Geeking With the Wife – Episode 2: Real Estate

“I want to stomp.”

* * *

Kate IMs me from school. She’s had a long day in the lab, and I ask if knocking down small pieces of plastic would make her feel any better. She agrees, so long as I’ve set up the board by time she gets home. I start thawing shrimp for dinner and begin placement of the buildings.

I’m setting up the board in her favor this time. All of the buildings out there are meant to be advantageous for her – Imperial State Building and Statue of Liberty on her side of the board for big powerups, four Skyscrapers all over the map for teleportation, three Sun Industries buildings mid-map for extra firepower, and a handful of buildings that leave fire hazards (which my monster will not be able to walk through without taking damage) on my side of the board.

This isn’t too bad of a one-way street. Since I’m playing as Armodax, one of my main weapons is Super Stomp, which encourages me to knock down multiple buildings at once, leveling the board. In a way, giving Kate the building advantage evens the field. Or so -TheTheorist- might say (if you don’t find that funny, you aren’t visiting the official boards).

* * *

Two days later, we’re on a plane to St. Louis, from which we’ll drive to Martin, Tennessee and go house-hunting. Kate’s upcoming appointment is at the University of Tennessee branch there, and the salary is high enough (and the cost of living low enough) that we can afford to own a house once again after a year-and-a-half of living on the East Coast. We’d owned a cozy place in Bryan, Texas while in graduate school at Texas A&M University (I’m still at work on my PhD there, in absentia) and really lucked out. We’d had a decent yard, nice neighbors, and a mortgage less than what some of our friends paid for rent in adjoining College Station. A yard is crucial. Between our dogs, Stubby and Apple, and a love of gardening, we just can’t do an apartment. On the plane, in the meantime, I’m reading the airline’s magazine, checking out places I’ll never eat, a writer whose first novel was published in a language he doesn’t speak, and – oh, cool – Kristen Bell likes to play Scrabble. I’m tempted to hand Kate one of the Monsterpocalypse strategy guides I’ve brought along – she promised she’d look at them at some point – but she’s already asleep in her seat. I put on my headphones, start to play the Murder City Devils, and think about the game we played.

* * *

“Stomp gets you P-dice for buildings and units you crush.”

“What are P-dice?”

“The red dice.”

“Then just call them red dice. How about the blue dice?”

“B-dice. And the white ones are action dice [stern look]…but we can just call them white dice.”

“Red dice. Little pinko commie dice. Except that they’re not pink.”

“Why is it that everywhere else in the world red is the color of revolution, but in the US it’s for Republican?”

* * *

This time I go first. I advance some Stealth Apes (and let’s be honest, there is nothing stealthy about a gorilla in an aviator helmet wearing football pads) onto power points, but my main goal is just to move forward so that I can attack her soon. She sets up around the Imperial State Building, as usual.

On my monster turn, I advance Armodax and stomp three buildings. Boom. Like that, I’ve destroyed nearly a quarter of the buildings on the board and acquired six P-dice (sorry, red dice). I feel powerful. I feel manly. I feel a primal thrill. And I am not alone.

Now, Zor-Maxim is not known for being stomp-happy. That’s not his MO. But Kate sees those buildings go down, and she’s just got to get in on the action. She advances, stomps (with better odds than I had), and takes down three buildings and a unit herself. We started the game with sixteen buildings. We’re down to ten.

* * *

We have about twenty houses to look at during our long weekend in Martin. We have to find a way to narrow these down, because subsequent trips would just mean hemorrhaging money.

What do you want in a house? In a Monsterpocalypse city? You want it to be efficient, regardless of size. You want a central place for everyone to come together. You want a power base. You want it to look nice. You want the option of tearing down walls later. You want protection. Maybe you’ve read Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language (or one of the books by Sarah Susanka that falls squarely under its influence). Maybe you’ve read the MonPoc strategy guides (or articles on TC). Maybe you just know what you like. You want something that feels right.

* * *

“This one?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Me too. Can we rest now?”

“Yes.”

* * *

I do a cool move, rampaging up towards her side of the board but only rolling 1 action die (white die! white die!) and one power die (red commie die!), which, by the mechanics of the game, allows me to miss one of her units but still land on two others. It nets me two red dice and leaves me protected on three sides by her units and on a fourth side by a skyscraper, preventing her from getting at me. She moves up and brawls me for a point of damage. I have enough dice saved up to retreat, and I hotfoot it back to a safe position on my side of the board lest she spawn a bunch of units and ping me to death.

And then we get tired. It’s not a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, but it’s been a long, mentally taxing day for both of us. There’s a lot of damage still to be dealt, so we call it a draw, turn on the TV and settle in to watch a few episodes of the TV show we just got through Netflix (The United States of Tara, for those of you who are interested). We got the game started, did something cool, but we’ll wait until next time to play all the way through.

* * *

Things are different in Tennessee. We’ve made an offer on a house. This is a place we could spend the rest of our lives. It just fits us. This is not to say we’re not going to negotiate on price. We want to drive a hard bargain no matter how much we like the place. But we got the game started, we did something cool. We’ll have to wait until the weekend to hear back from the sellers and hopefully finish playing through.

* * *

I’m on the plane going back to New Hampshire. Is this what it feels like to be a monster? At 26,000 feet, the houses barely register. It would be like kicking sand. As we took off – 100 feet, 200 feet – I could see the appeal in smashing buildings. I realize that I’m glad things in Monsterpocalypse aren’t precisely to scale – there’s a minimum size necessary to gain satisfaction from destruction. I’m glad I play Monsterpocalypse. I’m glad there aren’t really monsters, though. Somewhere down there, 26,000 feet below, is home.