Power Grid rules refresher

Read the refresher

You win by powering the most cities in the final round, not by having the biggest network or the most money. You get there by buying power plants at auction, feeding them with resources you buy from a market whose prices rise as it empties, and spreading your network of houses across the map.

For setup, pick a contiguous playing zone of connected areas: 3 areas for 2 or 3 players, 4 areas for 4, and 5 areas for 5 or 6. That zone is shared by everyone, and nothing outside it may ever be used. Each player takes 22 houses, 50 Elektro, and a payment summary card, and puts a house on space zero of the scoring track. Player order is random for the first round only. Fill the resource market: coal on spaces 1 through 8, oil on spaces 3 through 8, garbage on spaces 6 through 8, uranium on spaces 14 through 16. The rest of the tokens go to a supply. Put out the resource refill summary card for your player count. For the plants, shuffle the cards with a plug on the back, numbered 03 to 15, deal 8 face up, the four lowest in the current market and the four highest in the future market, all ascending. Set one more plug card aside face down. Then set the Step 3 card aside, shuffle the socket-backed plants, and randomly remove cards face down and unseen according to the table for your player count. For 5 or 6 players you remove none. Shuffle everything remaining into one face down stack, slide the Step 3 card underneath it, and place that set-aside plug card face down on top.

Each round has five phases, always in this order: determine player order, auction power plants, buy resources, build houses, and bureaucracy. The first two phases run in player order, the middle two in reverse player order, and bureaucracy in player order again. The round ends after the plant market is updated in bureaucracy.

Player order is set by most connected cities, first to last. Ties are broken by the biggest numbered power plant.

In the auction phase, first put the discount token on the smallest plant in the current market, which lowers its minimum bid to 1 Elektro. Then the first player either starts an auction on one of the four plants in the current market, never the future market, or passes for the whole phase. The opening bid must be at least the plant's number. Bidding continues clockwise, and once you pass an auction you are out of it. The winner pays the bank, takes the plant, and is finished for the phase. Immediately draw a replacement and re-sort all plants so the four cheapest sit in the current market. If the player who started the auction loses it, they may offer another current market plant or pass. Each player buys at most one plant per round, and in the very first round everyone must buy one. The last player to start an auction simply pays the minimum bid. You may own only 3 plants: buying a fourth forces you to scrap one of the others, never the new one, moving its resources onto your remaining plants where there is room and returning the rest to the supply, not the market. Two discount details. If a newly drawn replacement has a lower number than the discounted plant, remove that new plant from the game, take away the discount token, and draw again. And if nobody buys the discounted plant, remove it at the end of the phase and draw a replacement. After the first round's auction only, redetermine player order before continuing.

Buying resources runs in reverse player order. You pay the bank the price printed on the space each token sits on, so the cheap spaces go first. You may only buy resources your current plants can use and can store. A plant stores at most twice the number of tokens it needs to fire. Hybrids take any mix of coal and oil, up to twice their requirement in total. Ecological plants hold nothing. If a resource type is sold out, nobody can buy more of it until the market is refilled. You may rearrange tokens among your own plants at any time. On the USA map, coal is always available for 8 Elektro from the storage space beside the market.

Building also runs in reverse player order. Your first house can go in any empty city in the playing zone for 10 Elektro. After that, every new city must connect to your existing network, and you pay the cheapest connection route plus the lowest empty building space in that city, which is 10, 15, or 20. You may build as many cities as you can afford in one turn, and you may pass through cities without building there. In Step 1 each city holds one house, in Step 2 two, in Step 3 three, and you can never have two houses in the same city. Update the scoring track as you build.

In bureaucracy, each player in order says how many cities they will power, discards exactly the required resources from the plants they fire, and collects money from the payment card. Powering nothing still pays 10 Elektro, one city pays 22, and the payouts keep climbing with shrinking increments up to 150. You can power fewer cities than you have, but surplus capacity beyond your network is wasted. Then refill the resource market using the refill card column for the current Step, always filling from the most expensive empty spaces downward, and accepting a short refill if the supply has run dry. On the Germany map, once someone buys the nuclear plant 39, uranium is never resupplied again. Finally, update the plant market: in Steps 1 and 2, put the highest numbered future market plant under the stack and draw a replacement; in Step 3, remove the lowest numbered current market plant and draw a replacement. If the stack runs out, just keep removing the smallest plant each bureaucracy.

Step 2 begins at the start of bureaucracy once someone has connected 7 cities, or 6 cities in a six player game. Just once, remove the lowest plant in the current market and replace it. Step 3 begins when the Step 3 card is drawn. If it comes up during the auction phase, treat it as the highest plant at the end of the future market for that phase, reshuffle the stack, finish the auctions, then remove the Step 3 card and the lowest current market plant with no replacements, and Step 3 starts at the resource phase. If it comes up during bureaucracy, remove it and the lowest current market plant with no replacements, reshuffle the stack, refill resources using the Step 2 column one last time, and Step 3 starts next round. In Step 3 there are only 6 plants, no future market, and all of them can be auctioned.

The game ends immediately after the building phase when at least one player has connected the target number of cities: 17 for 3 or 4 players, 15 for 5, and 14 for 6. In that final bureaucracy nobody earns money. Instead each player works out how many cities they can actually power with the plants and resources they hold. The player who powers the most cities wins, and if that is tied, the most remaining money wins.

A turn, played out

It is Step 2 in a 4 player game. You have connected 5 cities, the fewest at the table, so you sit last in player order. That puts you first to buy resources. You have 40 Elektro. Your coal plant burns 2 coal to power 3 cities, and it already holds 1 coal. Your hybrid burns 2 of any mix of coal and oil to power 3 more cities, and it sits empty. The coal market shows 2 tokens on spaces printed 3, then 3 tokens on spaces printed 4. Oil starts at 3. Your coal plant stores twice its need, so 4, and it can take 3 more. You buy the two 3 coal and one 4 coal, paying 10. For the hybrid you take 2 oil at 3 each, paying 6. You could stuff it with 2 more coal, since a hybrid holds up to 4 in total, but those cost 4 each and you need the cash. You have 24 Elektro left. Building also runs in reverse order, so you build first. The best city next to your network already has a green house. In Step 2 a city holds 2 houses, so the 15 space is open. The route costs 7, so you pay 22 and go to 6 cities. With 2 Elektro left, nothing else is affordable. In bureaucracy you fire both plants, discarding 2 coal and 2 oil. That powers exactly your 6 cities, and you collect the payment card's amount for 6. Then the market refills from the most expensive empty spaces down.