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61-513: Power Grid is the English-language version of the second edition of the multiplayer German-style board game Funkenschlag , designed by Friedemann Friese and first released in 2004. Power Grid was released by Rio Grande Games . In the game, each player represents a company which owns power plants and tries to supply electricity to cities. During the game, players bid on power plants and buy resources to provide electricity to

122-591: A best-of-3 games to make up a 'Duel'. The winner of each duel scores a point for their team in the match. From the start of the second edition, in 2021, the WTCOC has been officially sanctioned by the publisher Hans Im Glück and World Championship organisers Spielezentrum. Beginning in 2023 the top 4 teams in the WTCOC have been able to send an extra participant to the World Championships in Germany. This

183-520: A double-sided board with a map of the United States on one side and Germany on the other. Each map has six regions, containing cities with connections of various costs between them. The number of regions used is based on the number of players. The map is a key strategic component, since some areas have generally higher connection costs than others. Power Grid is played in rounds. Each round has five phases: The game ends when one player builds

244-523: A feature by drawing and placing a tile, claim it by stationing a follower on the newly placed tile, and receive the score for completing it all in the same turn, but the sequence of that turn means the player cannot redeploy the follower after it is returned to their stock. The stationing phase of the turn was completed by claiming the completed feature. Cities are completed when they contain no unfinished edges from which they may be expanded, roads are similarly completed when they have closed both ends or form

305-449: A fixed number of cities, and the winner is the player who can supply electricity to the most cities with his network. In case of a tie, the player with the most money wins. If that results in a tie, the player with the most cities is the winner. Power Grid is further divided into three steps. In step one eight power plants are visible to players, arranged in two rows of four based on reverse value. The first row (the least- valuable plants)

366-583: A follower, the marker is placed upright on the feature to claim that feature, except for a field , where the follower is laid down instead to emphasize that fields are not scored until the end of the game; the follower's role depends on the feature claimed, changing from thief/highwayman ( road ) to knight ( city ), monk ( cloister or monastery ), or farmer ( field ). It is possible for terrain features to become "shared" by opposing players when tile(s) are placed in subsequent turns that connect previously unconnected features. For example, two separate fields (each with

427-413: A follower/farmer) can become connected into a single field subsequently by a newly placed terrain tile. If any feature (except a field ) is completed during a player's turn, the score for the completed feature is counted for the player that controls that feature; after scoring, the controlling "meeple" is removed from the board and returned to the player's stock. Each player has eight followers; since one

488-531: A game has a board, the board is usually irregular rather than uniform or symmetric (such as Risk rather than chess or Scrabble ). The board is often random (as in The Settlers of Catan) or has random elements (such as Tikal ). Some boards are merely mnemonic or organizational and contribute only to ease of play, such as a cribbage board; examples of this include Puerto Rico and Princes of Florence . Random elements are often present but do not usually dominate

549-473: A game". German-style board game Due in part to postwar aversion to products which glorified conflict, the 3M series of strategy and economic games, including Acquire , became popular in Germany and provided a template for a new form of gameplay without direct conflict or warfare. The genre developed as a more concentrated design movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Germany. The genre has spread to other European countries such as France,

610-607: A half-hour to a few hours, with one to two hours being typical. Generally Eurogames do not have a fixed number of players like chess or bridge; although there is a sizeable body of German-style games that are designed for exactly two players, most games can accommodate anywhere from two to six players (with varying degrees of suitability). Six-player games are somewhat rare, with Power Grid and Caverna (the latter supporting seven player games) being two examples, or require expansions, as with The Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne. Players usually play for themselves individually, rather than in

671-434: A loop, and cloisters are completed when surrounded by eight tiles. Points are awarded to the players with the most followers in a feature. If there is a tie for the most followers in any given feature, all of the tied players are awarded the full number of points. Once a city, cloister, or road feature is scored, all of the followers in that feature are returned to their owners. In general (see table), points are awarded for

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732-444: A partnership or team. A growing number of Eurogames support solo play with modified rulesets. To win, the player either has to achieve specific single-player campaign goals or beat the score of a simulated opponent that takes actions according to special rules outlined in the scenario. Recent Eurogames suitable for solo play include Wingspan , Terraforming Mars , and Spirit Island . Another prominent characteristic of these games

793-432: A player who appears to be in a lagging position at end of play into the lead. A second-order consequence is that Eurogames tend to have multiple paths to victory (dependent on aiming at different end-of-game bonuses) and it is often not obvious to other players which strategic path a player is pursuing. Balancing mechanisms are often integrated into the rules, giving slight advantages to lagging players and slight hindrances to

