#3 Power Grid

Haven't written something for long time... I've been terribly busy - all the games and stuff... Who am I fooling - I haven't played any boardgames for couple of weeks (except a session of Beowulf with my mother)... All right. As even now I don't have much time to do something really cool I'm just gonna' tell You about a really cool game... For Your consideration - it's 3 o'clock in the morning and I haven't drunk beer for a week now... anyway...

Funkenschlag aka Power Grid is very good economic-strategy boardgame where playeres take the roles of electricity-companys who try to attend as many clients as possible. For that one have to buy powerplants, build electricity lines, obtain fuels and prevent other players to do the same thing...

Game board is double-sided - on one side there's the map of U.S, on the other side there's the map of Germany. Both maps are divided into six areas, each containing 7 cities. Division of that kind allows players to use different parts of the map with different number of players. It's rather easy to follow the borders :)

But that could not be said about the rules. They are rather poorly written. Even as I tried to recall how the game was played I had real trouble chewing though those pages... This of course can't be compared with the complexity of Arkham Horror rules :)

There are many kinds of power plants and fuels. For plants there's importance of price (upper left corner), consumption and type of fuel (down left) and amount of citys this plant can supply with power. WIndmills produce green energy and therefore don't need fuel. The last of them should be thermonuclear powerplant which neither doesn't need any further investment after purchase. The price in the upper corner is not the final price but rather initial price. When player had decided which powerplant he/she would like to buy an auction starts. The initial price may be set higher than base price on the card by the player who put it on auction. Oftentimes green power is rather valuable and that kind of plants are sold for massive price.

There are four types of fuel in the game - coal (brown), oil (black), garbage (yellow) and uranium (red). When purchasing fuel one must consider the current price and future market. Often it's not very wise to buy crapload of coal when You are about to swich Your old plants for new ones (unless they use the same type of fuel). Uranium is rather expensive at the beginning but later on that changes. That of course in the case that no-one uses it in the beginning...

Game is very well balanced - when someone is left behind with buildings he/she has massive advantages when buying power plants, fuel and buildings. It's not nice to be the first. All the fuel will be bought right under Your nose... Not nice at all... With many players it's even more painful since You are left with the worst options ever - to buy high-price fuel or not power Your buildings.

I also brought the expansion from Essen that contains bunch of power plants that can be added to the game. There's some really brutal plants there. The plant on the right is the one I got for free (well, I did have to donate at least an euro to get it but that doesn't matter anyway). But I'm afraid it's only a requisite since the background is a bit darker tone than the rest of the cards. I would be perfect when playing in the dark room.

Great game...Why else did I waited for hours just to get a signed copy of the game :D

I promise I'll be more diligent in the future...