Sleep is something I dearly miss...

Over this last week I've spent a large amount of time hanging out with people, enjoyed an envoy of good news, and loads of other activities I can't begin to elaborate on. For this post I'll primarily be covering Magfest which was Wednesday of last week up till about Sunday evening. In the past I would sometimes cover the last post up to the current but that may yield to an exceptional long post. On the same accord though the post won't be exceptional long for example I'm not going to go over every minute of the 9 hours monopoly match we played last Wednesday and simply state 'we played monopoly for 9 hours'. As with Magfest this occurred several times...find a room and play games till our eyes bleed. With this established time for me to provide the details of the largest Magfest ever :D.

[b]Tuesday night // Wednesday:[/b]

The prior evening I didn't actually get a great deal of sleep due to double checking to make sure I had everything, bags were packed, tires were filled with air, the gas tank was topped off and all those other details that would keep me awake at night. Eventually I did lie to rest and accumulated I decent amount of sleep. The following morning I woke up at around 6:45 attended to my morning routine, packed the car and began the adventure for Magfest...I did forget my MP4 player to help me sleep at but it wasn't a huge concern or a priority to bring it. The one device which I forgot later was my cell phone, that in itself was a terrible mistake but it did provide for some relaxing down time at Magfest.

Arrived at my mom's house around 8 o'clock just to pack a few things but there wasn't much to do. I was in the contemplation of bring my mom's laptop to transfer files but that event never occurred. Last year I barely used my mom's laptop so I opted to leave it there this time around. Around 8:30-8:40 I arrived at Dean's helped him pack up (he had more stuff then I original thought) and we made our way to Magfest. The one thing to keep in mind was that Dean had already worked the previous evening so he'd been up for a bit. Surprisingly though he stayed awake for the entire car trip so props to him for that. We made a handful off stops to get breakfast consumables, bathroom breaks, tissues etc. Still made good time as we arrived around 11ish.

Room wise luck did not shine on us this time. We ended up getting a room on the 17th floor which didn't bother me initially but could tell it weighed on the others overtime (and myself during times of extreme exhaustion). The first to arrive was Kiel, really nice fellow that choose to sleep on the floor each night so that's a +1 in my book. Kiel, Dean and myself spent a good bit chatting along with Dean constantly stating he was going to sleep soon. Eventually we did receive a phone call from another group of individuals who were staying about 10 minutes from the convention. This was pretty much Dean's queue to catch up on some sleep and as a result I invite Kiel to tag along with us.

The first stop was Barnes and Nobles to obtain a copy of Seven Samurai which received good reviews on boardgamegeeks. There was a copy of Zombie Dice there but I kept my distance as $15 for it was a bit much. Via amazon you can get it for about $10-$12 with shipping covered. From there we spotted a 'Hot Topic' and 'Old Navy' and dubbed its fusion child 'Old Topic' or 'Hot Navy' (which at this point the whole emo fad is a bit old...). There was a bit of indecisiveness involving food so I decided to just start mention (saying/shouting) IHOP which moments later we found our table being waited on by a Jamaican lady. During the meal Brad called and I directed him towards this direction, though by the time he arrived most of us had finished eating. Though per a friend recommendation I decided to actually finish the remainder which I had prior to leaving to make it appear we were still waiting on someone.

Once the meal was complete there was a brief parting of ways in which we took 2 cars on the way back. At one point our cars were aligned and I began to make silly gestures to a few friends in the other vehicle. There was a good fit of laughter for a bit until the 'fabulous' one made an obscene gesture with his mouth in which the toothpick fell out my mouth and I stopped my efforts. When we all arrived at the hotel we broke open 7 card samurai and began to play. The game in itself wasn't too shabby with our initially group of 5-6 players. The round typically ended just before the draw pile ran out. However once the mass of the group was increased to 8 players the balance of the game was completely lost. The discard pile got down to just burning the aggressive cards against one another and for myself trying to force someone else to win. It was discovered later that the few amount of people the more flowing the game becomes (2-4 seemed optimal).