854-594: A road without touching any completed cities, or a field can touch only incomplete cities, in which case those fields will score no points. There are two older editions of Carcassonne , differing in scoring of cities and fields. The current scoring rules were introduced in the German version in 2004, but until 2008, the first edition scoring rules were still included with the English releases of Carcassonne , third edition rules are now included with all editions (including

915-401: A way that extends terrain features on the tiles it touches: roads must connect to roads, fields to fields, and cities to cities. Connections are made across adjacent edges only; corners do not connect. A cloister tile may be placed adjacent to another cloister tile, as there are no connecting features. If the newly drawn tile cannot be placed anywhere legally, the players may choose to remove

976-699: Is a tile-based German-style board game for two to five players, designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede and published in 2000 by Hans im Glück in German and by Rio Grande Games (until 2012) and Z-Man Games (currently) in English. It received the Spiel des Jahres and the Deutscher Spiele Preis awards in 2001. It is named after the medieval fortified town of Carcassonne in southern France, famed for its city walls. The game has spawned many expansions and spin-offs , and several PC, console, and mobile versions. A new edition, with updated artwork on

1037-412: Is a substantial luck component to the game; however, good tactics greatly improve one's chances of winning. Examples of tactical considerations include: The game has been used in education to teach geographical concepts. Several official expansions for Carcassonne have been published, which add numerous additional rules, tiles and new kinds of figures. Together, they can more than double the length of

1098-493: Is also awarded to games that are more complex and strategic, such as Puerto Rico . A few games have had broad enough appeal to win both awards: The Settlers of Catan (published 1995), Carcassonne (published 2000), and Dominion (published 2008). Xbox Live Arcade has included popular games from the genre, with Catan being released to strong sales on May 13, 2007, Carcassonne being released on June 27, 2007. Lost Cities and Ticket to Ride soon followed. Alhambra

1159-677: Is at risk of being enclosed in a loop and cut off from any completed cities. The three cloisters at [H3], [E5], and [F5] include stationed monks because they are not completely surrounded by eight tiles; the two cloisters that are surrounded, at [G3] and [D5], are vacant because the claiming player(s) have scored those points. A tile played at [F6] would complete the surroundings for the blue monks at [E5] and [F5], scoring eighteen points for those followers. Red has one knight follower in [D1], two thief followers in [B3] and [C4], and three farmer followers in [C2], [D2], and [D4]; this means that Red has only one follower remaining that can be stationed unless

1220-410: Is available for bidding. Only the first slot of a city may be connected. Step two begins when a player builds a set number of cities, determined by the number of players. The least-valuable available plant is removed from the game, and the second city slots are available for connection. Step three begins when the step-three card comes up in the power-plant deck after being initially placed at the bottom of

1281-447: Is considered to be an excellent "gateway game" by many board game players as it is a game that can be used to introduce new players to board games. In a 2017 Ars Technica holiday buyer's guide, it was described as "one of the absolutely foundational games of the modern board gaming hobby". The rules are simple, no one is ever eliminated, and the play is fast. A typical game, without any expansions, takes about 35 minutes to play. There

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1342-475: Is held annually in July in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania . The event is nine days long and includes tournament tracks of over a hundred games; while traditional wargames are played there, the most popular tournaments are Eurogames and it is generally perceived as a Eurogame-centered event. Attendance is international, though players from the U.S. and Canada predominate. The most prestigious German board game award

1403-527: Is the Spiel des Jahres ("Game of the Year"). The award is very family-oriented, with shorter, more approachable games such as Ticket to Ride and Elfenland usually preferred by the award committee. In 2011, the jury responsible for the Spiel des Jahres created the Kennerspiel des Jahres , or connoisseur's game of the year, for more complex games. The Deutscher Spiele Preis ("German game prize")

1464-447: Is the lack of player elimination. Eliminating players before the end of the game is seen as contrary to the social aspect of such games. Most of these games are designed to keep all players in the game as long as possible, so it is rare to be certain of victory or defeat until relatively late in the game. Related to no-player-elimination, Eurogame scoring systems are often designed so that hidden scoring or end-of-game bonuses can catapult

1525-671: Is the red farmer in [D4] sharing a field with one blue farmer in [G5]. However, if a tile is played at [F6], it will connect to the field to the southeast; even though blue would have two farmers in the merged field, including the farmer in [G6], and would control the merged field, that field still does not touch any completed cities and would score no points unless the city at [C6]*[D6]*[E6] is completed. There are two fields that have been completed and enclosed by loop roads in [I1]+[I2]+[J2]+[J1] and [C3]+[D3]+[E3]+[F3]+[F4]+[E4]+[D4]+[C4]. Neither of these fields touch any completed cities and so they would each score zero points. The Green farmer in [C5]

