No Girls Allowed!

I like my space. Not very profound a statement, or even startling. Most people do like their space. It is theirs, to do with as they desire.

In my case, my space was my game room. It wasn't much, smallest room in the house, but it was mine. Now it isn't, and it sucks.

As I mentioned earlier my wife and I are expecting. My wife is also very crafty so we decided early on that we both need a room for our various hobbies. Mine was my game room, hers was her sewing room, which then grew to encompass part of the dining room, and now at times spills over into the living room. In light of the newest edition to our home, it was decided that one of the rooms would become the nursery. I don't really get it, but something about CPS being called if you try keep your kid in a kennel.

Because babies get the best stuff even before they are born, well and some other thing about the sewing room being closer to our bedroom, it was been decided by "us" ( I had no recollection of this decision.) that her sewing room is to become the nursery. Meaning that the smallest room in the house will be divided and crammed full of her stuff, the same stuff whose might cannot be contained by just one room. The real travesty is that I no longer have my space. Neither does she...kinda.

Last night I was working on my fire warriors (Only got about an hour in.) when I started to hear loud noises coming from the game room. Upon investigating I discovered that the wife had begun carving her "half". In the name of fairness in borders, and not wanting to accrue some serious wife agro, I decided to "help". As she tore through my space like some Conquistadora I suddenly felt empathy for the tribal people of South America. After all, who can comprehend no longer possessing what has always been yours? And how do you explain the worth of things that foreigners can not comprehend?

The Bitz

From Mars Project Blog

Explaining the whole notion of bitz and bitz boxes to my wife proved far more difficult then I ever would have imagined. I have a lot of sprues lying around, as does any enthusiast who has been playing the game for awhile. Admittedly, most of my sprues are for Warhammer Fantasy Battle as I use up most of the 40k stuff. My wife is getting into quilting, so she has these "scrap baskets" that are just filled with extra pieces of fabric that she can use. Showing far more insight than I thought myself capable of, in a moment of triumphant diplomacy, I drew a parallel between my bitz box and sprues, and her scrap basket. Even going so far as to point out that people trade from bitz boxes just like quilters trade scraps.

The trouble is that my wife is smarter than I am. She immediately began asking the right questions:

W (Wife): "So, you are gonna use all these pieces on your Tau guys or whatever?"

M (Me): "Maybe, there isn't a lot about the game these are for that translates into hi-tech but I might."

W: "Why did you buy them?"

M: "Because they were for another army."

W: "And so these pieces left, they aren't for that other army?"

M: "No I used what I was going to use."

W: "So these pieces won't be used for your Tau, and any armies that you already have, you have combed over these pieces and taken what you wanted?"

M: "Yeah. But I may use the pieces for a future arm-"

The mere mention of me getting another army before I have completed this one brings the "wife rage" to the surface. On this path I shall tread no further.

M: "Look it is just that I already have these. And I do not want to be going along years down the road and be like, "Damn I have to spend forty bucks again for the few pieces I need out of the Tomb Kings regiment."

W: "You spent 40 bucks on a 'few' pieces you need!?"

And there is where I lose the battle. You see, I learned long ago not ask my wife to get me gaming stuff because then she knows what it costs. Once she knows what it costs, she can do the math, and realize what I am spending on shit that has thus far gathered dust. And once she knows what I am spending...well you can imagine.

Instead I like to keep her assessing her own value to the items. If she doesn't know specificly she will attach a sense of "reasonable worth", relative to her own fiscally responsible nature. If she thinks, "There is no way Tony would spend one hundred dollars on this," then I haven't, as far as she is concerned. It is a win win.

The outcome of this sparring match was a resounding loss by yours truly. If you are looking for WHFB sprues check ebay soon.

Other Armies

From Mars Project Blog

Without a doubt this is the greatest point of contention between my wife and myself. And though I vilify her to some extent for the purposes of interest and humor, she is really quite tolerant about most the various eccentricities that go with being married to a gamer, and a fickle one at that. The unfinished armies really exhausts her patience. The way she sees it is that the army is built, so I am almost done. Would that it were true! I spend about fifty times longer painting an army than building it.

A little while back, when she first got pregnant, we reviewed our budget and my gaming took the major hit. In all fairness, so did her sewing, a hobby which is just as expensive as my own. In order to recoup the loss I started ebaying stuff that I got in excess trades or whatever. Just stuff that I would never use. This was unfortunate because the wife was then able to see the potential of turning around the stuff "I don't use" for financial "gain". I think maybe in her mind, most everything on my shelf is stuff "I don't use", and unfortunately she is right. Even still, it doesn't mean I am eager to hawk my shit at 40% of what I paid for it. What happens if a Tzeentch dedicated CSM list is really enjoyable to play when ever CSM gets a new book? I will be stoked to play it but my army will have parted out and shipped to the four corners of the world if she has her wicked way.

In the end it came down to simple economics to avoid not having to spend the next month ebaying. I explained to her that prices for GW stuff go up often, even if the models don't change. I would be spending less if I hung on to the stuff. Also, I showed her that I could consolidate the various armies, sprues, and crap into modular plastic bins that filled the closet. As real estate is a premium in "our" room, this went a long way. The efforts put forth by both parties were fair and appreciated. And never would have had to be made if I still had my own effin' room.

The days of "out of sight, out of mind" policies pertaining to wife and gaming are over. It is a brave new world of budgeting, effective storage, and hard questions like, "Do I really need this?" It is going to be a pain the ass, but in the name of marital bliss I will endeavor to persevere. In the mean time I will dream of an even larger house, with a room that can once again be my own. In this glorius room I can scatter plastic willy-nilly and have no cares. Oh such a place will be Nirvana, and in this Nirvanna will be no girls are allowed!

Now to stash all my crap from the other games I play before she sees it.

From Mars Project Blog

Thanks for reading,
T