How long? 5 hours.
Last Friday we had a game night. Six people were there: Charles, John, Sophy, Darren, and us. Totof picked Power Grid among his board game collection. We laid the game out. We took United States map. After 30 min explanation, we started the game (yes, Power Grid has a higher difficulty level). You can see my previous post.
For some reasons, Power Grid became popular at game nights. I have already played Power Grid 3 times during October and November. Thanks to the designer, I always had fun from Power Grid. In addition, I always discovered something new from each play.
This time, people played psychology games a lot. When someone bid, someone else would try to make the power plant very hot. This increase was performed deliberatly. This someone else knew how much this someone wanted this power plant. I saw this kind games here and there. Quite entertaining. Charles and John pair was a perfect example of this psychology game. Charles always blew the price high up when he knew John wanted the power plant. By all means, John gave Charles the same thing. You saw flames and fires between them often. The attacks cracked us up.
All cheap connection cities were on east coast. For example, it was low cost to go from New York to New Jersey. So, Totof, myself, and Darren decided to power east coast cities first. Charles took a different strategy. He picked Oklahoma as his hometown. Sophy preferred the great lake area. She picked Chicago first. John started his game from the Midwest.
John had a completely different strategies. He expanded his union to west coast where the connection fees were high (20 ~ 30 connection fees compared to 4 ~ 20 connections fees for east coast cities). He deployed his city to the northwest city group first. He then followed the coast down to San Diego. Sophy played conservatively. She did not bid for high cost power plants. She expanded her cities slowly but firmly. I could not tell what her strategies were.
Darren was the opposite to Sophy. He played aggressively. He was leading at least 40% of times. He got a very good spot. He owned all New England cities. All New England cities were inexpensively connected to each other. The good start point saved Darren a lot. Darren was the first person from the east coast gang to cross Midwest to west coast.
Charles and Totof's cities mingled. Charles wanted to go east while Totof wanted to go west. They blocked each other and made city deployment expensive for each other.
Myself was happy to acquire Florida cities. Nice weather. Good connection. Far from the attacks.
Of course, the blocking became more and more violent. You saw people slowed down their deployment on purpose since no one wanted to cross 7 cities (where the step 2 began). Darren went for it. The step 2 triggered many aggressive city deployment plans (aggressive city deployment meant the player bought 4 cities at least at one turn). Many dramatic flips occurred in step 2.
Another interesting phenomenon was that uranium became very cheap. The unit price for uranium went down to $3. The initial unit price for uranium was $12. Owning an uranium power plant gave you a good advantage in budgeting. Clean energy power plants were popular at some time and then replaced by traditional resources (coal and oil). John was very green. His power plants were all green energy ones at step 3.
Another funny thing was that we all learned how to piss off others completely. I got the most inefficient power plants. Two power plants in my possession required 3 resources for each. Both power plants were coal power plants. At one buying resource turn, I bought 9 coals. This huge extra storage was costly. It cost me $49, enough to buy another power plant. The extra storage resulted in coal shortage. This shortage triggered a heat. Totof played after me. He got the hit. He could not power up all his cities because he needed 4 coals. But he only got 3. He deliberately left one coal on the market. Neither Charles nor Darren could power up their good power plants with one coal. Charles and Darren were totally screwed by this.
We did not stop when someone hit 15 cities. Everyone had fun. So we continue to play and said the game would not end until someone hit 21 cities. This playoff was filled with strategies. Most strategies were auction related. Everyone tried to get a good power plant which allowed to power up at least 5 cities. Everyone tried to prevent others from getting good power plants. The bid price went to skyrocket high many times. For example, the ultimate clean energy was bid with $120. The uranium power plant for 6 cities cost Sophy $124 which was all her money.
Totof won this time. We ended this game at 2:30 AM. Wow, we spent 5 hours on this game. It was my longest game ever.
