Naturelich Games

Power Grid - North Italy almost totally covered

We were able to get Power Grid out. I had only played the German map before, so we tried the map of Italy this time. Like Ticket to Ride, Power Grid has the advantage of being extensible with additional maps. This keeps the game fresh and interesting.

Shelak, Raven and I decided to limit play to Northern Italy. This part of the map is characterized by many short connections with little cost for getting the infrastructure up and running. The rule booklet states something about coal and oil resources becoming scarce but we did not experience any such thing. Maybe this comes into play when you use the whole map, as Southern Italy has much higher cost of connecting those cities.

In the end Naturelich had the lead for quite a while, with Raven coming second and Shelak third. I had made a strategic mistake as Raven was able to provide more cities with power which would have given her more victory points. The power plant market just was not ready for our demand. Raven was able to keep her leading position, although she was a little bit high on the usage of resources, while I was producing very lean. Time was certainly more on my side but she played it well. In the end, Shelak was able to get closer to both of us as there was a time in which we could not do all that much except than wait for better power plants. All in all, this has been a very fun game again...