I first spotted Power Grid when we were shopping for another game. I picked it up and went, “Hah! A board game where you play a power magnate!” Later at home, though, as I browsed r/boardgames looking for my next purchase, Power Grid showed up a lot. People said good things about it. I started to consider buying it. Soon enough, I needed Power Grid. So we went out and bought it while it was still on sale.
Power Grid is pretty complex. There’s a lot to like about it. But, as I found out, there’s also a few things that could do with ironing out.
Suggested ages: 13+
Number of players: 2-6
Playing time: 2 hours [maybe]
My rating: 7/10
In Power Grid, you play a power magnate who competes against other power magnates to power the most cities. In each round, every player has the ability to buy a new power station at auction, buy resources to power their power stations, and buy cities for the power stations to power. The winner is the first player to successfully power a certain number of cities – but each station can only power a certain number, and each player is only allowed three stations. You need to upgrade your network to keep up with demands. To get money in the game, you decide on how many cities to power at the end of each round. Each city pays up and that’s the cash you work with for the next round. Deciding how to allocate the cash is the most strategy-laden part of the game.
Let me start with what is great about Power Grid: the economy simulation. When you buy resources, the supply of those resources changes. So if you buy up heaps of coal, the next player to buy coal has to pay more for it – demand is high, so the price is high. It’s extremely clever. It’s probably my favourite part of the game.
It also simulates the advance of technology really nicely with the power stations. At the beginning, your choices are coal or oil, and the stations available aren’t very powerful. Soon, though, you get into garbage power, nuclear power, and clean power, and the stations get much higher in capacity.
I also love that the game comes with a reversible board so that you can play Germany or America. (For the record, I recommend Germany, because connecting cities across middle America will cost you a fortune.)
This game is playable with 2 players, and as I discovered it isn’t much different to playing it with 4. That’s really nice – not many board games are good for 2 players.
The art is awesome. I don’t know much about steampunk, but this might be steampunky type art? It’s cool, anyhow.
Turns aren’t like in other board games. In each round, you take turns with the other players to do four things: buy power stations, buy resources, buy cities, get money. You don’t sit around waiting for everyone else to have their go. All players are more or less active at all times.
So, it sounds pretty good, right? Well … there are a few issues – one bigger than the other – that could stand to be mentioned here.
When we first played Power Grid, two of us, I read the rules and set up. And the rules are confusing – I’m not sure whether it’s because they’ve been translated from German, but I found them fairly difficult to follow. You definitely want to either play with someone who knows the game, or set up and play as you read the rules. The rulebook itself will not get you excited about the game. I don’t really hold it against Power Grid though: a lot of European board games are really complex. That’s what makes gameplay so brilliant, but it presumably also means the rules are tough to write.
What I do hold against Power Grid though is the rut we found ourselves in at the end of the game. When you buy power stations, the really powerful ones don’t appear on the market until the less powerful ones have been purchased. These less powerful ones can continue to clog the market for many rounds, unless someone buys them. After a certain point, nobody wants to buy them because they’d be downgrading their network. During the first two steps of the game, at the end of a round you discard the most powerful station on the market – but that doesn’t help the clog. It’s only once you reach step three that you start discarding the least powerful stations in the market instead.
Basically, you wind up with everyone having plenty of cities and plenty of resources, and fighting tooth and nail to buy the high capacity power stations when they eventually make it to market. This is where we have tended to enforce power outages by effectively skipping rounds so that we can go straight to the discard step.
When we first played, I thought this might be happening because we were only 2 players. However, having given it a shot with 4 as well, I can see that it is the same, no matter the number of players. Playing with more people also increased play time a lot. When we played as a pair I think we did fall within the estimated 2 hour play time, but with 4 we were fairly well outside it. Having said that, as with most European board games, Power Grid has a defined end point and you know you’ll reach it eventually. That’s reassuring.
Overall? I like it, because it’s just so extremely clever. It involves a lot of strategising and it’s not aggressively competitive. I have some ideas for work arounds for that big issue I mentioned. It can definitely be dealt with. Still, given the length of the game I think I’ll file it under “rainy weekend day” rather than “busy board games night where you want to get through multiple games”.
Where can I buy Power Grid?
You can buy from Toyco for $89.99. They also have the expansions (different maps) and spin off games (The First Sparks and Factory Manager, neither of which rate as highly as Power Grid on boardgamegeek.com). Mighty Ape sells it for $79.99 – and check out the review that calls it “electrifyingly amazing”. I see what you did there. Fishpond has this one too, for $72.20 and free shipping, but you’ll wait a while as it’ll come from the U.K.
So – have you played? What did you think?
‘Tabletop’ is a class of games including board games, dice games, tile games, pen and paper games, etc. While tabletop games might make you think of bitter Christmas feuds over a Monopoly board, I love them, and I like to think they’re making a comeback (having said that, I’ve not played Monopoly for years). Not all of them are aggressive, and some of them don’t even have players competing against each other! What they do have is a plethora of ways to play and strategise, depending on the type of game you’re playing. That’s exciting, no?
I have played this game! It was fun! It was enjoyable! It was frustrating when we couldn’t get any more good power stations and the good guy bought them all and it still didn’t make enough of a difference! Exclamation marks! I share similar sentiments about this game to those expressed in this review!