Brandt Fundak
United States
Cleveland
Ohio
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I have been obsessively gaming over the last year and have managed to grab about 20-30 euro-games in that time. I was brought into the fold by Settlers of Catan and quickly got hooked on Agricola. But one of the games that always intrigued me was Friedemann Frisse's Power Grid, a game that a lot of people talked well of, but that I had never played. Around the Christmas holiday, my friend John brought his copy to a game night we were having, and when my wife gave me the gift of a Thoughthammer shopping spree as a belated Christmas gift, Power Grid was a must have on my list. Here's why.
The components of Power Grid are some of the best I have seen. The grid maps (of the US and Germany on a double sided board) are very stylized, invoking memories of Fritz Lang's Metropolis and the steampunk movement with all of the conduits linking the cities. At the bottom of the map is a strip that represents the market for the different fuels needed to power the power plants. The fuel markers are a series of wooden cylinders painted different colors to signify the different fuels available (coal, oil, garbage and plutonium.) The power plants themselves are simplistically represented in deck that is shuffled and dealt out to an auction market that the players use to put them into play (more on that later.) The money used in the game is nothing special, owing much to the ubiquitous nature of Monopoly money, but making money isn't the ultimate goal of this game, so the fact that it appears to be an afterthought compared to the other components isn't a total shock and does not detract from game play, and it is that game play where this game truly shines.
The idea of the game is to create a power grid amongst the cities on the map while your opponents do the same. The ultimate goal is to be the player that can power the most cities when the end game conditions are met. In the rounds leading up to that moment, players grow their networks by bidding on power plants that gradually allow for supporting more cities, staking claims to cities adjacent to the player's network and buying resources to fuel the plants. It is how these events occur that make Power Grid one of the best games out there. The way the game is designed, it would be easy for one player to run out to the front of the pack and bury everyone else. However, Friese has brilliantly split the game turn into phases that prevent this from occurring. While the starting player gets to start the bidding process for the power plants, it is the players who are in last place who get first crack at buying fuel and expanding their networks. This encourages competitive balance, as growing your network too fast will put you at a distinct disadvantage for growing your network and fueling your power plants. This, in turn, makes sure most games are going to be played tightly, with no one trying to pull ahead. In addition, for the first two "steps" of the game, the auction block contains both a current and "futures" market for plants. The mechanism for this auction are a little too complex to go into detail here, but it is designed in such a way that the most powerful power plants end up placed back in the power plant deck and not brought into play until the last step of the game, when they will not give a particular player an unfair advantage (namely, the player who loses all of the bids and gets to buy the power plant at cost.)
One problem with the game, however, is that in its attempts to be balanced, it actually detracts from some of the game. The game plays 2-6 players, but every different number of players invokes different rules and charts for fuel distribution, which can be confusing. You never want the rule book to be further than 3 feet from the play area at any time for reference. Complicated rules may discourage some of your casual gaming friends from joining in. Also, the beautiful map that comes with the game is divided into six colored segments, but to get the game to play right, you always must eliminate at least one of the segments to get the game to balance right. It's a little disappointing to play on a game board that is beautifully designed, but that you have to ignore a section of it to have balanced play. That said, Friese has managed to take multiple countries and create balanced maps for them. The game comes with maps of Germany and the United States, and many more have been published, which I think is quite the accomplishment, given the varying shapes of those regions.
The flaws with Power Grid are too small to outweigh a game that has really nice balance and is a true joy to play. I will never turn down a chance to play this game. I would highly recommend giving it a try if you haven't yet. Just remember to be patient and be sure to keep that rule book handy.
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