So a friend got some guys together, and tonight we played a 5-person game of Risk. The dice-rolling one takes with a certain resignedness, but man that game can be a lot of political and psychological fun. I mean when else do you get to be deceiving, manipulative, and outsmart other people when all the facts are right there on the board in front of everyone? All in good fun, of course.

The placement phase happened to land me in South America. Two guys had split their forces between Africa and Australia, one guys was in North America, and the last guy was in North America and Europe. I was already cackling with glee inside the scheming part of my brain. Sure enough, one guy took Africa, and the other took Australia, but both were severely weakened. Making a pact with North America (Thus leaving Europe/NA to fend him off from taking that huge continent, I expanded into Africa and kept those first two guys fighting in Asia, building up my forces and territory. The fight in N.A. didn’t go as I expected: He didn’t manage to take the continent at all, and the Europe guys eventually became the threat as he pushed down through America.

At this point, I underestimated the threat from the one massive (Europe-guy’s) army sitting in N.A. I was clearly in the dominant position at this point, and since Australia had taken out the Asian remnants of the Africa guy, I sent a few armies over to sabotage Australia. I felt I was due to be ganged up upon all too soon, but perhaps in retrospect I should have built up a few more turns. No, I still think people would have united against me from the effect of seeing all those troops.

Anyway, the Europe guy never tried for a continent the whole game, and at that point he made a quite nice spear down through N.A., right through my South America, and into the tip of Africa as well. I managed to regain Africa and take most of Australia, but Australia still had most of Asia at this point. And by “this point”, I now mean the end of the game, as we ran out of time. We looked at the board, and no one had any power advantage that we could see – it was a bloody (plastic) mess. I don’t know if this narrative conveys the experience. But even if the world (and all my plans and schemes) was in chaos, I still felt a little more alive for it.