Blog 2: Electric Blogaloo

Last Wednesday I played Risk for the first time in about a decade. It went considerably better this time than it did last time: this time I actually comprehended the rules [sort of] and could form rudimentary strategies [sort of].

Risk is a turn-based board game/world domination simulator in which you roll dice and draw cards in order to take over the whole board with your little colored game pieces. I couldn't tell you how the card-drawing part works because I did not get that far in the game, but the dice-rolling thing worked well enough.

The board is a very disproportional map of the world with territories mapped out. These territories are then divided up between the players thru some card-dealing process [doesn't matter exactly how, mainly cause I don't remember]. When all the territories were doled out, I ended up with all but one of the territories in Australia.

For quite a while I focused all my attention on getting that last eastern territory so that I could have the entire continent to myself, but then I realized that this was Australia I was fighting for. Sure it looks like a fun place to take a vacation, but not a place that I'd want to occupy for an extended period of time. Do you know about all the tiny animals that can kill you in excruciating ways? No thanks!

Upon realizing this, I cut my loses and focused on expanding my armies in North America. After about two turns, time was up and no one had accomplished anything close to world domination. Not even continent domination.

I can [sort of] see how this game could be considered fun as it incorporates both strategy and chance and it lets you simulate world domination, but there were about fifteen things you needed to do before you even begin playing [none of which I committed to memory] and it didn't help that they were printed on the booklet the size of a postage stamp.

To make this game better I'd like to revert back to my old rules of playing Risk. The rules were simpler but held one major restriction: it could only be played on sunny days, ideally during the summer. The only things you needed were the Risk army pieces, magnifying glass, and the sun. No need for any stupid dice, or cards, or even a board!

Turns out the same thing could be done with regular plastic army men, and for about the fraction of a price, but hey -- nothing ventured, nothing gained.