Power Grid Gets Carded

Power Grid Gets Carded
Board Game: Power Grid: The Card Game
The game industry has seen a wave of [Game Title]: The Card Games being released in recent years, with many popular titles being transformed into more portable games with smaller footprints (except for The Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game).

The trick to these designs is that they need to feel like the original game, yet not fall so closely to the tree that people don't see a reason for them existing. Come October 2016, we'll have yet another chance to see whether one of these transformations is successful thanks to the release of Power Grid: The Card Game from Friedemann Friese and 2F-Spiele, with Rio Grande Games handling the release of the English-language version.

What's different in this design? In Power Grid, players compete in three arenas — the power plant marketplace, the resource pool, and the network of cities to which they're supplying power. This latter aspect has been removed in this new design, as explained below:

Quote:
In Power Grid: The Card Game, the players represent CEOs of mighty power companies producing electricity.

During the game, the players bid for power plants at auctions and supply them with resources. Their income depends on the amount of electricity produced in each round. At the end of the game, the player who produces the most electricity wins the game.

Power Grid: The Card Game offers all the tension and tactics well-known of its two big brothers — Power Grid and Power Grid deluxe — without using the different maps. You get the full Power Grid emotions in an intensive playing time of sixty minutes!

To give two players an exciting experience, they will play with the Trust acting as a third player. While challenging the opponent, they must incorporate the schemes of the competing Trust in their plans and use these schemes against their opponent.

This game includes a small variant for the Demolition Contractor. This variant is playable with Power Grid: The Card Game, and all maps of Power Grid deluxe and Power Grid!
Board Game: Power Grid: The Card Game


Board Game: Power Grid: High-Voltage DC Transmission Passage C
Board Game: Power Grid: High-Voltage DC Transmission Passage C
Power Grid: The Card Game will debut at Spiel 2016, and one other Power Grid item that people will be able to find there is Power Grid: High-Voltage DC Transmission Passage C, which was originally released as part of the 2015 Brettspiel Adventskalender. This mini-expansion is playable solely with the Power Grid map of Germany, and like most of the promos that 2F-Spiele produces, it will be available for a small donation that will be forwarded to an organization to be revealed later. Here's what this item does:

Quote:
In future years, Germany plans a new high-voltage transmission line from North Germany to South Germany to deliver the electricity produced by wind power to the regions in South Germany with demand for that power. You are collectively building this transmission line, so step by step your power companies will not need to pay connection costs anymore between Cuxhaven and Stuttgart. Sadly, the construction of this transmission line is paid with tax money, so you must pay taxes to supply these cities with electricity.
Henning Kröpke from 2F-Spiele notes that other ways to get this promo will be revealed following Spiel 2016.

When passing along this information, Kröpke also added a footnote to the other 2F-Spiele game announcements for 2016. In that earlier post, which mentioned that 2F-Spiele's new Strategic Partnership with Stronghold Games would not include existing 2F-Spiele game lines currently published with other partners, I speculated that this referred only to Power Grid. Kröpke clarified that all games currently under license by Rio Grande Games will remain with that publisher, including upcoming reprints of Power Grid: The First Sparks, Power Grid: Factory Manager, Unexpected Treasures, Friday, and Fearsome Floors.

Related

New Game Round-up: Fighting with Spells, Battling with Chibis, and Rolling Like a Hero

New Game Round-up: Fighting with Spells, Battling with Chibis, and Rolling Like a Hero

Jul 08, 2016

• Cool Mini Or Not has gone old school with the look of Steve Avery's Ta-Da!, which will debut at Gen Con 2016 ahead of the game's Q3 2016 release date. Here's an overview of...

Friedemann Friese, 2F-Spiele and Stronghold Games Feature Fabled Fruit and Fuji Flush

Friedemann Friese, 2F-Spiele and Stronghold Games Feature Fabled Fruit and Fuji Flush

Jul 06, 2016

German publisher 2F-Spiele and U.S. publisher Stronghold Games, who cooperated on the publication of Friedemann Friese's 504 in English in 2015, have announced a "Strategic Partnership" that will...

New Game Round-up: Spiel 2016 — KOSMOS Expands Andor, Invites Cunning, Revisits Luther, and Asks You to Leave the Room

New Game Round-up: Spiel 2016 — KOSMOS Expands Andor, Invites Cunning, Revisits Luther, and Asks You to Leave the Room

Jul 05, 2016

Spiel 2016 is still more than three months away at this point, but some companies have started to reveal their late 2016 titles, so expect more such round-ups like these from now through...

Designer Diary: Americanizing Terra into America

Designer Diary: Americanizing Terra into America

Jul 04, 2016

Background: Publishing TerraIn early 2015, Bézier Games, Inc. decided to publish the English version of Friedemann Friese's Terra. This was an easy decision once we found out it was available as...

Crowdfunding Round-up: East to West and Lair to Nest

Crowdfunding Round-up: East to West and Lair to Nest

Jul 03, 2016

• A few years ago, the lone household name to emerge from the burgeoning Japanese hobby game scene was Seiji Kanai, but lately Hisashi Hayashi has been giving him a run for his money. Yokohama...

ads