Fighting to the Death

I'd never played Risk before last Sunday. My brothers asked for (and received) the "2210" version a couple of Christmases ago but I never participated when they played because I wasn't particularly interested in board games that take hours. Also, it's a four-player game and the other participants were usually my two younger cousins, which would have rendered me de trop. However, last Sunday I witnessed my first game of Risk and found it sufficiently interesting to warrant playing when the opportunity presented itself over the course of the following week. Including the game that I watched on Sunday, there were three games, all of which were the Lord of the Rings version of Risk. This simultaneously makes it more fun and more emotionally traumatic. When playing I pretty much just wanted to maintain a peaceful existence and protect the Shire, which is not the point of the game.

Having awakened my latent Risk-play abilities (if not abilities, then perhaps interest), upon my return home on Monday I proposed to my brothers that they dust off their Risk set so that we could play. We did but we had to stop partway through because things got somewhat heated, so we gave it a rest and finished tonight. Eric (my youngest brother) wound up with total global domination. It was pretty obvious partway through tonight's session that that would be the end result but I refused to concede defeat and fought to the death. My last turn saw me start with only one territory (Japan) that was occupied by one valiant troop. I managed to use my three reinforcements to take two more territories but it was all over by the end of Eric's next turn.

The Risk 2210 game board is kind of interesting in that it represents the game designer's idea of what the world will look like in 200 years. It's obviously been simplified in order for there to be territories big enough to keep gamepieces on as well. Interesting geopolitical quirks include the existence of the "Exiled States of America," which are in the vicinity of Greenland.

Risk can be tied into the mathematical nature of this blog by the importance of probability in gameplay, with the rolling of dice. I like to defend using only one die because I find it really unpleasant to lose two troop pieces on one roll but it was pointed out to me that probability is more in my favour if I defend using two. My problem in a lot of strategy-type games is that I tend to let my feelings and whatnot get in the way. I also need to practice thinking in the correct patterns more.