Tabletop games

Power Grid

Run a power company: buy power plants, supply them with resources, connect cities, and power the most cities at the end of the game.

players: 2–6
minutes: 120

You’ll need the game box. Marquoir sums up the rules and keeps score.

Setup

Choose neighbouring regions on the map: three with two or three players, four with four, five with five or six.
Everyone takes their houses, a summary card and 50 Elektro, and places one marker on the scoring track and one on the player order track.
Fill the resource market: coal, oil and garbage on the cheap spaces, uranium on the expensive ones.
Power plants 3 to 10 form the market: the four cheapest in the current market, the next four in the future market.
The remaining power plants form the draw pile, with the Step 3 card at the bottom and plant 13 on top. Without looking, randomly remove 8 power plants with two or three players and 4 with four players.

How to play

Each round is played in five phases.
1. Player order: whoever has the most cities goes first; in case of a tie, the biggest power plant breaks it.
2. Auction: in turn, each player may put a power plant from the current market up for auction, starting at its number, or pass. You buy only one power plant per round, and you keep only three (four with two players).
3. Resources: in reverse order, everyone buys coal, oil, garbage or uranium at market price to fill their power plants.
4. Building: in reverse order, connect new cities by paying the connection cost and the space in the city.
5. Bureaucracy: everyone powers the cities they can and collects the matching income, then the resource market is restocked and one power plant is changed.
The game moves forward in steps: in Step 1, only one company per city; in Step 2 (as soon as a network reaches the threshold, usually seven cities), two; in Step 3 (when the card comes out of the draw pile), three.

Scoring

For each player, count the number of cities in their network they manage to power with their power plants and resources.
A city that is connected but not powered does not count.
In Marquoir, enter each player's number of powered cities.

End of the game

The game stops at the end of the Building phase in which a network reaches the threshold: 21 cities with two players, 17 with three or four, 15 with five, 14 with six.
There is then one last powering, with no new purchases.
Whoever powers the most cities wins; in case of a tie, the most money left, then the most cities in the network.

Frequently asked questions

Does the first player to reach 17 cities always win?

No. They trigger the end, but the win goes to whoever powers the most cities. A large network without enough power plants or resources can lose.

Why is going first a disadvantage?

The first player is the one in the lead: they buy their resources and build after the others, so at the highest prices and in the cities that are left.