Saint Petersburg

No, not the city, or at least not in real life. We got the game Saint Petersburg and played it yesterday afternoon. It was a lot of fun, though it took forever - closing on 3 hours! Of course, some of that time was reading the rules and trying to learn how to play the game. And then during the game, we would occasionally come across new cards that none of us knew what they meant - so we had to dig in the rules and find out.

The story behind the game is that you are building the city of St. Petersburg - you have to collect workers, buildings, aristocrats and rubles. As you go along, you can upgrade the workers, buildings and aristocrats - while collecting rubles and points.

It was a bit complex to play the first time, but I'm sure it will go faster in future playings. I think, though, that the game's guidelines of 45-60 minutes is a bit optomistic.