Late Saturday at the Houston Gamers: Power Grid game is awesome

I learned Power Grid and also got in a game of Ra at the Houston Gamers yesterday.

Power Grid has been at the top of my Wanna-Learn list for a while. It's highly-ranked at the BoardGameGeek, and Aaron Fuegi's Internet Games 100 List, both excellent sources for finding games to research.

Here's the problem: it's fairly complicated, and usually takes 3 hours to play. Add in teaching time, and that' s a problem. Every time I go to the Houston Gamers, it's already 9 pm. If everyone's in the middle of games, it's hard to get a quorum going on a 3 hour game that's a brain-burner, especially since many of them have been gaming all day at that point. My Thursday night regular crowd is NOT going to start learning a complicated game at 7:30 pm when I need to be at work the next day.

R.J. owns a copy, and Chris B. wants to learn it, and I now want to play more, so that's a much more hopeful scenario to throw together. It's right up Larry's alley, too. He owns Caylus, and Power Grid is about the same complexity, although the mechanics and theme are entirely different.

Uh, I think I like 5-player Ra more than 3-player Ra. It's a great auction game, but there's something about the 3-person auctions that leave something to be desired. It's also much easier for one person to dominate the bidding process. I also keep losing the 3-player games I play by about 1 hojillion points, which might be a factor.

Gamecount: Individual game sessions played for the year = 112, New game titles played for the year = 18.