Power Grid: Outpost

• Designer: Friedemann Friese
• Publisher: 2F / Rio Grande
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 12+
• Time: 90 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link:  https://amzn.to/4gAqaEs
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Power Grid: Outpost, the colonization of the new planet advances quickly. There is a huge demand for electricity that your companies gladly fulfill.

Can you purchase the best power plants, biggest shelters, and best technologies? Can you spread your network faster from city to city than your competition? Do you expand your company economically to accommodate workers permanently so that you can avoid employing expensive seasonal workers that you must dismiss to the labor market after each assignment? Only then you can win Power Grid: Outpost!

Outpost was one of the major inspirations for Power Grid as that game was far ahead of its time. More than twenty years after the first release of Power Grid, Friedemann wants to honor Outpost with this game. He took many thematic elements of that game and translated them to the Power Grid world.

To start, place the large board on the table; here you’ll find a bunch of cities (each with spaces for houses, power plants/shelters on them) connected by pathways.  You will place tokens on each pathway to randomize the connection cost – something between 2 and 8 Elektros.  Each player also gets their own medium sized player board which provides storage space for their houses as well as an area to display their activated cards. 

The game is played over a number of rounds – the game continues until one player has the target number of cities connected to their grid, the winner is the one who can provide power to the most cities at the end of that round.  If there is a tie, the player with the most money left over breaks ties. 

To start each round,  there is a card auction.  There are three types of cards in the game.  Power plants have green backgrounds, and they allow you to power a number of cities using the work of a certain number of workers (the ratio is seen at the bottom of each power plant card).  Shelters have a yellow background, and these provide you with permanent workers.  Technology cards have blue backgrounds and each of them provides you with a unique rule-breaking advantage for the duration of the game.  On all the cards, there is a number in the upper left corner which represents the minimum bid for that card.

In the first 2 phases of the game, the cards will be set up in two rows of 4 cards each. The top row are the lowest numbered cards, the bottom 4 the higher numbers. Only the top row can be bid on, while the bottom row can possibly move to the top row depending on the numbers of the new cards added to the market.  As the plants are auctioned off, new cards are drawn from the deck, and the plants are reordered based on their number.  The rules change for the third and final phase of the game when there is a single area of 6 cards, all of which are available for auction.

In general, the higher numbered cards are “better” – they tend to be more efficient plants or shelters with higher capacity or technologies with stronger powers.  In general, the lowest cards are available for auction first, but in most games, there can sometimes be a surprisingly high card that hits the active market…  

In this game, there is no limit to the number of cards that you can buy and own; all of your cards are in your player area, and you can install purchased cards into the appropriate spaces on your player board once they are available for you to use (more on this later).

The auctions are done in turn order, starting with the player currently in the lead.  At the start of each round, turn order is determined in favor of the player with the most houses played to the board. Ties broken in favor of the player with the highest numbered card.  So, to start the round, the player currently in the lead has to nominate one of the four cards available for auction and then bids at least the minimum bid (number shown on the card).  Later players either raise the bid or pass out of this auction. The highest bid wins the card and places it in their area. They also move their turn order marker to the other side of the column to show they are out of buying cards for this round.  The player with the highest turn order that is still in the auction then nominates a card for auction and the process repeats.  When there is only one player left in the auction, that player can nominate any card and automatically win it for only the minimum bid.

At the end of the first five rounds, a discount marker is placed on the unpurchased cards – the discount equal to the current round of the game, these markers will reduce the minimum bid for those cards.  

Once the cards are auctions, players now have a chance to place wooden bits on the board.  This phase is done in reverse turn order.  Thus, the player currently in last place gets to go first.  At the start of the game, houses cost 10 Elektros.  You can only place one house per city, so you must expand your network – and each time you place in a new city, you must also play the transport cost shows on the marker that lies between those cities.  On your turn, you can also build your shelter pieces or power plant pieces for 5 Elektros each.  Note that you do not need to have a house that city – the destination must simply be within your network.  As you place these Shelter or Power plant pieces on the board, you will free up their spaces on your player board, thus giving you areas to play your matching typed cards.

In Phase 1, there can only be one house per city.  When the game enters Phase 2 (once a player has 7 cities in their network), cities can now accommodate 2 houses, though the second house is more expensive at 15 Elektros.  When the game reaches Phase 3, the third house slot in each city becomes available, but at the cost of 20!

Now, players now power cities on the board.  Players can take a moment to freely exchange the cards on their player boards.  Again, in reverse player order, players now designate how many cities they will power – the cities must be connected on the board with houses of their color AND they must have power plants that can power that number of cities on their player board…  

The top of the main board has a worker market.  You will fill any empty spaces on your Shelter cards first.  Then you will hire temporary workers for this turn paying the cost shown on their space on the track.   Finally, calculate your income for the round based on the number of cities powered.  Each player does this process, and then all of the temporary workers are returned to the board. 

