Board games

Here I will be adding some interesting board games I come across!

Power grid

I played this exciting game called  ”Power grid”

Being in the energy sector I can say this was one of the most realistic games I have played

It went on for 5 hours or so

The aim of the game is to power as many cities as possible.  Every player is given a fixed amount of money to start with.

You can buy power plants – Coal, oil, wind, nuclear, combined heat and power, power from waste – Through an auction process in each round with the money you got.

Then you all buy resources required and then spend money to construct houses in areas on map.

You can power more houses by paying for the grid lines and building in the nearby city if it isn’t occupied by someone else.

And you can own only three power plants at once.

At the end of each round you get money for powering as many cities you have built connections for.

What is best about the game is that the price of coal starts off cheap which makes it  attractive to have coal plants and then over the coming rounds the price keeps increasing. Also the price of nuclear keeps getting cheaper. Renewables seems like a great option but it powers less houses for a bigger price as compared to nuclear.

What you end up is a portfolio of investments – coal/nuclear/renewables that makes the winning bet and not just monopolizing one resource or power plant.

You can quickly see players taking up areas on map and trying to encroach into other areas.

But you need to optimize the money you have to build houses/connections, buy a power plant and to buy resources.

It’s a great game that involves optimizing, math, strategy and keeping an eye on what other competitors are doing which makes it very interesting.

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Any thing interesting you come across give a shout!