Random Babblings

Players:
Duane – 17 powered
Steve – 16 powered
Lisa – 14 powered
Jame (me) – 15 powered

I had discovered this version just last week, and we had played Power Grid just the week before. But being a sucker for modular boards, Duane and I at least, we had to give this a whirl.

I randomly selected a 6 tile layout from the chart, we threw in 3 random neutral tiles, “shuffled” them up and placed them out on the table. This ended up with city heavy cluster of 3 tiles on one side of the board, With long connections to a smaller cluster of 6 cities between 2 tiles on the opposite corner.

After the initial power plant auction I ended up being first to build. I had only purchased a 1 house plant and feared the congestion that would happen on the 3way free interconnect tile, so built apart from it. The section I built upon had plenty of cities, but I think my down fall was that the only way out was through the 3 way. I quietly built over in my section while Duane and Steve competed in the “cheap” cities, and Lisa built in the truly isolated zone.

Stage 2 was the clincher for me I think. I really needed to be first since Duane had sterted encroachment into my area and it was already a leap frog between Him and steve in the cheap section. Duane was first however, and he snatched up the cities he didn’t already have leaving me large jumps to get out of where I was.

Coal became scarce and there was some hot contention for alternative power plants as we all tried to get ready for the end game. Stage 3 came along and the power plants slowly dwindled. Steve was in the lead n cities, and triggered the end by building 2 to have 17, while he could only power 16. But Duane managed a 5 city build to also bring him to 17 and win the game.