Best game for aspiring German bureaucrats: Power Grid

Funkenschlag!

By Dylan Matthews Updated Jun 1, 2015, 10:27pm EDT

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Dylan Matthews is a senior correspondent and head writer for Vox's Future Perfect section and has worked at Vox since 2014. He is particularly interested in global health and pandemic prevention, anti-poverty efforts, economic policy and theory, and conflicts about the right way to do philanthropy.

Part of 11 board games you should be playing as an adult

Board Game Geek review: 7.9/10.0 (34th).

Power Grid is like Ticket to Ride, except instead of building rail infrastructure, it centers around building out an electrical grid. Players gain footholds in a number of German cities by supplying coal, oil, garbage-based, nuclear, or renewable energy. That earns their power companies money, but they’ll need to spend a lot to get the latest and greatest power plants and to build connections to more and more cities.

The game makes it easy to limit play to a few German states for games with fewer players, and the market for raw oil, coal, garbage, and uranium features prices that rise with demand, a startlingly realistic touch in a game that is otherwise not overly complex. The game is currently only available in physical form, so iPhone/Android practice isn’t possible.

Buy at Amazon: Power Grid ($37.45); Power Grid: Factory Manager ($38.09); Power Grid: First Sparks ($37.96); Power Grid: Brazil/Spain and Portugal ($28.88); Power Grid: Northern Europe/United Kingdom and Ireland ($20.15); Power Grid: Russia and Japan ($14.99); Power Grid: Québec/Baden-Wurttemberg ($13.27); Power Grid: Australia & Indian Subcontinent ($17.90); Power Grid: France and Italy ($20.30); Power Grid: Benelux/Central Europe ($13.99); Power Grid: China and Korea ($14.99); Power Grid: Expansion Deck ($10.25); Power Grid: The Robots ($9.98).

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