One Coin Short: A Power Grid Recharged Board Game Review

Ah, the venerable Power Grid. Where games like Catan, Ticket...

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Great stuff. I was never a fan. Just like we were talking about the Brass series, efficiency puzzles are just not my jam when it comes to board games. I played 3 or 4 times over the years and actually bought a copy of Power Grid: Deluxe for my girlfriend (now wife) because she does like games like that and is an engineeer, to boot, but I think she knew that I wasn't a fan so it never really came off the shelf. I traded it a few months back for a couple Cthulhu Wars extras.

I appreciate that they've done some of those quality of life improvements, though, and playing the European map in Deluxe was always more interesting than the US map, if only for the visual novelty, I think (and getting away from the dead zone that is the Rockies on the US map.)

Perfect name for the review, <chef's kiss>, as one dollar is what cost me the win in my first play of this game. Nailed it.

Honestly any game where your odds of winning go up significantly with the use of a calculator is a game I never want to play again. And this may be the first game I ever put on my "will never play again" list and has been there for probably 15 years...

Why you Yanks always want to swap real money for poker chips I'll never know, it's a crap game to start with and money looks so much better .

I'm a very Ameri-trash gamer - big campaign games, narrative, lots of conflict with dice or cards for resolution, love kickstarters - but will always play Power Grid if it is around.
Maybe I never played with people who min-max'd it, maybe it's because I used to be an electrical engineer and the game just makes so much sense to me (generate and distribute and make some cash from it), whatever the reason I loved it ... haven't played it for a while as I have too many other (new) games to get thru so no going back to oldies.
But I also like train games so maybe it's the networky/engineery thing about the games and I see them more as thematic sims than anything else .