Minor gaming

Attempted a last-minute summoning of the greater ET mobbage for board games yesterday afternoon, and succeeded in at least getting critical mass to play things. We played La Citta again, and I found it much less frustratingly inscrutable. (You're building cities, and many of the city tiles have colored arches on them; each game round four cards are picked, one face up, and at the end all are revealed and people between adjacent cities based on which city has more of the predominant-color arch. The last round I bet heavy on blue and lost, but this is better than having no clue what's going on at all.) We got in a round of Puerto Rico in which I did successfully demonstrate that shipping is an optional part of the game (two VP chits! Count 'em! But three large buildings; I was able to get selling coffee up pretty quickly, and that plus the construction hut got me in a position to build expensive things well before the game was over. But narya twitched first on the big buildings, really.) And then we started feeling silly and played Carategena (arr!) and Dungeonquest (mumble bottomless pits mumble).

In the pre-discussion for this it was revealed that there are in fact people who are interested in this sort of thing, are local, and have free time now that they've graduated. Maybe I should try to call a Civilization mob for two weeks hence; or is that just too long for people? narya wanted to play Titan but conflicted with a different mob; maybe slightly shorter but intense games (Die Macher, maybe 1830 BC) are in order (and remember, I said shorter, not "short"). Hmm.