somewhat averted

Tonight Psi Phi held a board gaming in Parlors. I went, since it was the first one of the semester (aside from inauguration, which I couldn't make). When I arrived people were still waiting to see how many would come. So we spent 15 minutes playing Miles' cool variant of Class Struggle/Dalmuti/whatyouwill. Then we decided to start playing real boardgames, and various people described what they'd brought (I had Modern Art, Evo, and Carcassonne). There was uncertainty and dithering for five minutes, then someone made a push for critical mass to play Risk-2150. Five people headed off to that, and immediately the remaining four said "let's play Magic" and peeled off to another corner of parlors and started playing. I just sat there by myself for a minute, as everyone else started setting up, feeling ignored. I got on my coat and said I'd head off.

Miles gave a sympathetic look, which made me pause and come over to his game, and then my unhappiness was averted, because I suggested to them that I might play a two player game with someone while four played Risk-2150. Orion agreed, and we played Polarity, which I'd only ever heard about - it's a skill game involving disc magnets which you try to position on a board so that they're not lying flat, but lean on a diagonal in the air, held up by the other magnets already on the board. It's tricky but pretty fun and very cool looking. It took 20 minutes, by which time two people I didn't know had come in and gotten interested in gaming, so we four played Chrononauts.

After that Orion took over for the departing Jamison in Risk, and Annie arrived, so I put off leaving long enough to play a couple of games of Lost Cities. I'm glad gaming happened, and I'm even glad I went, but it was a close call.