To celebrate Burr finishing a paper submission, Burr, Natalie, Matt and his brother Kyle came over to play Citadels by Bruno Fadutti, a card game none of us had played before. (Fadutti also designed the Queen's Necklace) Players compete to build 7 castle parts, where each part you build could also help you with building in the future. The interesting part was that each round we chose different roles each round, Merchant, Thief, King, Assassin, etc, which gave us differeing abilities. It was tough to choose the right role, and I was frequently killed by the Assassin; it definitely requires some second guessing of your opponents strategy. Matt build up an impressive castle as the Merchant most of the time, but Laura squeaked by, building her last castle piece just in time to win the game. There was a lot of downtime as each player chose their roles, enough to refill drinks, but the building phase was very active and involving.

For dessert, Matt brought a delicious cheesecake from Sara Lee; we don't eat cheesecake often so this was a real treat! We finished up the night by playing a round of Fluxx. It is generally a quick game and good for a laugh at the ridiculous rules you have to follow, but in our case, the game lasted about 45 minutes, and we got the feeling the game was playing us instead of the other way around.