Now, check to see if the game ends – If a player has 14/15/17/18 cities in their network for 2/ 3-4/5/6 players connected to their grid, the game ends.  The winner is the one who can provide power to the most cities at the end of that round.  If there is a tie for most cities, the player with the most money left over breaks ties. 

My thoughts on the game

So, I think that sometimes my impression of a game is directly influenced by my pre-game expectation for said game.  Perfectly fine games that fall short of my expectations could end up with an unfairly harsh judgement.  Power Grid: Outpost is certainly a game that different gamers will have varied pre-game conceptions about – because it is inevitable that many gamers will compare it to the original Power Grid.  For me, I think I escaped a lot of that problem because I honestly couldn’t even remember the last time that I played Power Grid – even though it has been in my top 10 all time games for a long time…  So, I went into the game having to actually re-learn the rules a bit; though blissfully, it all came back quickly and I definitely remembered what I love so much about the whole Power Grid franchise.  

When I first heard about the game, I wasn’t sure how Outpost and Power Grid were going to meld together – but in reality, about 95% of this game is Power Grid, and there is a 5% theming of Outpost laid on top.   

Power Grid: Outpost poses an interesting dichotomy – the game is at times simpler than the base game while adding some extra elements that can make it more complex at the same time!  How can that be?  Well, the easier part (for me, at least) is the fact that there is only one “fuel commodity” in the game – here, you only worry about workers.  You no longer have to try to balance your needs for coal, nuclear or oil and their different refresh rates – now it’s nothing but workers.  

The Shelters are important cards as they help provide you with permanent workers – i.e. workers that you don’t have to pay for each turn… and trust me, the cost for workers can get quite high, especially if you’re going last in a round.  Additionally, in one of our games, we ran out of workers in the market as they were all housed in Shelters – so you’ll have to keep an eye on that as well.

The Technology cards add some rule-breaking powers to the game, and until you’ve played a few times, it’s hard to know how to value their contribution to your overall strategy.  And since this is an auction game, that translates to not knowing how much to bid on those cards as well… But, once you have purchased the cards, they can definitely augment your strategy and change the value of different things in the game for you.

As with the base Power Grid game, this is a game all about timing.  You often do not want to be leading the game, well until the final turn.   Even moreso than the base game, I feel like Power Grid Outpost wants you to sit and wait.  There are plenty of advantages to being last in turn order – you have the best chance of having no competition for the final card in an auction and you also get the first chance at building each round.  Depending on what is in the market, you may even want to sit out from buying a card every round to save up your cash to be ready to buy that most desirable card when it becomes available.

To those who are more familiar with Power Grid than myself, I would caution them to approach the game with an open mind – and more importantly, to carefully read the rules.  There are a number of places where the rules to PG:Outpost differ from the base PG rules, and the game will definitely not play out as it is supposed to if you try to put the old rules that you “remember” onto this new game that doesn’t use those rules!  

I would have liked for the rules to better emphasize the differences; but again, I had to re-read like a newbie, so it wasn’t critical for me.  One thing I did notice is that the market does not trash anything once you are in the third phase – if you do this, you’ll run out of cards before you’re supposed to!

While we’re talking about the rules, I should mention that we found the EN translation to be a little rough.  There are a number of passages that are confusing to me (purpose of the discount markers, whether or not workers are added to the market at the end of each round), a few things which are omitted from the rules (how it is possible to place a 19th house when you only have 18 in your supply), and one or two areas that seem to be in the wrong place (discount markers).  Many of the questions have been answered on online forums, but gamers should be aware of the questions that arise from the rulebook – and to be fair, this is a big departure from the norm for 2F – their rulebooks are usually complete.

The game is a definite table hog – you’ll need a big space to play the game.  The Power Grid map is its usual huge thing, but then each player needs room for their own player board (about an A4) as well as the supply area and the auction area.  Don’t go trying to play this on a folding card table!  The iconography is familiar and comfortable.  The number font is a bit weird to me, with the bubbliness of the numbers making them hard to read from a distance, but that is probably a “me” issue as no one else has complained about it in my groups.  The top-heavy font makes it look like some of the numbers are upside down to me (Especially the 8s)

For me, Power Grid: Outpost was a great way to revitalize one of my favorite franchises.  It has many familiar rules and themes from the base game, but enough new things to make it a wholly separate experience.  Again, I would caution players to not view this as just base Power Grid with some rules added on – because there are some important changes / rules deletions – that require you to approach this as its own beast.   When this game is viewed through that lens, it is a wonderful experience, and one that I want to play again.  

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4gAqaEs 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale Y
• I like it.  John P
• Neutral.
• Not for me…