Rio Grande Games Power Grid The Robots, Green (462RGG)

This is a great way to add an extra player to a game of Powergrid. You can basically build a player, and make it as challenging as you want by establishing rules that the robot has to follow. It's a great idea, well-executed, and as innovative as anything could be. The only downside, though, doesn't have to do with the way the product is built, marketed, packaged, or anything like that. It takes practice to use well. Most of the time, the robot becomes a punching bag for my friends and I. When it does work, the robot destroys us.

This is a great expansion to Power Grid. The robots act as "dummy" players and add a nice tension to the game (see product description for how the robots work). They aren't easy to beat either. I have played a few games alone, with 2 robots, to make it a tight 3 player game, and had a lot of fun. I was initially hesitant about the bidding phase using the robots, because one of the best parts of this game is trying to outbid your friends for plants you want, but that element isn't thrown off too much. The robots will still give you some competition in the bidding war. Overall, this is probably one of the best expansions to get for Power Grid.

Power Grid suffers--ahem, used to suffer--when played with 2 players. Much of the competition is lost, since there is inherently less of a war for power plants, resources, and city placement. So what do you do when you want one of those exciting, cutthroat games that Power Grid is known for, but you don't have enough players? Why, you build a player of course!Robots is an ingenious solution to the problems created from not having enough friends. Although they will not help you enhance your social skills or provide warm feelings, they can certainly make your low-attendance games of Power Grid more exciting!In a nutshell, this expansion allows you to create artificial "players" that take actions according to a set of predetermined rules. The robots participate fully in all elements of the game (auctioning, purchasing, building) and even have the ability to win, if you're not careful. Robots are assembled by choosing one tile from each of five different groups of tiles that contain a variety of rules. The tile groups dictate:1) Where the robot will place its first city (for instance, "player auction")2) How the robot will participate in power plant auctions (for instance, "bids for the highest numbered plant that uses the cheapest resource")3) Which resources the robot will purchase (for instance, "purchases anything it can store that costs less than 5 electro"4) Where the robot will expand its network (for instance, "always makes the cheapest connection and cannot build through occupied cities")5) What special ability the robot will have above all players (for instance, "builds 1 city for free each round")And since there are 5 tiles in each group, not only is there practically endless variety, but you can play against up to 5 robots in a game.The robots follow the same set of decision-making rules for the entirety of the game, no matter the circumstances--and frequently, they make stupid decisions. Strategic players will learn to use this to their advantage. But most of the time, the robots are "intelligent" enough to be a thorn in your side and a challenge to overcome. All of a sudden, your 2-player (or even 1-player!) game can become the fight to the finish that it was meant to be.

Very fun game. It takes a while to learn, but once you get the hang of it, it's great. It's almost as interactive as Settlers of Catan because of the bidding, though it doesn't have the trading aspect of Settlers. It's the closest second I've found to Settlers in terms of being a great strategy game with fun player interaction, and we're getting a little sick of that one so it provides some nice variety. The robot expansion makes it work for two players.

If you mainly play Power Grid with less than four people, you may have found competition to be a little bit stale. I usually play in two-player games and I have my opponent figured out after the first few rounds. A drawback of the original game is the lack of dynamics with a small number of players. I feel this expansion solves this issue. The addition of the robots adds more complexity to the overall game, increasing the participation to all aspects of the game. Power Grid plays well with four players, and adding the robots to make a four player game creates a more challenging and fun time. Since we purchased the robots to make four player games, I have been playing this game almost every night for the last few weeks.As with all parts of the Power Grid universe, the instructions can be a bit confusing. But once you are able to comprehend what the instructions say, the robots easily make up for it with it's ease of use. Just randomly put all the parts for a robot together, setup another player, and you have another competitor for plants, resources, and houses.

This is an okay expansion for the game Power Grid. I was hoping for something to give a bit more suspense to the game, but the robots instead act more like a passive player.

Awesome concept! In practice, the biggest flaw I think is that the robots are often painfully easy to manipulate. For example, if a robot will always bid $10 higher than starting price for a plant, well easy sauce, you bid $9 higher, then they have to pay $10 higher, even if it's the worst power plant ever.They really don't come close to playing well most of the time, but they do add some complexity to two player games, since it can be interesting to fight over who can manipulate the robot into hurting the other player.