There was one moment that worked called me which I thought was a bit silly (which eventually led to the prequel of stupidness that occurred this past week). One of my co-workers (like many) was worried and confused when something didn't occur as anticipated and asking for advice. During the initially call I told them I was busy and would give them a call back...about 10-15 minutes later I got another call from them calling me back. It took about 5-7 minutes to troubleshoot and went back to my game of 7 Samurai. There was a few more 'work' related interruptions but the rest were on positive notes.

After Seven Card Samurai we found another table (a larger table) to play other games at. One of the individuals which joined us was a huge Looney Labs fan and had a bag full of them. Fluxx, Zombie Fluxx, Monty Python Fluxx, Stoner Fluxx, Chornonauts with Gore Years and Early Americas, few promo cards...it was simply bulging with goodness. He had also traveled from Texas and with his belongings had several copies of Munchkin as well. For the first round we played Zombie Fluxx... I actually enjoyed this one as there was more cards on the board/involved. Even though I won then lost (in the same game) Zombie Fluxx it was still good fun. Others I don't think enjoyed as much as he was flying through the card explanation. Typically when I play Fluxx with new people I tell them to read the cards. One reason is so they can adapts quicker to them and secondly its fun to tell people 'god follow the rules there on the card'. Monty Python Fluxx is definitely designed for your hardcore Monty Python fans. If you've only seen 'The Holy Grail' then your at a huge disadvantage. Due to this fact I wasn't a huge fan of it.

After these hands we did stop and...to be honest I don't recall. I do remember suddenly Pizza but I forget at what point. I know later that evening I did embark on an adventure to find the last person for the room. Unfortunately I was unsuccessful in my attempts however I did see some random guy playing the piano and enjoyed watching him for a bit (15-30 minutes) before I roamed about again...eventually I just gave up but during that time I ran into Rod the man I was way overdue to play Monopoly with. After using my /conjure people ability we had a total of 8 people ready to go. Seeing how we live in the generation of instant gratification we were basically playing 'tag team' game of monopoly. Some people had to sub out and were replaced with other people. The game itself went on for about 9 hours but I left at about the 7 hour mark as I wanted to wake up early enough for the registration line.

There were two crappy things that happen during the monopoly match. I did finally run into gentlemen and he is probably one of the most annoying individuals I have ever meet in their 30s...that's all I'll say about him as he doesn't warrant any further mention. The second bothersome part was around 4 am dean and brad (victorious) came in and dean started using the Microwave...which is a bit load and woke up Kiel and myself (though not sure if Kiel was asleep or awake hard to tell with him). At around 6 am I finally feel a sleep and woke up somewhat ready for the first official day of Magfest.

[b]Thursday[/b]

Will update in the near future...

Ok finally getting around to updating the information for Magfest on Thursday. First day of the convention. To be honest a lot of Magfest was really straight forward though with the new position at the job I haven't had the opportunity to document it all though I'll try to the best of my ability this week to attend to it.

So after the rude awaking from a microwave as mentioned previously I went back to sleep for about 3 hours...aka I woke back up at 9 o'clock though I knew due to the ways of Magfest that really this was going to become the norm. So after getting situated I made my way downstairs. Amusingly enough Brad was already down there and like one of the first people in line...still baffled how he got so little sleep and was able to keep kicking. None the less the line was considerable longer this year and I went about meeting a few friends as well (as they were on the pre-reg list as well). There was definitely good times to be had in the line, there was much colossal roaring, and general conversation.

There was definitely one huge plus side which came in the form of a phone call while I was halfway through the line. I received a call from my recruiter and after the interview to be honest I wasn't sure what news to expect. The news I did receive however was confirmation that I had landed my new position at CarMax and would be starting about 2 weeks from then. I spread the news to my friends almost immediately after having discussions. We were all quite pleased including myself as I was beyond pleased. For starters I would be doing something new, along with learning something different, on top of that I would actually be pushing myself towards a less niche skill set. While all this was on my mind the line progressed at a rather slow pace...it took about 1-2 hours to get through it (though later I heard it got much worst and took about 3-5 hours at time). After waiting in the line I immediately made my way over (after finding out where it was) to the tabletop room...or should I say rooms.

