Sponsored.  The Power Generation is a skirmish board game named after its many musicians who have gained the otherworldly power to deal physical damage with their music.  The game tasks you with picking a genre of WarBand, setting a lineup of musicians, building a custom hex-grid map, and fighting your opponent for control of concert venues.  There are two ways to win – fill enough venues with your fans, or wipe your opponent from the map.

Each musician in your WarBand is its own unit with stats, energy, and star power to manage.  Energy is your initiative value, but it can be spent to boost your stats.  Star power is your health, and it’s also your action points.  Each round, you’ll decide how much of your energy to spend, lowering your initiative to get stronger.  Then you’ll decide how to spend your star power: either by performing, defending, or using your WarBand’s special ability.  Choosing to perform means generating fans and triggering an attack on an opponent you can reach.  When rolling combat dice, you have a chance to fill your War Van with roadies that can help you eliminate opposing fans or reroll combat dice.

Your spent resources refresh at the start of a new round, but any star power lost through combat is gone for good.  If a musician’s star power drops to zero, they’re toast!  Before they kick the bucket, though, they get the chance to hit one last Solo, a devastating attack that removes one star power and energy from everyone’s cards – even your other bandmates.

The core game has four WarBands to choose from: Fellblade, a metal band whose leader is a shredding lead guitarist; The Blitz, a do-it-all rock band with a tanky drummer leader; Denny and the Rabble Rousers, a fleet footed country band with a singer for its leading man; and Liquid Proximity, a hard-partying electronic group whose keyboardist leader really knows how to crank the volume.  The expansion offers two more WarBands, a Vampire KPop ensemble and a Zombie Marching Band.

The Power Generation was designed by board game studio Nic James Games.  A partnership between two longtime friends, Nic James Games is a studio focused on providing refined game systems that prioritize player expression, and adapt well to user-made custom content.  The Power Generation is the first game from partners Alex and Nic, who have spent the last 18 years putting together game concepts and have finally decided to take one to completion.  It’s available now to back on Kickstarter, and Nic James Games hopes to release several more games in the coming years.

Most skirmish games struggle with difficulty curve.  The Power Generation sets itself apart by including two sets of rules: the A-Side, which are easy to teach, fast to play, and have been designed for players primarily familiar with board games; and the B-Side, rules built for skirmish and wargame veterans to sink their teeth into.  Also in the box are a collection of scenarios, map designs, campaigns, and three AI opponent types for solitaire play, all of which can be played using either ruleset.

Aside from looking great on a shelf or at a gig, The Power Generation also includes 60 full-sized guitar picks (used to represent fans and roadies in the game), 28 unique musician and War Van cards with custom artwork (38 total including the expansion), 12 custom printed combat dice, 21 unique hexes and 12 venue half-hexes, and a whole lot of player markers and resource tokens.

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