Including teaching we got our 3 player game done in a little under 3 hours. This is just about still tolerable. I would nnot play this with 4. My friends have reserved their judgement till after next time but so far it wasn't a huge success or failure either way. While we had the gameplay pretty much down pat towards the end of the game, we're still grasping for anything remotely like a strategy though...
GF mentioned that she will probably try it again with me seeing as we didn't hate it...