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viktor_haagAnother Sunday afternoon at the Old Huron Redoubt featuring long boardgame madness. First we put Die Macher on the table, and then warmed down (sic) with a stint of Power Grid.
Die Macher
Once again, I get absolutely smoked in this game. However, it was still involving and reasonably fun. Well, for me, fun right up until the last couple turns when it became clear that I was destined for a solid thrashing! This is only the third time I've played this game, but I'm glad I own it -- it obviously is an excellently developed game, and will have a great deal of replay value. Also, playing with four, we managed to get through the game in only three and a half hours, which makes it much more attractive as a long game selection. Mind you, two of the players at the table are notoriously quick players, and previous plays were with players that were notoriously slow players, so that obviously has a lot to do with it. Also, we played with one rule missed: we auctioned off only one poll per turn, rather than one poll per region. This affected everyone identically, but it also meant that popularity in the upcoming elections was much harder to affect, and this in the end turned out to be a game breaker.
Playing thus incorrectly makes it hard to formulate ideas about reliable strategy for future plays, but I still picked up two or three tricks to add to my bag of options in the future.
• It seems very useful to seed a single party meeting cube into future regions. That way, on the next turn, you can seed four cubes into the region and then convert them into votes before the region becomes "active". Likewise, in regions where your party have good affinities with the issues, you can effectively make your party meetings count two or three times for votes by flooding the region with cubes and always making sure that you can get up to at least five cubes on each turn.
• In regions where you have no affinities at all, don't fret, buy votes! You can use your shadow cabinet cards to buy votes, and this is an important thing to remember.
• Never, ever, ever waste votes. The break points are at factors of 5. Therefore, having a vote number that ends in a 4 or a 9 is absolutely wasteful. You will not be able to show well in every election, but you should always attempt to be efficient with votes: get vote totals that end in 5 or 0, and never any other number (unless you're in a coalition and need a precise number of votes to squeeze out a victory, or need a specific number of votes to squeeze out a sole victory).
• Getting to 50 votes is an ideal situation and it's not quite as difficult as it might seem: there are basically three ways to dramatically improve your vote total. First, make your meeting cubes count two or three times as mentioned above; second, use shadow cabinet cards to buy votes; third, always try to max out multiples with popularity, x2 tiles, and affinity between your party issues and the issues in the region. Getting to 50 early is quite possible and this also gives you the flexibility of being able to concentrate your resources farther and farther ahead in the future.
The player at the table who won maxed out three or four of the elections (and lost out large in others, but they were much less useful regions). And at least two of those maxed out regions where achieved before the region board became the "current turn".
• Having national popular support is vital, and having greater popularity is worth more at the beginning of the game than it is at the end since every turn you get income that's dependent on your current popularity level. Some techniques to take advantage of this: select a set up option that gives you as much popular support as possible -- you forsake a regional advantage early in the game, but I'm not sure that this isn't more than off set by the larger advantage you will get nearer the end of the game because of the income advantage. Also, consider refusing a big money contribution very early in the game: it's more likely that you'll be able to refuse the most money, and get the bonus dice to add to your popularity. Finally, it would seem to be a good idea to always bid on polls to some extent, and snap up a cheap poll if you can. Turning polls into popular support can be a powerful thing, especially earlier in the game, because the popular support you gain will pay off every turn.
• Finally, the part of the game I have always found must challenging and frustrating is aligning your party's interests with the national interests. It's absolutely vital that you align yourself with as many national issues as possible, especially early in the game. Affinities there means popular support which means money. If you go in to the sixth (and functionally last) turn with lots of affinity with the national issues, then you can afford not to have to push strongly in the last two elections. Trying to win the last two elections is very difficult, I suspect, and you really don't want to put yourself in a position where you have to win both to have any hope of placing well.
Power Grid
I did much better in our warm-down game of Power Grid than I did in Die Macher. Assured that the game would play much faster with the Benelux board, we decided to give that a try.
This game does seem to play faster than any of the other PG boards I've tried (German, Western US, France), but that's probably also influenced by the fact that two of our group are swift players. The more rapidly changing technology didn't really seem to change the game much, but I suspect that it'll make the game much tougher with five or six players, as players could potentially get squeezed into expensive power plants more quickly.
Also, the relative "coal shortage" and "pro green" stance for this board has two real effects: first, I think the green plants are more valuable as resource costs seem higher in this game. Secondly, the coal plants are of strongly dubious value, especially if two or three players have coal plants. There was one turn where I got completely shut out of resources, and this probably cost me the win (as it turned out, I came in second place). Coal costs will be high, and even worse, coal plants (especially early on, when you can least afford resources) consume lots of fuel. My standard tactic of "over spend to get the lowest-numbered plant" didn't pay off as well in this game as it has in the past, because I was stuck with a coal plant and high resource costs for too long. Mind you, I did get an advantageous board position out of the deal (which is the real reason to try this tactic, in my opinion -- buy the cheapest plant, and then build as many cities as you can afford, even though you know you won't be able to power them all for a few turns).
The "pro green" stance is interesting in this game, as well: the relatively high resource costs seem to, in turn, make green plants more valuable because they save you lots of money you'd be spending on resources which you can in turn funnel into connections to cities. I've never seen anyone win Power Grid by leaning on green plants, but in this game I did quite well by leaning very heavily on the green plants. In the end, I had the green 5, 6, and a 2 coal/6 and came in second only by having less money on the last turn.
On the whole, I rather like the Benelux board, somewhat better than France I think. (France is good to teach the game: I think it's a very forgiving board, but I find it a bit bland, and I think the supposed pro-nuclear stance of the French board doesn't really seem to work out as they intended.) But I'm not sure I like Benelux better than the basic Germany board.
