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by Friedemann Friese
Rating: 8/10 after 5+ plays
art Maura Kalusky
publish 2F Spiele / Rio Grande
players: 2-6
duration: 45-90 mins.
type: medium strategy board game
PACE: MEDIUM. The auctions go quite quickly, but when it comes to buying fuel, and trying to figure out which cities to connect to, how much to spend and when to spend it, it will sometimes take some planning by the players. Much planning is being done while it is not your turn, and with experience, the game flows fairly quickly.
COMPLEXITY: MEDIUM. This is one of those games that sits between medium and heavy strategy. On one hand, the game is very thematic, and so the rules are not at all hard to understand. On the other hand, this is an 'optimization' game and in order to optimize your power plants, and your fuel, and your power grid, planning your money carefully and recognizing when to switch power types makes a difference. Medium to learn, heavy to play well.
LUCK: LOW. Players know ahead of time which plants and fuel will be available, and so very little luck is involved. With more players, more happens between your turn, but the board 'grows' with more players, which helps even things out.
TENSION: HIGH. A good 'optimizing' game is always tense, and this is among the best. Planning money, plant types and fuel, city placement -- lots going on here and very tricky. You'll often be down to your last dollar.
VICIOUS: HIGH. With less players, the board becomes more cutthroat, with more players, the auctions and fuel pickups become tighter. The best part is the board where board placement is tight because of the prices of connections and because of your opponents.
INTERACTION: MEDIUM. Auctions, fuel acquisition, board placement all involve indirect interaction -- and lots of it! City placement is the one part of the game where players may make a point of interfering with potential placement with their opponents.
VISUALS: GOOD. Nice board and wooden pieces and power plant cards. My only visual problem with the game is that the board is fairly busy (and looks like a plumbing game, instead of a power game) and it would have been nice if the board were just a little 'cleaner' to look at. Still, you get used to it quickly. Also, the board is double-sided, and divided into regions so that every time you play, you get a bit of a different feel.
THEME: HIGH. You really do get the sense of being a CEO of a power corporation. Very nice.
GAMER APPEAL: YES. Aimed straight at gamers, and a very good game to do it.
NON-GAMER APPEAL: MAYBE. It's not hard to learn, but the number crunching will scare some people away (the number crunching reminds me of Princes of Florence.) However, the theme is so heavy, it should draw people in.
2 PLAYERS: GOOD. It becomes much more of an optimization game and less of an auction game, but that doesn't mean it isn't fun: the board gets so tight for space that cutoffs become important in the first round.
REPLAY: GOOD. So far so good. It remains to be seen how it is over long term, but the variable board (with two different maps) helps a lot.
RATING: 7/10 after 4 plays.
Good with 2-6 players.
Best with 4-5 players.
Have you ever wanted to be the CEO of a fledgling power corporation? No? Well...erm...you may want to after playing this game! Each round starts out with auction for power plants, each plant a different cost and differing efficiency and differeing fuel type. Coal, nuclear, wind-powered, even recyclable waste! You will try and get power plants that will, as cheaply as possible, help you power up the USA or Germany. Next players buy the different types of fuel their power plants need, keeping a close eye on supply and demand, angling for good prices. Then players will expans their network by trying to get into cities quickly -- the first player pays 10, the next 15, the last 20. And you also want to hurry to get the best spots on the board, since the connecting price from, say, St. Louis to Kansas City, is different than Portland to Seattle. The more cities you power, the more money you make. And this game will keep you on your toes the way Princes of Florence does -- always trying to find ways to optimize your money and get as much done as possible. The winner is the player who powers the most cities. An excellent design from Herr Friese.