Vicious little plants

My first thought when looking at 💐Power Plants was definitely “Wow that looks delightful! 😊”, so I’ve been interested for a while in how well it plays. We were happy to find out that the gameplay is also great and provides us with fun decisions all throughout the game! 👍

Power Plants is about tile-laying on a shared board. You always have 2 tiles in hand and have to place one on the table adjacent to existing tiles.
Turns are fast but there is a cool twist that makes choosing which tile to place and where to place it much more juicy! After placement you have to decide whether you want to activate the powerful effect of the tile you just played, or the weaker effect of every adjacent tile instead.
So it’s just place, activate, next player. Smooth, yet decisions are always crunchy! 🙃

As you build out this big patch of plants you will also place down sprites on some tiles using different effects. There will be a majority scoring at the end with these, and as bigger same-colored contiguous areas are worth more points, those will be more contested. In 2p we’ve had really tight fights for points! ⚔️

The effects of plants are quite diverse, some placing down sprites, or placing down points tokens, moving tiles or removing things from them. The ways these let you place sprites are also intriguing, as there is always some spatial aspect that restricts you. The list goes on, and the best part is that each game only uses 5 plant types, and with the mini expansions you have 10 different types to choose from!. So you’ll always have different plant effects in play, and how they combine is interesting too.

At the end of the game you want to have the most points by having gems, controlling plants that have a point scoring power and controlling areas on the board. 🏆

Power Plants looks splendid - colorful tiles with colorful tokens on them, it’s really a joy to look at. With the deluxe edition the tiles are actually thick wooden tiles, which are amazing to play with! 🤩 I also like the card art and iconography.

If you are looking for a quick but meaningful competitive tile-laying game with huge replayability, I think this is a great one. 🙂