Sunday, November 09, 2008

Roy Conquers The World!








Roy taught me how to play Risk today. As you can tell from the title of the post, he won. By a lot. No mercy at all. His little gold men ruled and they ganged up on my little red guys and he plucked them off, one by one, methodically and brutally. I thought I owned America, but it didn't matter. He took my home base of Indonesia, held his own Madagascar ever so dear, and trounced the rest of us with competitive zeal.

So you know a little about us from reading Shrink Rap and playing Risk proved to be as a good a way as any to study personality. Roy has wondered if he has ADD. He doesn't. I'm a bit obsessive: I spent the game lining up the little soldiers who weren't in play. First they were arranged in rows, then in a straight line, finally, with a bit of agitation, they stood in a disheartened clump. Roy was cautious and concerned with a big picture, but his little soldier guys were lying around everywhere. I let his ones in waiting just lie there-- the ones in play I had to stand up and arrange within the borders of their territories. Roy was meticulous with his planning and strategy. I just wanted to attack any where I could. My real life demands some attention to detail, I wasn't investing any of it in a board game. Here was my chance to let loose. Our third player, like Roy, took the game pretty seriously and really wanted to understand it (I just wanted to play, who cares about the rules?) and spent a fair amount of time contemplating the next move. "Processing information" was what I was told when I asked how spending all this time helped anything. And then I wondered why I got laid out in the dust with those little soldiers. And to think, I thought I could expand into Canada.

5 comments:

Rach said...

When I was hospitalized a number of years ago there were a bunch of patients with acute psychosis playing risk... which ended up being quite violent.

Anonymous said...

This brings back fond memories of my one and only trip to the US a while back. I played (and beat) a bunch of Americans on a weekend in West Virginia. I let them have the Western and Eastern US though - when you're conquering the world you don't need everything ;-) My OCD traits would come out big time here!

Anonymous said...

Ugh. My dad used to want to play Risk all the time (because he usually won). My strategy was always to lose as quickly as possible, without calling anyone's attention to my plan.

Dad is neither a gracious winner nor loser, but was generally easier to get along with after a win. Therefore, my strategy was a good one; little soldiers and conquered continents be damned.

Midwife with a Knife said...

Risk... that's totally a blast from the past. I have lost days (years?) to many games of risk with my brothers. :) It's a great game!

(Keeping Indonesia is the key. She who controls Indonesia can rule the world)

Roy said...

Indonesia is a good tip. Also, Ukraine. Protecting that instead of Afghanistan and Ural to hold Asia. Ukraine's at the eastern edge of Europe which you can control instead of controlling the two adjacent western-most Asian territories, thus only needing to put armies in 1 territory, not 2 (that's if you are trying to keep Asia).

Something weird on this map (40th Anniversary edition)... Africa has only TWO entry points needing fortification. The map I grew up on had three entry points, which always made Africa a tougher continent to hold. Two makes it just right. When did that change?

When I was in high school, I wrote a TurboPascal program (remember Borland?) incorporating my logic to playing Risk, so that one could play a decent and not-too-predictable game against the computer. I never finished the graphics for the program, but it was a solid effort. Those were the good-old geek days. Now, blogs and podcasts and html are so mainstream.

I would never have Risk on an inpt unit... that's a set-up for conflict.