After waffling for a month now, I decided to go with a tricked out gaming laptop, a Sager 8170. I like the look of it because it's understated so it can pass as a professional device, even though this will be replacing my desktop and not travelling.
http://www.reflexnotebook.ca/index.p...er-np8170.html
17.3" Full HD LED-Backlit Display featuring 90% NTSC Color Gamut in Super Glossy Surface (1920 x 1080)
2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2860QM Processor ( 8MB L3 Cache, 2.50GHz)
Nvidia GeForce GTX 580M GPU with 2.0GB GDDR5 Video Memory
16GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 4 X 4GB
250GB Intel 510 Series SATA3 Solid State Disk Drive
6X Blu-ray Reader/8X DVD±R/2.4X +DL Super-Multi Drive & Software
After tax, shipping, warranty, it all came to $3580.88 which is a bit more than I initially intended on spending but not completely unreasonable and should easily last me several years.
I now will be able to play something other than Civ5 on low settings!