Due to the response last year the tabletop area expanded to 3 rooms...which I thought was fantastic...so immediately asked if I could conquer one of the rooms and the usually staffers didn't mind so myself and a few friends took the opportunity to reorganize the tables and create floor space for a session later on that night involving a round of zombies. My only concern at the time was if we set out that space and it got occupied later but that never seemed to be the case. Once the space was cleared we played a few rounds of Monopoly Deal which during this time Dean was creating the Zombie deck for the game later that evening. Once the Monopoly Deal game was over the guy who had the loads of Looney Labs and Steven Jackson games stopped by and we played a round of Ubernaughts (Chrononauts + Early American). It was alright the game was a bit longer than my usually test for Looney Lab games. Plus the one thing it lacked was the ability to connect the expansions properly so it felt very segmented. One of my friends won the round and after that there was a small bit of down time followed by food ordered by the friend who departed earlier. The meal of pizza was definitely worth it and shortly after finishing it we went back to the board game room to begin the game of Zombies.

The match itself went on for about 5 hours all which was very enjoyable. Though it was amusing as there was one female that was kind of looking back and forth with a curious look which eventually I invited her to play. We had 2 people swap out the whole time...one I'm not sure why and the other rage quit due to trolling...at the time it wasn't cool cause honestly the person gloated out his strategy, had it backfire twice, and then got relocated. The part about zombies (like most board games) is points accumulated can't be redistributed so we just had to chuck them....kind of a shame... I did get to troll one friend though and stopped him from winning by one space... revenge for the 4 am microwave...maybe but I enjoyed it non the less. Not much else happen the rest of the evening...mostly just relaxing/chilling nothing completely out the ordinary. Friday however...was consumed by a single game...which I'll go in depth about it hopefully tomorrow.

Friday:

I know I'm a bit behind with this but tonight will have a good chuck of time invested in updating the remainder of days that I have left for Magfest. In general there's gonna be a lot of typing tonight even outside the blog sphere so I'll get started.

Friday wasn't super eventful but there was definitely some activities that went down. I believe I woke up around noonish it seems like almost the norm after a bit and went down to the board game room. To be honest I had to reflect on Friday several times before I remembered what happen that day. Typically if I don't recall a certain day it means I did the same game/task for an extend period of time. Finally when I remembered I was correct...all Friday was essentially dedicated to Dominion. Now I had heard of Dominion, via board game geeks but was cautious when approaching it. Primarily because well its a game with cards...game with cards involve dare addicting and make me cringe when cards are bent certain ways which could possible damage them. In either case I clearly remember now playing this game for a stupidly long period of time. Eventually I did take a break to head down to the concert to watch the Protomen play along with a few friends.

There was a point where I had to jet to my car and charge up my dying phone. I did try on a previous attempt to use a friends phone charger with the exact same adapter but sense it went through a USB to AC jack it wouldn't register it. Though in the car I did have a chance to reflect on the con as a whole and a bit of personal time...can't argue with that. Though I did skip the Catan tourney as a result but at the time I didn't care (though later I found it probably wasn't the best move to do so due to the influx of 'ok' people at the tourney). Anywho after the concert was over I spent a small bit of time in the classic arcade room and spent the remainder in table top...more Dominion. Later that evening I did discover a game known as Pandemic which was a great deal of fun. I didn't exactly enjoy one person I was playing it with but I did enjoy the game as a whole.