1586-461: Is to use only the base game of Carcassonne (the original 72 tiles) and for games to be between only two players. International Carcassonne tournaments were held in Germany in 2003–2005. The first official Carcassonne World Championship was held at SPIEL in Essen , Germany, in 2006. An annual world championship has been held at SPIEL every year since 2006 with the exceptions of the 2010 and

1647-455: Is used to keep track of the player's score, only seven can be in play at any moment. The game ends when the last tile has been placed. At that time, all incomplete features (including fields) score points for the players with the most followers on them. The player with the most points wins the game. During each player's turn, completed cities, cloisters, and roads (but not fields) are scored before that player's turn ends. A player may complete

1708-578: The 2023 championships, which were held during SPIEL but at an alternate location in Herne , Germany; and the 2020 edition which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic . Qualification for the World Championship is primarily reserved for national champions, along with the defending World Champion. Since 2023 a number of additional wildcard qualifications have been granted. This has included

1769-523: The Essen Games Fair, is the largest non-digital game convention in the world, and the place where the largest number of Eurogames are released each year. Founded in 1983 and held annually in Essen, Germany, the fair was founded with the objective of providing a venue for people to meet and play board games, and show gaming as an integral part of German culture. A "World Boardgaming Championships"

1830-692: The Netherlands, and Sweden. The Settlers of Catan , first published in 1995, paved the way for the genre outside Europe. Though neither the first Eurogame nor the first such game to find an audience outside Germany, it became much more popular than any of its predecessors. It quickly sold millions of copies in Germany, and in the process brought money and attention to the genre as a whole. Residents of Germany purchased more board games per capita than any other country as of 2009 . While many Eurogames are published and played in Anglophone markets such as

1891-512: The River mini-expansion adds 12 tiles with river features. The version of the game currently in print includes the River and Abbot mini-expansions. 2× [REDACTED] 1× [REDACTED] 2× [REDACTED] 3× [REDACTED] 2× [REDACTED] 2× [REDACTED] 2× [REDACTED] 1× [REDACTED] 9× [REDACTED] 3× [REDACTED] 3× [REDACTED] 1× [REDACTED] The river tiles are used as an alternative to

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1952-413: The U.S. after the turn of the millennium are now the norm, with newer high-end titles like Terra Mystica and Tzolkin being significantly more difficult to master. While many titles (especially the strategically heavier ones) are enthusiastically played by gamers as a hobby, Eurogames are, for the most part, well-suited to social play. In keeping with this social function, various characteristics of

2013-759: The United States and the United Kingdom, they occupy a niche status there. Other games in the genre to achieve widespread popularity include Carcassonne , Puerto Rico , Ticket to Ride , and Alhambra . Eurogames tend to be focused on presenting a complex challenge to players. They feature economics and the acquisition of resources rather than direct conflict, and have a limited amount of luck. They also differ from abstract strategy games like chess by using themes tied to specific locales, and emphasize individual development and comparative achievement rather than direct conflict. Eurogames also emphasize

2074-518: The Xbox 360 and travel versions), and are assumed by all expansions in all languages. In the first and second editions of the game, completed cities covering just two tiles scored two points (one per tile) and one extra point for every pennant that resides in the city. This exception is removed from the third edition, in which there is no difference between "small" two-tile cities and cities of larger size. The greatest divergence in scoring rules between

2135-460: The board according to the capital first letter of the color name: "R"ed, "Y"ellow, "G"reen, "B"lue, and "P"urple, where purple is substituted for "B"lack to avoid confusion with blue. There are three completed cities at [C2]*[D2]*[C3]*[D3], [F1]*[E2]*[F2]*[F3] and [H2]*[I2]. It is not possible to complete the city at [G4]*[G5]*[G6]; by examination of the available tiles, there is no tile that will fit in [H5] to continue all four edges, which also means

2196-490: The box, or at least in the rule book. Top designers enjoy considerable following among enthusiasts of Eurogames. For this reason, the name "designer games" is often offered as a description of the genre. Recently, there has also been a wave of games designed as spin-offs of popular novels, such as the games taking their style from the German bestsellers Der Schwarm and Tintenherz . Designers of Eurogames include: The Internationale Spieltage , also known as Essen Spiel, or

