by Justin Bell

Ray Charles and I agree: night time really IS the right time, particularly when it comes to my energy level.

Some of that is tied to the fact that I have children (ages 12 and 9) and I have a wife, all of whom typically go to bed by 9 or 10 PM every night. That means Dedicated Justin Time starts around 10, and I try to squeeze a lot in between 10 PM and maybe 1 AM every day.

In some ways, nights for me start as soon as my typical weekend afternoon siesta ends around 4 or 4:30 PM, because I try to take a nap each day on the weekends and select days during the week, especially if I can find or create a gap somewhere each afternoon when “that 2:30 PM feeling” kicks in.

So even though I love mornings, I find that my body’s peak energy sweet spot typically runs from about 5 PM until 1 AM. I have a passion for things like happy hour, dinner parties, evening networking events, and the Chicago nightlife. I also have a passion for playing board games at night, typically starting after 7 PM and running late, if I can find the right people to hang with me.

For me, the body clock is set. Board games exist in my world as an evening activity, and that activity is not limited to playing lighter fare at night either. In fact, some of my best memories of the last 10+ years are playing heavy games that ran late, that went past midnight, that featured people squawking at each other into the wee hours of the morning.



Conventions are sometimes worse for me because I will always find a way to start a game late when “free play” halls are open 24 hours a day. I have many memories of doing what I consider the absolute worst thing one can do at a show: opening a new treasure at like 10 PM, then ripping off the shrink and trying to table a new game by learning that game from the rulebook (“Justin…NOT FROM THE RULEBOOK!!”) when I have no business trying something like that.

You know the situation. “Yeah, I just picked up a copy of [insert new strategy title here]…we should DEFINITELY play it tonight. No, there are no teach or learn-while-playing videos out there because the game is so new. Yes, this is the right time to punch the cardboard chits, set it up then learn it by reading the 24-page rulebook tonight.”

“Is there any chance we finish this by 1 or 2 in the morning?” a brave soul, doubling as your group’s voice of reason, will offer.

“Absolutely. All we have to do is get through the rulebook; I’ll bet we are up and running in 20, maybe 30 minutes.”

Then you try to play the game…and find that you’ve just finished the first of four rounds, and it is already 1 AM.

But thanks to Ray Charles’ voice in the back of my head, my body is always telling me that night time is the right time to do just about anything. So, I’m the joker who tries this or just agrees with your plan—learning a new game from the rulebook is absolutely the right idea late at night during a show, so we should go ahead and commit to learning it. Strike while the iron is hot, even when it looks like everyone else is essentially asleep.

I still remember when a friend tried to get a game of 1861: Railways of the Russian Empire rolling, a first play we started at like 10 PM. (No, we didn’t finish.) A first play of Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory that went from a teach to a final turn that ended just after 1 AM on a Monday night? No sweat; those five hours just flew by.

Rebel Princess: Deluxe Edition at a convention free play space that started after midnight? Home, sweet home. A five-player game of Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy that started at 9 PM and required a teach? Count me in, even as one player hid in the corner of the map to earn a victory while the other players space-battled their way into a four-hour slugfest at the center of the playspace. (Naturally, that was the second game of a very long night of chucking dice.)

I’ve got dozens of stories like this, and I’m thankful that I’ve found other players who love playing games late at night as much as I do. That’s because I struggle carving out the time to play games during the day.



I certainly like the idea of playing board games starting at, say, 11 AM or noon on a Saturday. But the reality is that being a dad also means trying to avoid tough conversations at home.

“Honey, listen…my friend Beth is doing a game day from 12-6 PM. I’m thinking that, well, maybe I just bail on the family all day long, and you can run the kids to soccer, then band practice, then that third-grader birthday party downtown. We’re cool, right?”

Talk about a recipe for divorce! Instead, I try to carve out one day each month when I actually do bail on my family and tackle daytime gaming. Lately, that means starting around 4 PM with friends in the suburbs on a Sunday here and there. But getting out of parental responsibilities is tough and it never feels great, so I try to balance the day gaming option where I can.

Even if I wasn’t a dad, my body still loves afternoon down time. That makes my already-legendary lack of patience a bigger issue, so I try to avoid these trouble spots by not making critical board game decisions at 2 or 3 PM on a Saturday. Plus, no one I know plays games early, and I’m not a part of a 6 AM commuter game day where I can do card games with folks at a coffee shop downtown or something. (Maybe I need older gamers to join my network, since the people I know who love early mornings the most are also seniors. Some of those folks have already retired, so I’ll have to start making a list of potential gaming buds out of local retirees.)

Maybe it’s different in other parts of the world. There have to be people playing Grand Austria Hotel in an actual hotel lobby somewhere at 8 AM, right? Wargamers who kick off new campaigns at the crack of dawn? Post-yoga trick-taking game mornings with folks from a local gym?

I’ll keep an eye out; maybe mornings give me a chance to shake up the night owl formula that has worked wonders over the years.

In the meantime, nights will do. Thankfully, my body prefers late nights anyway.