Battle for the world!

With the fact that going out and doing things on weekends tends to cost a pretty penny between eating out and/or going to the movies it can run you in the area of...well a lot.  Our Saturday nights as of the past two weeks have consisted of board games, beer and movies.  The first time we tried this experiment in non money spending fun, the monolithic box with World Of Warcraft sprawled across it was drawn forth from the closet .  It's a pretty fun game if you love WoW, but don't feel like dealing with Barrens chat, kids, WoWHeroes Scores and other various BS that comes from playing it in the internet.

Anyway a few weekends ago I picked up Risk which I haven't played in YEARS.  It was the bookshelf edition so it was really old school with wooden pieces and everything.  Now if you have played Risk before you probably know the rules, if not heres a quick cliff noted version of it.  You pick your country, place some armies in zones indicated by cards and then the battle begins.  Each round depending on how many countries you own, you can place a certain amount of armies.  If you want to take over someone else's country, you have to go into combat against them.  Based on how many armies you have, you can roll 1, 2 or 3 dice against the defender. You then match the highest die of the attacker to the highest die of the defender, whoever is higher, wins and knocks out an army.  IE if I roll two die (3,1) and G rolls one die (2) I would win, but if he were to roll a three as well, the defender always wins a tie.  Each time you capture a country you get to pick up these cards that have either a cannon, solider or guy on horseback.  Match a combination of sorts with those cards (indicated in the rule book) and each time its your turn you get X amount of more armies to place on the board.  The more armies you have, the more die you roll, the better chance you have at crushing your opponents!  Now yes, I needed to explain the rules somewhat quickly because they become the backbone of our story.  Our players battling for control of the world on that night would be me(Black), my girlfriend(S - Purple), my roommate(G - Blue) and our friend(R - Green) (who I will refer to by the letter after just so I don't use names for now but)  We each picked our respective colors, cards were dealt and our armies were sent marching to their battle zones.  I was to the left of G which meant I started and went right for the throat. War had begun.

To war!

So with the rules now in play, the troops given their marching orders and the generals ready to die in a blaze of glory, we fought.  The first couple rounds were slow.  Small skirmishes taking place in Africa and South America led to early victories by myself and G.  The battle raged on and after the first hour G's blue warriors,   had conquered the America's as well as parts of Great Britian and forced out the combatants of S and R.  S was losing the battle quick having a few small groups to the North in Europe, most of her original troops dead in on the plains of Africa.  R had built a stronghold within the Asia countries and sat watching from the East as everyone else faltered under the Blue Regime.  With my grip tight around Africa and Europe I bolstered my forces and waiting for the on coming storm that G was ready to send across the Atlantic.

The Blue Wave of Death

The next few battles to take place raged for hours, days even (not really more like a few rolls but hey I'm trying to build atmosphere here...)  as I was pitted against The Blue Regime.  When G would roll against R or S, 75% of the time it was a no contest that he would win, until he faced me.  I held steadfast dealing impactful blows to G's army left and right.  I was the opposition, I was the immovable object.  G would march in with 6-7 armies against my small huddle of troops, and one by one, roll by roll, he would fall.  But as Optimus Prime once said "One shall stand, One shall fall."  and my time had come to fall.

  

The first to fall.

With each county G took over, he would be constantly picking up cards, and constantly putting down sets of three ever increasing the size of his army to insane amounts.  Now that I was out of the game, I figured I would lend a small hand and be advisor to the Blue Regime.  I helped G rearrange his armies fitting to take over the world.  We moved troops fast out of the Americas for there was no opposition seeing as G was moving west to east gouging chunks out of everything he could.  Armies were put into more strategic points in an effort to better conquer the last remaining vestiges of fighters.  The home stretch was here, it was time to decimate the weak.

CRUSH THEM ALL!

The time had come to deliver the final blows.  TBR would strike first to the green armies of R, dealing heaving damage quick and silently moving closer to the East.  It was at this point that G would come into his final set of three matching cards, now giving him a total of 25 EXTRA armies per turn, on top of the armies he got for each county he had control over.  He ran out of armies and soon representing 20 armies would be a candy corn, and candy corn pumpkin for 30 armies.  It was insane how many troops he had in battle at this point.  Battle was fought sparingly for the next few rounds, but not wanting to take any POW's G and The Blue Regime finished off every last bit of the other armies for a clean sweep.  At one moments in the last wee hours of battle G attacked the green army and with much EPIC FAIL, rolled three 1's against R's one 1.

Critical failure FTW

All in all the game was a blast.  We had a lot of fun playing.  Overall game lasted about 2-2 1/2 hours I would say which is pretty short for a Risk game.  G and I will be starting our own 2-player game in the coming weeks, and with a new army at my side, I have a good feeling that The Blue Regime will not last long...

To war!
-Nerdsbeware out!