Uploaded December 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
A new player to the channel, welcome Possum! They have a really high winrate but made some obvious mistakes here - guessing they mainly play with their buddies from other games.
This one came down to expensive green plants (me) vs. a rather cheap 26 (daroj). Thought daroj was the favorite since he also bought the 16 and powered 3 cities on turn 2, but we settled into a pretty long stall which helped me a lot. Possum building above me was huge, as i basically never want to stall at the top of the turn order. Having just one player above me made the stall favorable, as i was making more money than anyone else.
Didn't particularly want the 20, but was perfectly fine with it at cost since i was already powering 5 cities for free. That allowed me to keep the pressure off coal and pick my spots to buy up cheap coal for later. Had i missed out on 20 & 26, i may have made a huge jump into the southwest to break the stall ASAP; stalling is no longer in your favor if you don't have at least one endgame plant.
The biggest decision after the stall came right before Step 3. The 30 was on the market and i knew that 32 would come next (since the Step 3 card was going to be drawn). Badly needed one of those two plants so that i could easily reach 17 (or maybe even 18!) capacity on the next turn. When the game stalls as long in Step 1 as this one did, you should expect to get only one turn with the Step 3 plant market. That makes capacity much more important beforehand! Naturally daroj & i ended up fighting for the 30, but i'd noticed that Possum had dropped out of the auction very early. This suggested to me that they were poor and wouldn't bid too high on the 32, so i gave up the 30 in the $50's. My read was spot on and i ended up landing the 32 for just over $40! Oil was a lot cheaper than trash at that point as well, so that was a massive win for me. My obvious move from there was to build as much as possible and snipe daroj on a bunch of cities.
The last turn was pretty academic. It can be tempting to overpay for a 7-capacity plant, but seeing daroj drop out of the 46 auction early told me that i'd be safe going for 17. He ended up having barely enough money to power 17, resulting in a big win for me.
Moral of the story: green is gold! The 20 can also be effective if you get it cheap and have other great plants to run alongside or instead of it.
If you'd like to learn more about Power Grid, please check my blog for strategy articles on each power plant as well as a guide to 2-player games:
maninmotiongoingnowhere.wordpress.com/power-grid-strategy-individual-plant-articles
A new player to the channel, welcome Possum! They have a really high winrate but made some obvious mistakes here - guessing they mainly play with their buddies from other games.
This one came down to expensive green plants (me) vs. a rather cheap 26 (daroj). Thought daroj was the favorite since he also bought the 16 and powered 3 cities on turn 2, but we settled into a pretty long stall which helped me a lot. Possum building above me was huge, as i basically never want to stall at the top of the turn order. Having just one player above me made the stall favorable, as i was making more money than anyone else.
Didn't particularly want the 20, but was perfectly fine with it at cost since i was already powering 5 cities for free. That allowed me to keep the pressure off coal and pick my spots to buy up cheap coal for later. Had i missed out on 20 & 26, i may have made a huge jump into the southwest to break the stall ASAP; stalling is no longer in your favor if you don't have at least one endgame plant.
The biggest decision after the stall came right before Step 3. The 30 was on the market and i knew that 32 would come next (since the Step 3 card was going to be drawn). Badly needed one of those two plants so that i could easily reach 17 (or maybe even 18!) capacity on the next turn. When the game stalls as long in Step 1 as this one did, you should expect to get only one turn with the Step 3 plant market. That makes capacity much more important beforehand! Naturally daroj & i ended up fighting for the 30, but i'd noticed that Possum had dropped out of the auction very early. This suggested to me that they were poor and wouldn't bid too high on the 32, so i gave up the 30 in the $50's. My read was spot on and i ended up landing the 32 for just over $40! Oil was a lot cheaper than trash at that point as well, so that was a massive win for me. My obvious move from there was to build as much as possible and snipe daroj on a bunch of cities.
The last turn was pretty academic. It can be tempting to overpay for a 7-capacity plant, but seeing daroj drop out of the 46 auction early told me that i'd be safe going for 17. He ended up having barely enough money to power 17, resulting in a big win for me.
Moral of the story: green is gold! The 20 can also be effective if you get it cheap and have other great plants to run alongside or instead of it.
If you'd like to learn more about Power Grid, please check my blog for strategy articles on each power plant as well as a guide to 2-player games:
maninmotiongoingnowhere.wordpress.com/power-grid-strategy-individual-plant-articles
