Binge and Purge

Whoops, haven't updated lately. You can blame that mostly on SSBB starting from March 9th onwards. I went with Adam to Walmart for the midnight release (I think that means my geekdom has reached a new high). There were a handful of other nerds there for that very reason. They probably sold about 20 copies of the game that night. That night (same night as the clocks moving forward an hour), I played the game until about 4. I think the five or six days following the release of the game, it got a cool 35 hours of playtime. I remember checking the other day and seeing that there was 10 hours clocked on Sunday alone! Time well wasted, I tell you.

I realized it was becoming an obsession, and I had a few assignments to do, so I let Grant borrow my Wii since Saturday night. I think I'll pick it up either later today or get him to bring it to games night tomorrow, because I'm caught up again and itching to play.

On games night last week, I had the regulars, plus Adam and Sheena's friend Kim. We wound up playing Settlers and Power Grid (well, those two games were played), and afterwards, I played some four-way SSBB with Adam, Dan, and Grant. Haha, I remember one of the first matches, I played against them as a team of three and wound up winning. I played either Falco or Wolf and racked up a good 4 kills off of one of my final smashes alone. I failed in all my other attempts though. Grant's starting to get pretty good and we're close to being evenly matched

Since the last post, I ordered and received some new board games from the states. I purchased El Grande, Santiago, and Alhambra, which have been on my wishlist for a while, and I picked up Pillars of the Earth on a whim since I needed another $40 to get free shipping, and there wasn't really anything else I wanted that was in stock. It's been called "Caylus light" by lots of BGG users, and it's got some nice looking components. You'd think that after opening four new games and getting that "new game smell" into my system, I'd be happy, but I actually wound up going to the local game store to buy another game, RA! It wasn't in stock at ThoughtHammer when I placed my order, and it's been number one on my wishlist for a while. It's out of print, so I figured I should get a copy while I still can (even if the local store charges $10 more than I could get online).

I've also grown very interested in a new game called Pandemic. It's a cooperative game where you play as team of people who are trying to control and cure a bunch of diseases around the world. From what I read, it seems like the theme is tied in pretty well with the mechanics, and it seems like there's a lot of tension in the game. The local store has it at the same price as online stores, so I'm thinking of picking up a copy. At the very least, I could play it solo!

Listening to... Dream Theatre - Metropolis Part I
Link of the moment... My Wii's GPU is shot (but not to the point where it's unplayable), so I'm going to have to get it sent away and repaired. At least it's under warranty.

Woohoo! 14 hour sleep!

So, the other day I decided that going to bed at 4 AM probably wasn't going to work well with my school schedule, so I resolved to do something about it. Of course, you can't just shift your sleep schedule back 4 hours on a whim, so my plan was to pull an all-nighter and then go to bed early the next night. I wound up staying up for an entire 32ish hours without any sleep (well actually, I sort of passed out around hour 30 for ten or fifteen minutes). I went to bed that night at 9:30, and slept 14 hours straight (I probably could have kept going if my dad didn't wake me up). Unfortunately, I don't think it fixed my sleep schedule all that much, but it was a fun little experience.

I placed an order for my board games the other day. I'm still waiting for one to get in stock, but it will probably ship within the next week or so. When choosing games to buy, I tried to get a game that would fill every need I have. I got Power Grid for a heavy game, Citadels for 4-7 people, For Sale as a quick filler game, Coloretto for another filler, Shadows Over Camelot for a good thematic game, and San Juan for a fairly deep 2-3 player game.

I think it's interesting that ever since I've put serious thought into placing an order for games online, my list of "must haves" has changed quite a bit. The first game I really wanted to buy was Alhambra, and I've since changed my mind to buying San Juan as a substitute. I was also very intent on buying Category 5, but it didn't make the cut either.

I've transformed the back room into a games room now (well, it has other purposes, but what I mean is that my tables are permanently set up in there). The lighting is a bit better in there, and there's a bit more elbow room, but there are a few nitpicky drawbacks. The fridge and microwave are now no longer within sight, and I have to shuffle chairs around quite a bit to seat everyone. We'll see how I like the setup in a few weeks.

John's in town this weekend for a wedding and most of next week as well. I can only assume I'll see him tomorrow. It'll be fun to hang out with him again.

Listening to...
Link of the moment...

Monopoly? More like monotony.

It's been a while! I'll break up my adventures into multiple posts. I'll start off jabbering about board games for a while, I think.

While I was in Waterloo, one stop I was intent on making was to J&J to pick up some board games (since I brought a Wii to Waterloo for Andrew, I had some space in my luggage I had to fill up). I bought Dodge City, an expansion for Bang, a two player abstract game called Hive, and a starter deck for the Harry Potter TCG.

Hive has turned out to be a pleasant little suprise. I've played it a few times and have managed to lose most of those games, but it's a really nice little game. It takes no setup time whatsoever, and can be taught in about three minutes. Once you've played for five minutes and "get" the game, you can throw some interesting strategy into it right away.

I haven't played a game of the Harry Potter TCG yet, but I'm already looking to acquire some more cards. I can get 24 or 36 booster packs (11 cards each) from ebay or other online sources, but the shipping to Canada costs more than the cards themselves. I don't really know what to do about that.

I've already got a nice little list of games on the proverbial chopping block (or shopping block if you will). I suppose I've gotten most of my geek talk out of my system. I'm looking at Alhambra (for a good light 3 player game), one of Shadows Over Camelot or Arkham Horror (for a pseudo-RPG co-op game; the latter has decidedly heavier gameply and takes longer but has a nice theme), and I've been interested in HeroScape for a while (but I feel like I already have so many 2 player games that never get played).

I got a lot of game time in while I was in Waterloo. I played three games of Catan (one with 3 players, one with 5, one with 6), two games of Bohnanza, a game of Monopoly, two games of Mario Party 8, lots of Smash Bros, some really good 4 player Wii tennis, a few games of Hive. That's quite a lot of gaming in one weekend. Even after all those games of Catan, I'm still ready for more! It gets a lot of table time on Tuesdays, so I'm sure I'll get into another game soon.

I'm not really sure how many games I'll have in my collection before I think that I have enough games. I have a ton of games that I rarely play (I don't want to introduce too many to my friends at once), but there is always a set of games that I want to purchase. I really hope that once the Game Shelf gets a website up, I can hook up with some more hardcore gamers. I might even be able to come across a few gamers in the math department at Lakehead. Until then, I'm going to have to try to mold my Tuesday night crowd into hardcore gamers.

Listening to... Opeth - Deliverance
Link of the moment... HeroScape even has a nice little community and is loaded with customized scenarios.