2257-428: The cancellation of World Championship in 2020, the community of Carcassonne Catalonia decided to create an online world championship for teams, to be played online for several weeks on the online platform Board Game Arena . Named World Team Carcassonne Online Championship (WTCOC), the format of the tournament is for each match to have 5 players selected by both teams. Each player is paired with an opponent who they play

2318-472: The city in [H6] cannot be completed. Similarly, because any piece that can be placed in [E1] must continue the three bordering edges, that piece in [E1] will connect the two fields that are currently claimed by the green farmer in [G1] and the red farmers in [C2] and [D2] alongside the yellow farmers in [H4], [H1], and [J3]. If no one else adds a farmer, yellow would claim the field by having the most followers in that merged field. The other shared-field situation

2379-454: The cloister and seven for the surrounding tiles) at the end of the game. Worse, the green knight follower in [H6] will not score any points and is stranded because the city will never be completed. Yellow has three farmer followers, one knight [J4], and one thief [I5]; both the knight and thief remain active and can be returned by completing that city and road, respectively. The original board game has 72 tiles with city, field, and road features;

2440-401: The deck, and the least-valuable available plant is removed from the game. The available-power-plant pool is down to six, and the remaining-power-plant deck is shuffled to make a new draw deck. Power Grid is available under different names in different markets. Most have the same game play, but a few editions are slightly different because they have non-standard maps. All expansions require

2501-492: The editions of Carcassonne is in scoring for fields. In the first edition, fields were considered from the point of view of the cities. The player(s) with the greatest number of farmer/followers adjacent to a city were awarded four points for that city. Thus, followers from different fields contributed to the scoring for a city, and followers on a field may contribute to the scoring for multiple cities. The second edition considered different fields separately – for each field,

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2562-533: The final in five consecutive years. Els Bulten is the only female champion. Since 2020 the Mind Sports Olympiad have run open international tournaments in a similar format to the World Championships. For 2020 and 2021 only an online tournament was held, but since 2022 both online and in-person tournaments have been held in London. Online Tournaments In-Person MSO Tournaments As a result of

2623-431: The game will be resource or terrain distribution in the initial setup, or (less frequently) the random order of a set of event or objective cards. The role played by deliberately random mechanics in other styles of game is instead fulfilled by the unpredictability of the behavior of other players. Examples of themes are: Although not relevant to actual play, the name of the game's designer is often prominently mentioned on

2684-491: The game. These expansions are generally compatible with each other and may be played together. Six stand-alone mini expansions, with each containing a tile for a seventh mini expansion. Following the success of Carcassonne , a number of games have been spun off from the main game, all sharing similar mechanics. There is also a travel-sized version of the original game, Travel Carcassonne ( Reise-Carcassonne ), released in 2007. The format of competitive Carcassonne tournaments

2745-421: The game. While rules are light to moderate, they allow depth of play, usually requiring thought, planning, and a shift of tactics through the game and featuring a chess- or backgammon-like opening game , middle game , and end game . Stewart Woods' Eurogames cites six examples of mechanics common to eurogames: Eurogame designs tend to de-emphasize luck and random elements. Often, the only random element of

2806-428: The games tend to support that aspect well, and these have become quite common across the genre. In contrast to games such as Risk or Monopoly, in which a close game can extend indefinitely, Eurogames usually have a mechanism to stop the game within its stated playing time. Common mechanisms include a pre-determined winning score, a set number of game turns, or depletion of limited game resources. Playing time varies from

2867-401: The growing number of cities in their network . Power Grid was developed from Funkenschlag , the original game, which had players draw their networks with crayons instead of playing on a fixed map. This and other changes were made when Friedemann Friese reworked the game. The new game is called Funkenschlag in the German market, but is sold under other names elsewhere. The game comes with

2928-449: The leaders. This helps to keep the game competitive to the very end, an example of which is Power Grid, where the turn order is determined by number of cities (and biggest power plant as the tie-breaker), such that players further ahead are handicapped in their option of plays. A wide variety of often innovative mechanisms or mechanics are used, and familiar mechanics such as rolling dice and moving, capture, or trick taking are avoided. If

2989-489: The mechanical challenges of their systems over having the systems match the theme of the game. They are generally simpler than the wargames that flourished in the 1970s and 1980s from publishers such as SPI and Avalon Hill , but nonetheless often have a considerable depth of play. One consequence of the increasing popularity of this genre has been an expansion upwards in complexity. Games such as Puerto Rico that were considered quite complex when Eurogames proliferated in

