Power Grid

Each player is in control of a network of cities and power plants to power them with. You’ll acquire power plants through auction and use them to power city network lines you purchase.

Everyone is working towards the same goal: to power the most cities once a player has built out the required network size. The number of cities to acquire to end the game depends on the number of players. Even if you are the first to reach the required network size you won’t win unless you power more cities than other players.

Each turn involves a 5 phases: Determine Player Order, Auction Power Plants, Buying Resources, Building and a Bureaucracy phase.

Player order is determined by controlled cities.

Auctions are used to purchase new power plants to power more cities. Everyone participates in the auction until they purchase a plant or has passed on their turn to make a first bid. Like any auction, players bid until only one bidder remains.

To prepare for powering your cities, players now buy resources (in reverse player order) from the resources track on the board. Some resources are cheap while others are more expensive. The more people purchasing the same resource type makes the cost of the commodity go up.

During the building phase players purchase cities (in reverse player order) to build out their network. The more cities you power each turn, the more Elektro you will acquire to make purchases next turn.

The bureaucracy phase pays out players for powering cities, replenishes the resource market and replaces a the most expensive power plant on the track with one from the deck.

Play progresses until a predetermined number of cities have been built (as shown in the rules book). In a 3-player game, for example, you would play until 17 cities have been built by a single player.

The winner is the person that powers the most cities after someone reaches the number of cities built to trigger the end of game.

Power Grid is a perfectly simple game with plenty of room for strategy. Making the right decisions in spending your riches to acquire the cheapest resources and powering the most cities will win you the game.

This game is great for beginner to moderate board gamers, but advanced players will relish the underlying strategies. The more you play, the better you will get.

Balancing your resources and acquisitions is the name of the game here. Spending too much or too little can give other players golden opportunities to advance.

Designed by Friedemann Friese

The object of Power Grid is to supply the most cities with power when someone’s network gains a predetermined size. In this new edition, players mark pre-existing routes between cities for connection, and then vie against other players to purchase the powerplants that you use to supply the power. However, as plants are purchased, newer more efficient plants become available so you’re potentially allowing others to access to superior equipment merely by purchasing at all. Additionally, players must acquire the raw materials, like coal, oil, garbage, or uranium, to power said plants(except for the highly valuable ’renewable energy’ wind/solar plants),making it a constant struggle to upgrade your plants for maximum efficiency while still retaining enough wealth to quickly expand your network to get the cheapest routes.