Hello, this is TehTentacle reviewing, your number one board-gaming squid pal! It's time for a review about managing electric power and money, this is Power Grid, a game with Max Power.

Looks Good

Well, can't blame the game for not looking good; it's smooth, generally very much greenish and overally the graphics seem to fit in the game theme, it's very good. All the cities you see around the map, the power plant cards and resource grids etc. it's kinda catchy.

...

but wait, don't you think it also looks a bit like... a propaganda poster? I do and a friend of mine actually asked if the game was a doctor game because of the guy in labcoat on the cover. Wow, looks more like the guy is managing an electric chair. That's some sinister torture, we can't even see the victim.

So anyway, looks good and wooden components are nice, although some of the wooden power plants were a bit shattered and retarded, still nothing much to quibble about here.

Nuclear power, no meltdowns

Now then, how does the game play? I'll make a try to explain the overall gameplay here, see if I succeed or not.

A game-round has five phases: first you start by determining turn order: the first player is the one who has most power plants in cities or has the most expensive power plant.

In the second phase players buy power plants in an auction. The first player starts, which can be a bit irritating if you are the one. You see that there are good power plants coming, but you can't get your hands on those. You don't want to skip because you need a plant, but it would be so wonderful to get the good one.
Don't get me wrong, this is probably my favourite phase in the game. It's fun, players making their offers ''twenty'', ''twenty one'', ''twenty two'' and then someone shouting ''ONE HUNDRED!'' . You can't know what's coming from the deck, you don't know if someone else is looking at the same plant as you; sometimes you even want to lose the auction and sometimes you win just to see an überplant being revealed next.

Third phase is where you buy the materials your plants require to power cities. Ah, the money, I think they were electros, but we tend to call them euros or dollars.. yeah, electros, what the heck?
In this phase the first player is actually the last one and trailer's the first. A power plant can handle twice the number of resources it shows in the card, and it might be a good idea sometimes to backup yourself with double resources.
A player needs to be careful after his/her money, for they're also needed in the next phase, which usually devours an awful amount of it, and the prices usually rise and rise as the game emerges. This phase requires some skill to look forward, and players should note if they are about to buy enough or even too much resources.

We then come to the fourth phase: players now start buying room for their power plants in the cities and expanding their, well, power grids. A city holds places for three plants in which all can not be built at the start of the game, but become available after some time. No player can have more than one plant in each city, and expanding to other cities costs money, both the expanding and buying a place for your power plant. The turn order goes as in the previous phase, making it easier to catch up for the other players, a very good mechanic, though not always does it work as it should.
The expanding phase is something which sometimes annoys me, and a lot. On some occasions it happens that players can be too close to each other 'trapping' one player to his place with only few cities. This makes it more difficult for that player to expand his power grid, and on times it can be really frustrating, especially if other players do it on purpose. It's something I don't like but which might mean that you have to be intentionally playing all the time, like ''don't mess around in an eurogame or you're fcked!''

In the final phase the players are given money as they produce power to the cities, the more cities are powered the more money you get. Now your power plants exhaust their required materials and the resource lines are filled with more resources for the following turns.

The gameplay carries out well and the balance system usually works fine and does its job. I have, however, noticed after a few plays of Power Grid that you can sometimes foretell the winner before the game ends, it can be very clear at times. But most of the time, fortunately, the game is going on smoothly, you're having some good hard time of thinking and the game can end to be a more like draw, even though the winner is still sorted out by one way or another, usually counting your 'electrooooz'.

Expanding

The game expansions are one of those aspects I really love, and also Power Grid shares this feature; there are number of official expansions introducing new maps and power plants and there's a nice amount here on BGG also. The maps can include special conditions which affect the playing, and I think this could also be used in association with somekind of condition deck, of which you would draw every round, or events which might have instant effects etc. I think Power Grid is perfect for this kind of customization, very durable game.

I see good and bad

I myself have scored Power Grid 8.25, seems to be the same rate as the general BGG rate. It's medium/medium-heavy and probably our gaming groups favourite eurogame. I list here a few of those aspects and things I like about the game and do not like.

What is fun
+ thinking, thinking and thinking, I like thinking and this one has some of hardest of it
+ graphics, looks like propaganda, very smooth looking
+ pretty good balance
+ auctioning, can be fun but also...

Not always so fun
- ...it just drives me mad
- expanding, frustrating when you're trapped but leads me to ---> thinking, which I said I like, a paradox!
- all the numbers and counting, though good practice can be annoying
- still not always as balanced as you hope

For those of you who are looking for about 2-3 hours or more with some heavier eurogame I might even recommend this. The cover of the game didn't really encourage me at first, but Power Grid isn't something you should judge by how it looks, and after sometime you might actually start liking how it looks, as have I.

Maximize your power if you must.