Since I'm still waiting for PG (and its expansions) to ship to my house, I thought I'd browse the BGG entry on PG to find good fan-made player-aid material. Not only did I find that, but I found the awesome Canada and Great Britain maps. So I gathered all the PDFs I would want to print so they could be assembled by the time PG arrived in the mail.

Well in case you haven't seen it, the Great Britain map— http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/info/22073—comes with some substitution power plants. I figured that even at their best printed quality, they still wouldn't seamlessly blend into the official cards (plus mixing them for every game would be a pain) so I found some fan-uploaded scans of the official cards at extremely high quality, and made my own deck.

After hours of cutting and gluing, I realized that I had the two most difficult parts of the game in my posession—the board and the plants. If I only had some resources (beads from Michael's) and wooden houses and money (Monopoly finally has its use!), I could actually play the game before getting it in the mail. This was a very exciting prospect for me.

After scraggling around and gathering all the pieces, I had the game ready to play. I explained the rules to my roomie (albeit awkwardly) and we tried our hand at the game only through Step 1 as recommended for beginners by the rulebook.

Final score? We both owned 10 cities—she powered all 10 and I only 9. I lost! Even after all my own intimite research into the game.

Can't wait to play all the way through Step 3 tonight! London's going to be blinking like a Christmas tree.