Continuing from the 1st Round of the Boardgame Depot Qualifier where six made the cut to the 2nd Round. Read this report to find out who are the two among these six who qualified for the FINAL Day.

 

1. Sunny Guan

2. Kevin Tan

3. Heng Aik Yong

4. Ang Xian Jun

5. Aaron Tiw

6. Alvin Chan

 

Game Masters (GM): jack208 (Game #3)

Location: Boardgame Depot, Bangsar (link)

Date/Time: 19 March 2011 2.00 PM – 5.00 pm (Sat)

 

 

The first round of our Qualifier #1 was held at Boardgame Depot last week (click here for event report) where 12 players compete over the Germany map for a place in the 2nd round where they shall fight over the China map to decide who makes the top two finisher for the FINAL which is likely going to be held on April 24 (Sun).

 

Read on to find out who are our first two finalists. 🙂

 

Players (initial turn order): Sunny Guan (green), Kevin Tan (blue), Heng Aik Yong (purple), Ang Xian Jun (black), Aaron Tiw (yellow) and Alvin Chan (red)

Map: China, with north-east area not in play

GM: jack208

 

 

(L-R) Sunny Guan, Ang, Heng, Alvin Chan, Aaron Tiw and Kevin Tan

 

The 2nd Round for each qualifier is played on the China map (from the China/Korea expansion map set) which sees a major variation from normal Power Grid rules in that the power plants (up until #31) are set to appear in a regimented fixed order sequence (from lowest plant number to highest). There’s also no current & future market for power plant (until Step 3) and when a power plant is sold, we do not draw a replacement.

 

This variation to a certain extent tests a player’s ability to make a long term plan and execute it well. One very important point to note about this map is that you must not lose pace with the others… coz once you did, you may find it’s very difficult to get back into the game.

 

Let us see how our six players fare in this session! 🙂

 

Power plant #3 and #4 are not used in China and the game starts with 6 power plants; all available for bidding; the #5 to #9.

 

#10 and #6 seemed to be the popular power plants as these two went for some bidding fight while the rest went relatively quiet. Sunny-green got the #10 for $14 while Kevin-blue took the garbage plant #6.

 

 

The First Build…

 

 

Sunny & Ang

 

All except Aaron-yellow bought their 2nd power plant in this turn with Kevin-blue picking up his 2nd garbage plant, the #14. Resources were costing $15+ on average among the players.

 

 

Kevin-blue continued to dominate the garbage plants when he acquired his 3rd plant #19

 

 

Boardgame Depot serves healthy food, and no alcohol! We like-ed!

 

Alvin-red got the 1st 5-city plant (the #20) in this turn. And things started to turn nasty for Kevin-blue when he was locked out of his network! Horror!

 

 

Heng-purple applying the choke on Kevin-blue’s cities network…. Yessir, the China map is nasty. This lockdown actually impacted not just Kevin-blue. Ang-black was building his way out of the north-east corner… but Kevin-blue in his next build (next turn) jumped over Heng-purple to land in Baotou effectively shutting out Ang-black as well! Pain…. (hehehe)

 

Everyone’s at 3- or 4-cities now.. but only Ang-black and Heng-purple bought a power plant this turn (#21 and #24 respectively). The rest were probably conserving their cash for resources and building.

 

 

Cost for uranium dropped to $1/ea!!

 

Again, players were shying away from the power plant auctions and only Aaron-yellow and Alvin-red bought the #26 and #25 respectively (almost at cost). Are they getting these too cheap?

 

Step 2 was triggered in this round when Ang-black built his 6th city.

 

We reached the end of the regimented China power industry as the #31 was available this turn. Kevin-blue continued his griefing from Turn 3 while Ang-black, Aaron-yellow and Heng-purple powered ahead to get new plants to keep pace with Alvin-red and Sunny-green.

 

 

Step 3 was triggered in this round which turned China’s regimented market into a capital market (in other words, power plants are randomized and follows standard power grid rules). However everyone’s still at their 6th city with the exception of Ang-black who’s at 7th. That’s just halfway towards the target trigger point of 14 cities.

 

 

The game-end power plants are coming out in droves now.

