LogFAQs > #897670808

34. Power Grid
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2651/power-grid

Genre/mechanics: Area control, bidding, resource management, route-building, economic
Rules complexity: 7/10
Game length: 90-150 minutes
Player count: 3-6
Experience: 1 base game, 1 game China - 5 players each
First played: 2015

In Power Grid, your power plant company competes with others' to deliver power to the most cities. There are three key phases - bidding on power plants that allow you to generate the power, building routes to cities so you can deliver that power, and buying the limited resources that you burn for power. Each costs money, which you earn when you successfully deliver that power.

Design - I love pretty much all of three of the decision point steps of Power Grid.

An auction is by nature high-player-interaction - you have to gauge the value of plants against what your opponents bid; a plant might cost a lot of resources to power, but then you can hoard them and corner the market in those resources.

The game includes a very neat catch-up mechanic, where player order in subsequent rounds is determined by who has the fewest cities in their grid, so you might not want to build cities before you can power them - but the issue is, others can beat you to the city first and force a nasty monetary penalty when you try to break into those markets later.

And the resource market also is vicious - money carries over perfectly from round to round, but to imitate supply and demand, the more bought and unburned resources people are hoarding, the more each resource costs.

As a result of the way the game is designed, then, there's this tense competition in each phase of the game, even as there are no obvious "Take that!" mechanics. There are so many decision points, so many aspects you have to evaluate (and which I suck at doing). It's incredibly tight, elegant game design that more than justifies its potentially lengthy playtime (and slightly annoying upkeep).

Enjoyment - Alas, I've only played Power Grid twice. It's the highest-ranking only-played-twice game on the list, and some of those plays were long - which should speak to just how much I admire the game design.

Replay - All that said, I'm not exactly dying to get PG to the table again. It's long and I pretty much suck at it, and my usual playgroup is four and not five-to-six, which is where I'd expect PG to be best, as the least amount of map has to be cordoned off. That said, at some point, the stars will align and I'll be in on it and I'll get a solider read.

Bonus question - What heavier game do you feel is awesome, but haven't quite gotten to the table enough to confirm?

Hint for #33 - a eurogame with an awesome, giant centerpiece
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness