Power Grid: The Robots expansion review

As you can tell from our last review, I, dad, love Power Grid. When the mood strikes for a good strategy board game, Power Grid is at the top of my list.

But the problem, as we also mentioned in our review, is that it’s sometimes hard in our family to get enough others in the same mood at the same time to make the game really enjoyable. So the next choice is to get some friends together. But since they’re all in similar boats – balancing their own family schedules – it’s not a simple thing to just pull a gang together.

And that’s why The Robots expansion for Power Grid is fantastic. With Power Grid: The Robots expansion, we can easily add players to the game for more fun.

What’s added in Power Grid: The Robots?

The Robots expansion adds 30 cardboard robot segments/tiles that are pieced together like a puzzle to create artificial players. Each robot is made up of 5 pieces that dictate what that player/robot will do at certain phases of the game. In addition, robots also get programmed with a special ability.

The human players randomly select a tile for each of the 5 segments and piece the robot together. There are 6 different tiles for each segment, so the combination of what a robot may do is quite varied. The 5 segments that make up a robot are:

• Phase 1: The First City
• Phase 2: Auction Power Plants
• Phase 3: Buying Resources
• Phase 4: Building
• Special Abilities

Once a robot (or multiple robots) is built, give the robot its colored houses and begin. All of the standard Power Grid rules are followed and you’re off and running.

Now instead of just trying to figure out what the other human players are going to do, you have to also figure out how the robot’s actions will affect your strategy. And the golden robot rule is always in affect: if there’s a conflict between the standard game rules and the robot tile, the text on the tile wins.

Love it!

Sometimes the robot will do ridiculous things at certain stages. The expansion rules even say, “Sometimes the robot will not play optimally or even will make stupid decisions. Please use these robot rules exactly as written, even if the decisions of a human player would be different.” But that adds even more fun to the game. We’ll just laugh and taunt the robot like it was a regular player, “You really want to pay that much for coal? Go right ahead big guy!”

 

Robot Special Abilities

In addition to the instructions that robots follow at different phases of the game, they also have Special Abilities which are pretty cool. These abilities help the robots overcome any suboptimal choices they may make during play.

For example: “All Cities Cost 10 Elektro” or “Pays Half Bid for Power Plants”
We wish we could have some of those abilities!

Each tile is also explained in more detail in The Robots expansion rulebook – which is very helpful in understanding some of the text written on the robot tiles.

Check out the photos for examples of some of the robot instructions and special abilities.

 

Final Thoughts

Power Grid: The Robots is a great expansion that we’re very glad we bought. For around $10 it adds a lot of fun variety to the game. And it turns 2- or 3-player games into something much more engaging and fun. There’s a lot more going on and more to think about and plan for – which is why we like Power Grid in the first place.

Now we can ensure we get plenty of players to keep it interesting even if the players aren’t human.

 

Side note and tip:

We do actually have a monthly date set for the guys in the neighborhood to play games. With busy family schedules, it’s really the best way we’ve found to get together regularly. It’s got to be on the family calendars. We even started calling it “Boys Book Club” so it would match a bunch of the wives getting together for their book club. We just happen to revolved ours around Rulebooks.

Not everyone in our Boys Book Club enjoys strategy games either, so we have to adjust on the fly to what types of games we play. Power Grid has made a showing for those nights, but on a very rare basis. Mostly we play shorter games that still get a bunch of interaction. The one that gets the most play time over the last 6 months has been King of Tokyo.

But with the right group of guys, Power Grid (and a few Robots if needed) make for a great guys game night.

The Board Game Family Game Ratings
	Caleb
Has not played	Brooke
	Jaden
	Trevor
Has not played	Mom
	Dad
	Average