Heng’s Gaming Blog

Games - Powergrid - Italy, Die Handler

It’s now late at night and we bid Christopher and Kirshen good night. Joining us for the next game was Jeff’s friend Alan. Being hardcore gamers, we voted to play… Powergrid… on the hardcore Italy map!

A logistical nightmare, we players started innocently in the north… almost side by side with each other…

Then came the expansion… uugghh, still side by side…

Err, something’s wrong here, it’s a bit of a squeeze… x’cuse me!…

Argghh! You’re in my face! Breathing room, breathing room!

Quite a departure from the other maps, Powergrid - Italy offers an in-yer-face sort of challenge with the players blocking each other in the narrow Italian peninsular. The cheap northern links entice the gullible players to start north and race down afterwards in a mad dash to avoid paying extra for jumping cities. The extra calculations can really test your analysis skills.

What to build? Power stations? - Alan

…hurry up… - Henry

…hurry up… - Heng

What to build? Connections? - Alan

…hurry up… - Henry

…hurry up… - Heng

At one point in the game, the building stopped suddenly. This is because everyone came to the same conclusion: that building to activate step-2 is a bad, bad idea. Since everyone is squeezed together tightly like sardines, activating step-2 helps to open up the space for two players to go in a city. However, whoever activates step-2 will be the last to take advantage of it!

And so, the stalemate continues until… the step-3 card comes out! Being almost the last fella building connections, I was screwed. Overpaid for lotsa connections and long story short, ended up last.

But still, a fun and challenging game… But I am a sore loser… Must. Think. of. Way. to. overcome. the. step-2. stalemate. and. achieve. ultimate. victory! ***goes off and do research on BGG…***

The next game, Die Handler, is a goods delivery game. This game, I feel, is a weird mish-mash of eurogame mechanics. There’s auction, there’s role powers, there’s blind bidding, there’s negotiation, there’s wagon movement, there’s special courier cards, there’s market movement influence…

Like Tempus, the various mechanics sort of doesn’t gell for me. But the others quite enjoyed the game, so again, this is probably another game one has to try first before deciding whether it is good or not. Playing this game sort of reminds me of the bohnanza game played during Gamecon. I have no strategy and I have no inkling what to do next!

After the game, Jeff started giving a preview for 1856 and I started to nod off… ZzZzZz… Maybe what Lostboyz says is true, I’m getting old! I woke up to find the guys still going strong with Wyatt Earp!

Looks interesting, but it’s already 6 in the morning! I left the guys to their game to go home and get some proper sleep… ZzZzZz.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 8:13 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.