv’e been there picked another one. Anyway I started slowly being pretty strapped for cash early on. Steve was boxed in by Garry a bit but it didn’t seem to cramp his style too much. This game was played pretty tight by everyone with careful thought going into every move. I was building only one station to everybodies two for a couple of turns and thought I was lagging well behind. I did manage to get a couple of wind power stations to ease my financial worries for a bit though.
Garry had cornered the market in uranium power stations and by this time it seemed that Steve was well ahead. As the game entered the end phase Jo reckoned the only way to stop Steve was to buy all wood and oil to prevent him from supplying his cities.
This strategy seemed to work well and Steve was crippled in the end and we all sneaked past him and suprisingly I pinched a narrow victory.

Final Scores
Colin 16, Garry 15 (most money), Jo 15, Steve 14