Risking it for world domination rant....

"All images have been kindly donated by T. Weaver for the purposes of illustration. You can find all of them here for better reference and to see his side of the story. http://weaveswonderblog.blogspot.com/"

Some say inspiration can strike at the random moments in time when your brain is practically switched off. This is true, Yesterday when I was brainstorming character concepts with a movie and a jumbo bag of pretzls. Tom called me and asked for a 5 pound donation to the boardgame risk so we could see if the hype that Gamesmaster Rob created about it was true, Needless to say it was 100% true.

So the evening came and we each opened a drink, put some muffins in the oven and eagerly read through the rules, Mistake number 1. NEVER briskly read the instructions on risk. So anyway, We continued to decipher the rules of the game and began choosing areas of the world that we wanted to start in. Matt chose the Scandinavians, Tom (Weaver) chose the South Africans, Tom (Patterson) chose the South Americans, Kelly chose the Japanese and I took command of the good old Aussies. We chose our base location (A homebreed rule of ours) and began to set out for global conquest.

 

"The first steps of war"

At first things went smoothly, Scandinavia calmly expanded into its neighbouring Russia allowing Matt to get an extra troop per turn. Japan calmly moved into it's neighbouring areas quickly occupying a large section of Asia and allowing Kelly to expand her troops faster. South Africa began to conquer the entire of Africa with great speed, A move tom would later regret. I spread my forces throughout Australia allowing greater numbers and a bonus of 2 extra troops per turn. The yanks however, began to grow greedy and took over many of their own continents before rushing to Iceland (Leading to a casual remark from Tom about the Iceland volcano) and threatening to dominate Scandinavia fulfilling half of a mission objective. Soon things got bloody, My island grew populated with soldiers and my only exit was blocked by Kelly and her ruthless Japanese. This meant war....after she had taken the muffins out of the oven of course. With our bellies filled with sugary goodness and beer the combat phases began.

As with most boardgames the result of combat is down to dice rolls. In this case you took your attackers (to a max of 3) and the defenders (to a max of 2) and rolled off. The result would be pairing the dice up from the highest downwards and comparing who wins. This could take many turns if you did not win the previous fight and so on.

Australia continued to get stocked up on troops creating a never ending defence line that allowed me to hold my sanity against the ever expanding yanks and break through the line of Japanese Kelly had stocked up in a valiant effort to conquer me early. It even led to a pitiful alliance attempt by the cowardly South Africans, "Pretty big army you have there Jack." Little did he know that I had my jets overhead ready to drop my paratroopers into the heart of his country. I then realised why he had made this alliance attempt, The yanks had conquered his invading forces and had taken over his base thus decreasing Toms troop conscription per turn by 1 allowing for a faster takeover. In his cowardice he moved into Russia and began to defend himself from both the Japanese and the ever defensive Scandinavians who had now been cut off from their remaining troops and remained at their base in a effort to stop toms plans.

"Domination"

Russia was the main target of everyone now, It was next to a base and held a city, It was also the most accessible point which would prove a good troop spawning ground for global domination. The Aussie hoard had dominated through Asia leading to the Japanese retreating to Russia where they proceeded to defend it better than anyone previously had.

I had dropped my troops into Africa splitting Toms defence line up and causing him to retreat to his final plan of Madagascar. The Scandinavians dropped into Asia allowing them to hold the Yanks off. Tom also had a plan of dropping his troops into the heart of my base, Sadly the parachutes with the giant RAF logo on made good practice for my troops and shot them to ribbons before they smelled the salt of the sea. Good show old boys.

The final conquest came when Rambo landed in Madagascar and defended it valiantly until the yanks finally drove the blues out ending the game for Tom. Scandinavia fell also as Matt finally retreated after losing his troops around the globe creating a last stand for Japan in their home base where the Aussies and Yanks had seemingly made an alliance and destroyed them once and for all, The Aussies Left Russia and took over Asia as a final good will project, ending the game once and for all.

"Money well spent"

As basic as Risk seems, there are so many vital parts of it that no-one takes into consideration. For example, As Tom described in his entry of this. The most obvious choices are never the wise ones. Australia was the least enjoyed country when we picked where but it turned out to be a unstoppable line of defence when the game had gone through turns, Africa was central and the most sought after prize but it lead to constant wars so was not the smartest option in the long run.

I enjoyed risk more as a board game mainly because it lasted for so many many hours, 4 hours of monopoly would normally drive anyone insane but the time flew by when we were conquering the world. If it was a video game I think it would become tedious and straining for players and not create such a longevity.

Thanks for reading, Next blog will be about roleplay games once we have them started.