The San Jose Board Games Club advertises itself as a group that plays a "mixture of party games and light strategy games." Apples to Apples, Citadels, and Ticket to Ride are probably the most popular games. Slowly, however, I've converted a growing number to the games I prefer, the medium-weight mainstream of German gaming. Last night was a big step forward for the group: Power Grid.

I should start by saying Power Grid is my Settlers of Catan. It's the game that hooked me on German gaming. My poor copy has gotten far too little play, but I've been biding my time, not wanting to send the Apples to Apples crowd running from the room screaming.

Last night, however, the big moment finally arrived. It was driven more by circumstance than design: we only had five people -- too many for all of the great four-player games and too few to split into two groups. I almost didn't bring Power Grid, thinking we'd play Ticket to Ride as we usually do with a group that size, but I've been jonesing to play Power Grid for a while now and I figured what the heck.

After the usual pleasantries, someone finally asked: "What should we play?"

Trying to sound as casual as possible, I said: "Let's play Power Grid!"

The first question came from Fluffy: "Is it complicated?"

Me: "Naaah. It's easy."

Halfway through the rules explanation, D spoke up: "This seems really complicated." She gazed over at Taboo and Balderdash sitting on the next table. I pretended not to hear her and kept going.

Seeing the terrified looks on their faces, I felt bad and finally offered them a choice: we could play a full game or we could just play until one player connects to seven cities (i.e. Step One). "Seven cities," the group chimed in unison.

We removed the southwest from the game because of the connection costs. Fluffy per my advice selected the New England area for her starting city. D and her husband, Adam, both decided to start in the southeast. I plopped my first house in the industrial northeast (Michigan, Ohio, etc.). Kirk unhappily said: "I was going to go there." I brought him out on the ledge of his gaming comfort zone, so I figured the least I could do would be to let him have the starting area of his choice. I moved my house to the South.

After a few turns, I had four cities and power for all of them. Adam, Kirk, and Fluffy each had two or three. D had one city and made an off-color comment about the person who designed this game and his sex life. I thought: "Okay, so far, so good. Only one little sheep is trying to break from the herd. With a little luck, we'll make it to seven cities."

Finally, I informed the group I was ready to connect my seventh city and they should plan accordingly.

D: "Let's keep playing." She only had one city connected.

Me: "Are you sure? You're kind of far behind."

D: "I'm going to catch up."

Me: "What do the rest of you want to do?"

Kirk: "Keep playing."

Fluffy: "Keep playing."

Adam: "Start over."

The keep playings had it. Who was I to argue with the group? Big grin inside.

So there you have it, how I got Apples to Apples players to play Power Grid and beg for more. D in fact did catch up and ended the game with a respectable fourteen cities. Adam and Kirk ended around eleven or twelve cities. Much to my surprise, Fluffy, who never seems like she's paying attention, turned out to be the biggest competition. We both connected and had power for fifteen cities, but I nosed her out on cash by about six Elektro.

The End

If you want more meat in your gaming diet play at Yahoo! on Monday evenings or Matchplay on Wednesday evenings and you'll never need suffer Apples to Apples or Ticket to Ride again.

A nice little postscript to the story, here's the comments I received today:

Fluffy: "I'd like to play Power Grid again so Ed, if you're coming please bring it!"

Kirk: "I wanna play power grid again .... Thank you Ed for teaching me great games."

    Enjoyable read.

    One of the things I usually resign myself to is losing a game the first time I play it. The crowd I play with has no lightweights so if they have even one game's experience on me I am at a solid disadvantage -- one that is only resolved by playing and losing.

    So one of the things I've tried to impress upon people when I introduce a new game is that they should plan to lose; the first game is for learning. This takes the pressure off, and if they end up winning it's a nice surprise.

    Playing a "short" game of grid was an excellent strategy. I had not considered that. Of course, once the game has started, it's pretty much in for a penny, in for a pound. You could do the same with Puerto Rico or even Catan or Carcassonne by lowering the victory threshold or removing some pieces.

    That's worth a gold.

       Sag.

You have balls. I would never try Power Grid with eurogame newbies. While the majority of the game plays itself, valuing power plants during the auctions is hard, even for seasoned eurogamers who are new to this game.

An excellent session report. I managed to convert my group to Power Grid after they had digested enough Settlers (well, I had enough of it, but they didn't..), and it worked wonders. I can't believe that many feel that PG is just too complicated for newbies - everything makes sense logically, and only one person is required to fiddle the plant and resource market.

Ed, this is awesome.

I ordered Power Grid, and have been real excited about it, but wondering how to get my "Ticket to Ride" / "Hoopla" crowd to play it without groaning the whole time. The crowd you play with sounds just like my crowd.

"Does this take long?"
"This looks.. complicated."
"I don't know about this..."
Staring at the 6+ page manual: "That's not the rulebook is it?"

So, I actually found this post hoping to get ideas on out how to sneak it in. Sounds like your approach will probably work better than mine:

"All right guys, this game is called "Power Grid". It was designed by Wernher von Braun and Walter Gropius in 1957, but it wasn't released until now because the playtesters kept falling asleep. Okay! SO, you'll all need calculators."

I feel exactly the same way. I just taught Power Grid to a couple friends, and they both commented that they thought the game was simple and easy to learn. One of them even said "I think this game is better than the Farming Game!"

    The game is quite simple as long as they don't get a look at the rulebook.

             Sag.

I'm still amazed that they call themselves a Board Gamers club and are playing what they play. Have you introduced them to this site? Care to give another session report of when you introduce them to Puerto Rico? Or Age of Steam?