Funkenschlag Goes to Asia
Friedemann Friese’s Funkenschlag, aka Power Grid, expands to a new part of the world in August 2008 with the publication of the China/Korea Expansion. As Korea is still divided into North and South, so is the resource market, giving you two chances of getting hosed out of the raw materials you need. The richly varied geographical layout of the country also makes building expensive.
To match the Five Year Plans of old, China has a planned economy with the power plants coming out in ascending order for the first two steps of the game. Resources will be in short supply, though, so develop a good plan of your own as well. Rio Grande Games will release this expansion in English, while 2F-Spiele handles the German version.
This new expansion, which has been added to Gone Cardboard, is one more example of the continued support for Funkenschlag, which has sold more than 50,000 copies as of July 2008 across the seven languages in which it’s available. What’s more come Fall 2008, Spanish and French versions of the game will join those in German, English, Italian, Polish, Czech, Slovak and Korean.
Friese’s most recent standalone game, Felix – released in German as Filou: Die Katze im Sack – has sold 30,000 copies since its debut in October 2007. Dutch and French versions are available in addition to the German and English ones.
Edited July 29 to fix the sales data.
Posted by W. Eric Martin on Jul 28, 2008 at 01:00 PM in Game News, Gone Cardboard News / 1654
Comments:
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I’ve played the China map and let me say that it was GREAT fun for gamers who are accustomed to Power Grid, and accustomed to certain playing styles and strategies being “correct,” since you’ll get your butt handed to you if you don’t quickly adapt to the changes. A real hoot. Posted by Matthew Frederick on Jul 28, 2008 at 04:10 PM | #
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Is that a mistranslation? or did Power Grid really move 50,000 units in July? Or has is sold 50,000 units all told? Posted by Ed Bryan on Jul 28, 2008 at 05:14 PM | #
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Ed, here’s the line direct from the (English) press release: “2F-Spiele announces that the game Funkenschlag sold more than 50.000 copies in July.” The author of the press release is a German who has a good command of English, but I’ll double-check on the figure as perhaps “in” should be “as of” – I know from experience that prepositions are always tough in translation. Eric Posted by W. Eric Martin on Jul 28, 2008 at 05:21 PM | #
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It shoud be “as of” - the total print run since the release in 2004 is now at 50.000. Posted by Henning Kröpke on Jul 29, 2008 at 01:05 AM | #
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50k games is a heck of an achievement - congratulations to Friedemann and everyone else who is involved with this! I wish publishers would release sales data more - it’s fascinating information that is sadly shrouded in secrecy more often than not. I’m assuming this expansion is coming out at Essen, so let me add it to my buylist… <scribble scribble> pk Posted by Patrick Korner on Jul 29, 2008 at 01:57 AM | #
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A nice surprise, but what happened to the Baden-Württemberg map? I thought that would be this year’s Essen expansion. And isn’t there supposed to be a Quebec map on the French edition as well? That would go nicely with the Baden-Württemberg map. Posted by Oskari Westerholm on Jul 29, 2008 at 02:30 AM | #
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Baden_Württemberg in the EN-BW edition has a slightly modified Germany map on the back side… Posted by Klaus Knechtskern on Jul 29, 2008 at 03:17 AM | #
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[q]I’m assuming this expansion is coming out at Essen, so let me add it to my buylist… <scribble scribble>[/q] As written in the news - the expansion will be released in the next days - but will be in Essen, too :-) Baden-Württemberg will be published as part of an expansion map in the future, but there is no release date in the moment. The slightly modified German map in the EnBW version of the game is only in that box - the company has its main office in Karlsruhe, so Mannheim was removed for that city and connection costs are slightly different to the standard German map. Posted by Henning Kröpke on Jul 29, 2008 at 04:05 AM | #
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>The slightly modified German map in the EnBW version of the game is only in that box - the company has its main office in Karlsruhe, so Mannheim was removed for that city and connection costs are slightly different to the standard German map. Obviously it was no fault to get a couple of EN-BW´s ;-) Looking forward to see you in Essen Henning! Posted by Klaus Knechtskern on Jul 29, 2008 at 04:08 AM | #
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>which has been added to Gone Cardboard, I don’t see it. Posted by Eric Clason on Aug 2, 2008 at 09:35 PM | #
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Thanks for the note, Eric. Cross-referencing gets short-circuited sometimes… Eric Posted by W. Eric Martin on Aug 2, 2008 at 09:45 PM | #
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