Jared discovers another way to win Power Grid

Gaming at Kevin's on Saturday, we played three: Power Grid, with the new Italy/France expansion map, Alhambra, and San Juan.

Mike, Jared, Kevin and I started with PG, and Kevin surprised me by introducing the new Italy map he purchased from a local store in Bethlehem (The Portal). Kevin met the owner through work, and he was kind enough to order the new expansion for him and even got him a "Fairplay" type price.

We decided to play the Italy side of the new map, and the game started with the normal small power plant purchasing, and with a tight concentration of plant sites on the north side of the board. Kevin and I started side by side in the middle, his plan apparently to expand to the Northwest. Since the connection costs were much higher to the South, I figured (rightly) that Mike and Jared would stay towards the top with the lower connection costs. I would then build one expensive connection South, and make it too cost prohibitive for them to jump connections over me. I was then able to jump connections over Jared, and even stole a no-surcharge connection right next to one of his plants that he did not notice. (He did the same thing to me last time we played a few months back). He was annoyed, and I thought I was pretty clever, but it turned out not to matter at all.

We continued to build up to 6 plants each, and we did our first PG stall. This strategy attempts to delay the 2nd phase of the game, by preventing expansion to the 7th plant by making expansion to expensive for distant players. (Check out this article on the Geek for more info on the "Step 2 Stall".) You clog up the board in one direction, and dare the other players to try to build over you. If they do, the idea is that you now have a good sized money advantage on them, as their triggering the 2nd phase means that you can build a second plant on existing sites for a much smaller surcharge. Your money advantage then allows you to out-bid them for new high-tech plants, and allows you to buy up resources, sometimes even giving them more of a disadvantage.

Jared is credited with discovering the need to build the "right size" power plants, winning several games on us early in our time with PG. He would ignore plants in the middle phases of the game, waiting for the first 5 or 6 sized plants, and would end up with a 1 or 2 turn powering advantage on his opponents.

In our game this time, Jared discovered something new - and built 11 plants in one turn (with over $200) when Mike broke the stall by building the 7th city. It was so late in the game, that the third phase happened immediately as well, and didn't even matter. Jared had enough energy to power 13 of his 17 plants, Kevin was second with 11, and I had only 8 or 9. The beauty of this play was that Jared store enough cash during our stall, that he was able to force the game to the end WAY more quickly that we had ever seen before. Ever other game we have played, ended with multiple players powering 15, 16, or 17 plants, sometimes ended in a tie broken by cash.

It was a stunningly beautiful move on his part, and frankly, I wonder what else we are going to learn about this game?

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Next up was Alhambra, the Spiel Des Jahres award winner for 2003. (The Spiel Des Jahres is the "German Game of the Year", the most prestigious award in the world for games.) A family game, Alhambra is a combination of tile-laying, card play, and majority/control scoring.

Angie jumped in on this one with the 4 of us, and Jared ended up winning with 76 points, I took second with 75, Angie, Mike and Kevin took 3 through 5.

The game has excellent looking pieces, and nice small board for scoring reminders and as a storage for tiles placed in reserve be each player. The main board has 4 spaces for tiles drawn from a bag, each with their own color marker indicating the type of money card needed to purchase them.

The money cards come in 4 colors, numbered 1 through 9. The game tiles which you purchase and use to construct your city are in 6-7 color groups, each of which has progressively higher scoring values. The higher with value, to more the pieces available (and hence the more possible competition for them).

Each turn consists of 1 or more of 3 types of actions: pay for a tile and place it on your city or in reserve, draw one (or more) of 4 money cards face up near the board, or rearrange your city tiles. Players are allowed a one more bonus action of the three types if they purchase a tile and pay exactly the price listed, without going over.

Strategy in tile purchases comes in obtaining a majority control of higher-value colors, or sneaking in with an inexpensive second place during the later scoring rounds. Points are also obtained for the longest wall connections in your tile-city that you've created.

The game round goes fairly quickly as players decide on their turn whether to overspend for a critical tile in an attempt to nab a majority or secure a lead, or wait and draw more cards to perhaps buy tiles at a later time for the correct exact amount, and perhaps get bonus moves. Tiles are replaced when purchased at the end of a players turn, and vary in price between 4 and 11.

It is very difficult to plan much in the game, it seems to be almost entirely tactics driven, at least in a 5-player game.

It is a satisfying draw, play, build, drink coke, munch chips, chat with host, draw, play, build game. Very light, it's pretty, and has a nice tactile appeal in the handling of colorful cards and tiles. Our game took about 90 minutes as we were pretty chatty and Mike and I were unfamiliar with the game.

I would definitely play it again if Kevin brings it out, but we both felt that there was too little that we could control. I suspect it will only come out as a "tweener" between other heavier titles. If we can get it down to 60 minutes it will have a much higher chance of repeat play.

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San Juan was our final game, with Mike, Kevin and I. Mike had never played, so we played the first couple of rounds with open cards to give him a feel for the moves. Mike had played Puerto Rico before (although it had been a while), so he was somewhat familiar with the role mechanism in San Juan. Obviously, it's hard to build a good strategy without knowing at the card abilities, however, so Kevin and I suggested a few moves on his first turns, which ended up being a game winner for him!

Mike built a silver-smith, gold mine immediately, and then build a second smith and another production building. He added more production, and snagged the powerful library. Kevin tried a councilor play with the prefecture, and I went with an el-cheapo builder strategy, playing quarry, market, poor house, aqueduct. I managed to play City Hall at the end, snagging 9 bonus points, but finished with 28 tied with Kevin. Mike landed the Guild Hall, with 10 points to finish at 30 and the win.

I love San Juan in that it is fast, and everyone is involved every play. I love trying to time the governor, and the tactics of when to produce, trade, pull prospector, etc. And you can play the game in 45 minutes, even with 3 players. Great game.
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As always, Kevin and Marcie provided great hospitality, thank you both for an excellent evening (and good tacos, cookies, bean dip, chips, and coke!).