I have strong doubts whether the game would be as smooth with five or six players as it was with four, but I think this expansion is worthwhile, and adds good value to your copy of Power Grid.
Die Macher
Once again, I get absolutely smoked in this game. However, it was still involving and reasonably fun. Well, for me, fun right up until the last couple turns when it became clear that I was destined for a solid thrashing! This is only the third time I've played this game, but I'm glad I own it -- it obviously is an excellently developed game, and will have a great deal of replay value. Also, playing with four, we managed to get through the game in only three and a half hours, which makes it much more attractive as a long game selection. Mind you, two of the players at the table are notoriously quick players, and previous plays were with players that were notoriously slow players, so that obviously has a lot to do with it. Also, we played with one rule missed: we auctioned off only one poll per turn, rather than one poll per region. This affected everyone identically, but it also meant that popularity in the upcoming elections was much harder to affect, and this in the end turned out to be a game breaker.
Playing thus incorrectly makes it hard to formulate ideas about reliable strategy for future plays, but I still picked up two or three tricks to add to my bag of options in the future.
• It seems very useful to seed a single party meeting cube into future regions. That way, on the next turn, you can seed four cubes into the region and then convert them into votes before the region becomes "active". Likewise, in regions where your party have good affinities with the issues, you can effectively make your party meetings count two or three times for votes by flooding the region with cubes and always making sure that you can get up to at least five cubes on each turn.
• In regions where you have no affinities at all, don't fret, buy votes! You can use your shadow cabinet cards to buy votes, and this is an important thing to remember.
• Never, ever, ever waste votes. The break points are at factors of 5. Therefore, having a vote number that ends in a 4 or a 9 is absolutely wasteful. You will not be able to show well in every election, but you should always attempt to be efficient with votes: get vote totals that end in 5 or 0, and never any other number (unless you're in a coalition and need a precise number of votes to squeeze out a victory, or need a specific number of votes to squeeze out a sole victory).
• Getting to 50 votes is an ideal situation and it's not quite as difficult as it might seem: there are basically three ways to dramatically improve your vote total. First, make your meeting cubes count two or three times as mentioned above; second, use shadow cabinet cards to buy votes; third, always try to max out multiples with popularity, x2 tiles, and affinity between your party issues and the issues in the region. Getting to 50 early is quite possible and this also gives you the flexibility of being able to concentrate your resources farther and farther ahead in the future.
The player at the table who won maxed out three or four of the elections (and lost out large in others, but they were much less useful regions). And at least two of those maxed out regions where achieved before the region board became the "current turn".
• Having national popular support is vital, and having greater popularity is worth more at the beginning of the game than it is at the end since every turn you get income that's dependent on your current popularity level. Some techniques to take advantage of this: select a set up option that gives you as much popular support as possible -- you forsake a regional advantage early in the game, but I'm not sure that this isn't more than off set by the larger advantage you will get nearer the end of the game because of the income advantage. Also, consider refusing a big money contribution very early in the game: it's more likely that you'll be able to refuse the most money, and get the bonus dice to add to your popularity. Finally, it would seem to be a good idea to always bid on polls to some extent, and snap up a cheap poll if you can. Turning polls into popular support can be a powerful thing, especially earlier in the game, because the popular support you gain will pay off every turn.
• Finally, the part of the game I have always found must challenging and frustrating is aligning your party's interests with the national interests. It's absolutely vital that you align yourself with as many national issues as possible, especially early in the game. Affinities there means popular support which means money. If you go in to the sixth (and functionally last) turn with lots of affinity with the national issues, then you can afford not to have to push strongly in the last two elections. Trying to win the last two elections is very difficult, I suspect, and you really don't want to put yourself in a position where you have to win both to have any hope of placing well.
Power Grid
I did much better in our warm-down game of Power Grid than I did in Die Macher. Assured that the game would play much faster with the Benelux board, we decided to give that a try.
This game does seem to play faster than any of the other PG boards I've tried (German, Western US, France), but that's probably also influenced by the fact that two of our group are swift players. The more rapidly changing technology didn't really seem to change the game much, but I suspect that it'll make the game much tougher with five or six players, as players could potentially get squeezed into expensive power plants more quickly.
Also, the relative "coal shortage" and "pro green" stance for this board has two real effects: first, I think the green plants are more valuable as resource costs seem higher in this game. Secondly, the coal plants are of strongly dubious value, especially if two or three players have coal plants. There was one turn where I got completely shut out of resources, and this probably cost me the win (as it turned out, I came in second place). Coal costs will be high, and even worse, coal plants (especially early on, when you can least afford resources) consume lots of fuel. My standard tactic of "over spend to get the lowest-numbered plant" didn't pay off as well in this game as it has in the past, because I was stuck with a coal plant and high resource costs for too long. Mind you, I did get an advantageous board position out of the deal (which is the real reason to try this tactic, in my opinion -- buy the cheapest plant, and then build as many cities as you can afford, even though you know you won't be able to power them all for a few turns).
The "pro green" stance is interesting in this game, as well: the relatively high resource costs seem to, in turn, make green plants more valuable because they save you lots of money you'd be spending on resources which you can in turn funnel into connections to cities. I've never seen anyone win Power Grid by leaning on green plants, but in this game I did quite well by leaning very heavily on the green plants. In the end, I had the green 5, 6, and a 2 coal/6 and came in second only by having less money on the last turn.
On the whole, I rather like the Benelux board, somewhat better than France I think. (France is good to teach the game: I think it's a very forgiving board, but I find it a bit bland, and I think the supposed pro-nuclear stance of the French board doesn't really seem to work out as they intended.) But I'm not sure I like Benelux better than the basic Germany board.
I have strong doubts whether the game would be as smooth with five or six players as it was with four, but I think this expansion is worthwhile, and adds good value to your copy of Power Grid.