 

 

Everyone’s going in for their last – or 2nd last – power plants as they prepared for the end-game, driving the auction prices high but Kevin-blue managed to get the #29 at cost.. and now he’s getting back into the game!

 

Sunny-green was leading the pack with his 10th city, with Heng-purple and Alvin-red in close pursuit with their 9th cities.

 

 

Both Heng-purple and Aaron-yellow have already positioned themselves for the expensive – but perhaps crucial – expansion into the north-west region of China.

 

 

With Step 3 triggered, the large power plants were coming out in droves now.

 

 

The #39 uranium plant went to Alvin-red while Heng-purple got the #40 oil plant. Almost everyone’s power plant capacity were now set to trigger the end-stage. Question was: Do they have enough cash left-over to build? Probably not.

 

Ang-black bought the #50 eco-plant which I think he’s now regretting. 😛

 

 

As suspected, the players were only able to build to 11 cities (three of them did) and they were now poised to end this game in the next turn.

 

The push into the north-west region was made but not by Heng-purple. Ang-black was the first to open that region before Aaron-yellow joined him.

 

 

At the start of this turn, three players – Sunny-green, Heng-purple and Alvin-red – were in pole position with 11 cities while Ang-black and Aaron-yellow were two cities behind and has a large gap to close. Kevin-blue did well to come back to 8 cities.

 

Aaron-yellow was the first among the three 11-cities player to build but he only managed to build to his 13th city. Ang-black did manage to build 4 cities in this round to get his 13th city but since he did not buy any garbage resource, he’ll only be able to power 11 cities (and won’t be in the contention for the top 2 finisher position).

 

The game-end trigger was made by Alvin-red when he dropped 3 cities to hit 14th. Heng-purple followed to 14th but Sunny-green being the last to build was unable to find an affordable 3rd city and was thus left behind at 13th city.

 

 

Heng-purple (1st), and Alvin-red (2nd) shall proceed to the FINAL Day as Finalists. They also win a Rm50 boardgame voucher from Boardgamecafe.net for being the top 2 finishers from this qualifier. CONGRATS!

 

Position	Player’s Name	Color	Cities	Supplied	Cash
1st	Heng Aik Yong	Purple	14	14	$23
2nd	Alvin Chan	Red	14	14	$17
3rd	Sunny Guan	Green	13	13	$21
4th	Aaron Tiw	Yellow	13	13	$0
5th	Ang Xian Jun	Black	13	11	$3
6th	Kevin Tan	Blue	11	11	$3

 

Well played to everyone! The China map is indeed not easy and I would love to see how the players from the other qualifiers fare in this map. 😛 However it is fast becoming everyone’s favorite map!

 

These three decided it might look cool and fashionable to come as the Men-in-Black for a Power Grid tournament…

 

 

… but turned out Black is Taboo for Electricity and all three Men-in-Black crashed out of this round. You didn’t consult Lilian Too ar? LOL.

 

 

 

Special thanks to our host, Boardgame Depot (and Lucas) for hosting this Qualifier. If any of you are in Bangsar Lucky Garden, do drop by and visit Boardgame Depot. They’ve lots of open boardgame sets available for you to try out.

 

 

And even more brand new shrinkwrapped games – including all our March new arrivals – for sale at their outlet.

 

 

The players relaxed with a game of BOOM TOWN after the intense session.

 

 

While aanemesis went back to his Catan roots to teach a family to settle in Catan. J

 

 

– the place where crocodiles meet with sharks

 

 

Learn more about POWER GRID board game at Boardgamegeek (link)

Buy POWER GRID from our webstore (link) and its expansion maps:

– France & Italy maps (link)

– Benelux & Central Europe maps (link)

– China & Korea maps (link)

– Brazil & Iberia maps (link)

– Russia & Japan maps (latest) (link)

– Power Plant Deck 2 (link)

 

 

For more photos of this Qualifier, visit our Facebook Album.

For more boardgaming reports, visit our Boardgamecafe.net Blog.

To discuss this tournament, join us in our Facebook Page.

 

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To view a listing of POWER GRID and all its expansion maps, click here.

 

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