3050-416: The north by the roads in [A2]—[B2]—[C2], touches the two complete cities [C3]*[D3] and [C4]*[C5] and would score six points at the end of the game, more if the incomplete cities at [A2] and [C4]*[D4] are completed . In addition, the field could be extended by an appropriate piece in [D2] to touch the complete city [D3]*[E3]. Consider sample game #2 on the 6×10 board. In this example, followers are stationed on

3111-406: The number of tiles covered by a feature; a completed cloister scores nine points for the cloister plus eight neighboring tiles. At the end of the game, when there are no tiles remaining, fields and all other claimed but incomplete features are scored. The score of each field is based on the number of completed cities that field touches. It is possible for a field to be completely enclosed by

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3172-569: The original game. These are stand-alone games: According to Martin Wallace , "I cannot say the game is definitively a classic. What I do know is that it still gets played regularly around the U.K. games scene. The vast majority of board games get dragged out once or twice and are then chucked to one side to collect dust until either auctioned or hidden in the loft by the better half. Power Grid has hung around because it has that certain something about it that makes you happy to sit down and play

3233-645: The players with the greatest number of followers in a field scored three points for each city adjacent to the field, although points were only scored once for any given city. The third edition removes these exceptions and brings field scoring in line with the scoring of other features. Consider the sample game #1 in progress on the 5×5 board shown; there are four complete cities : [B1]*[C1]*[C2] scoring eight points (three tiles plus one pennant) and three two-tile, four-point cities [C3]*[D3], [D3]*[E3], and [C4]*[C5]. There are two complete roads, scoring two points each: [A2]—[B2] and [B1]—[B2]. The largest field , bounded on

3294-518: The remaining 71 terrain tiles. Kárná used a four-character tile code which described the feature on each edge of the tile as either a road (R), meadow (M, aka field), or city (C), written clockwise from an arbitrary starting edge. For instance, CRMR (modified as CRFR to conform with the terminology of this article) would describe the starting tile, starting from the top edge. With three possibilities for each edge, theoretically there are 81 (=3 ) possible tile combinations, but as some are duplicates because

3355-446: The roads or city are completed to score and return those followers to their stock. In contrast, purple only has one monk follower on the board at [H3] at this time, but that monk is effectively stranded until the end of the game: there is no possible tile that can be played in [I3] as there are only two single-road tiles (with a cloister) and those are already on the board at [H3] and [D5]. However, that monk will score eight points (one for

3416-434: The standard CRFR start tile and have the same dark-colored back to indicate this. The starting river tile is called the source (a river tile with a single river edge) and the final river tile is called the lake (again with a single river edge); players take turns placing all twelve river tiles to start the game, including follower placement and scoring, if relevant, then after the lake river tile has been played, proceed to place

3477-449: The tile from the game, or return it to the draw pile. After placing each newly drawn tile, the placing player may opt to station a marker (called a "follower" or " meeple ") on a terrain feature (i.e., a road , city , cloister , or field ) of that newly placed tile to claim control of it. However, if the feature is connected to a feature already claimed by another player, the follower cannot be stationed on that feature. When stationing

3538-453: The tiles and the box, was released in 2014. The game board is a medieval landscape built by the players as the game progresses. The game starts with a single specific terrain tile face up and 71 others shuffled face down for the players to draw from. Each player's turn consists of three distinct phases: To start each turn, a player draws a new terrain tile and places it adjacent to tiles that are already face up. The new tile must be placed in

3599-421: The tiles may be rotated arbitrarily, there are actually 24 possible combinations. Capaldi and Kolba, professors of mathematics at Valparaiso University , also counted 24 distinct types amongst the 71 non-river tiles of the starting set, although 5 of these were duplicates of other terrain tiles with the addition of pennant/coat of arms features. They assigned a single letter to each of the 24 types. Carcassonne

3660-586: The winner of the Mind Sports Olympiad online championship, and top ranking teams of the World Teams Online Championship. In the 2021, each country was allowed to participate with two players, following the cancellation of the 2020 edition. Ralph Querfurth has been the World Champion in four editions. Pantelis Litsardopoulos is the only other player to have won the World Championship on more than one occasion, having reached

3721-465: Was due to follow later in 2007 until being cancelled. The iPhone received versions of The Settlers of Catan and Zooloretto in 2009. Carcassonne was added to the iPhone App Store in June 2010. Later, Ticket to Ride was developed for both the iPhone and the iPad, significantly boosting sales of the board game. Carcassonne (board game) Carcassonne ( / ˌ k ɑːr k ə ˈ s ɒ n / )

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