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.