For those that haven't played it as of the objective of the game of the game is to defeat 4 disease which spawn in a pseudo predictable, yet unpredictable manner. There's a multitude of ways to lose this game, if there's multiple out breaks, you run of out turns to win (aka draw deck) or you run of out diseases to put on the board for that particular disease. Before I forget this game was also made in German (surprised!). At the beginning of the game everyone is dealt out a role and use there abilities (on their turn) to coordinate and defeat the diseases. At the end of each player's turn the diseases spread across the board to increase infection. There's also another effect to increase how fast the infection goes which is 'epidemic' which basically maxes out a city with a disease (putting it in threat of an outbreak, which can potential spread) and increase the rate at which the disease spread to already infected cities. The game gets hectic fairly quickly but its all good fun. Once that was done I left the board game room to explore for a bit came back up to watch a few friends play a game I still don't recall the name too and then went to bed. Saturday wasn't too eventfully but Saturday night...was pretty awesome.

Saturday:

Saturday was overall pretty uneventful for some portions of it. I did go to a panel which I thought was "Make your own game NOW" which turned out to be "Video Games as Modern Folklore" which turned out to be a lot more interesting then I expected. After the forum was even over there was a good bit of discussion going out outside the whole way with myself and a few other individuals. It was actually really good to meet a group of individuals that shared the whole 'masocore' / 'back in my day' logic which was great. We reflected on days of old with Contra, Battletoads along with modern stuff such as Hatred of Activision. After that I attend in the Windjammers tournament and place in the semi-finals which was alright. Once that was over the rest of the day was kind of slow and filled with starving. To keep things in perspective Windjammers ended at about 3 pm...so from there to 6 was rough.

I did attend the Dominion tournament and got my butt kicked pretty bad, first round I entered had witches and I wasn't really familiar with them so I was out round one. I did get to see the Intrigue set played so that was good fun. Shortly after I got knocked out I consumed about a pizza and a half (had a friend order one while I was playing) and it was wonderful. Not sure if it was partly due to me starving or the pizza actually good but it was quite fantastic. Some people were looking at me oddly but I doubt they could fully comprehend how hungry I was. During all this I was watching a Warcraft TCG Raid of Naxxx...the group was doing ok but not that great. I later found out when I was playing that the deck were more built toward PVP rather than raiding, so as a result they would get to the secon boss then wipe. After the raid there was a large amount of randomness I can't even begin to account for...but I'll just list them.

Lair's Dice, Candyland, Lunch Money, Monopoly Deal and Munchkin... well I watched Munchkin didn't actually play. The one thing that amused me was each time one of my friend targeted me I was able to rally everyone to together and have that person swiftly killed / obliterated. It was good as it happen...about 3 times out of 3 games (fufufufufu). But ya it was a fantastic late night which of course lead to Sunday. The only part I think worth document was twirling some random girls hair, braiding it, watching other people get their hair braided against their will, 30+ person bathroom party, random female flashing, knitted samurai helm of greatness, and recorder playing...ya that pretty much sums it up, but not in that exact order. Though once 3 am rolled around I decided to sleep and transition to Sunday.

Sunday:

There was a light hope Sunday that I would run into a random female from the previous night that showed me how to braid hair...though that never occurred which was kind of disappointing. I forgot to note on Saturday that I requested a Panda hat commission (if you haven't seen the hat something is terrible wrong). Moving items down to the car Sunday was probably the most time consuming task as of course like every other Magfest the elevators were fairly full. There was one portion where we just took the stairs and said screw it when we had a lighter load.

The rest of the day was spent playing board games and getting free swag. Played Quelf with 8 people though some people comped out on some of the randomness. I won 10 Magpoints as a result...some guy wanted to split it and call 1st place even at one point but seeing how some of those points were for my Panda hat commission couldn't allow that. Also squeezed in one game of Catan (which at that point between rounds of Quelf and Catan turned in the room key along with picking up my comission, which I wore to IHOP). Once Catan was done the drive home was pretty straight forward. Dropped Dean off and that was Magfest in a nutshell.

If you didn't make it this year I highly recommend coming the following year I'll be taking pre-regs the moment they come up. That's all for now gotta another post to write then probably bed.