Risk at three stages of a man's life
As mentioned in my last post, I am deeply annoyed by Board Game Geek's hostility to the game Risk. I wrote a little review of it, but I wanted to write more, so here it is.
I have enjoyed Risk for twenty-five years, and am saddened to see that it is so unpopular in these parts [Board Game Geek]. This has led me to think over Risk's role in my life over the past quarter-century as I have grown from a boy to a man. I suppose I will have to post a follow up about the time I retire.
I.
As a boy of four, I learnt to play Risk from my grandfather, and occasionally played it with some of my cousins and once or twice my uncle. I rarely won, but considering that I was playing against people ranging from 9 to 59 years my senior, I do not (and did not) feel bad about it.
My grandfather had an old set of the game, presumably purchased in the 1960s when the game was young, with a garish board and wooden cubes to represent armies. I asked for my own set for my fifth birthday, and got one with plastic Roman numerals (and pink pieces replaced by brown ones). Among other things, this helped my learn my Roman numerals (something I have discovered, to my shock, that many young people no longer know how to read). Risk as a whole also taught me about making sets of card and reading dice, both of which gave me a basic introduction to probability that would be useful in learning and playing many later games (and it was sometimes useful in school, as well).
We played Risk with the original rules (which even then were given as an option, not the main way to play) in which each player was dealt an equal number of cards and then put one army on each pictured country. We then went on to play an aggressive game with increasingly large armies sweeping across continents (not, for the most part, huddling up in defensive postures).
We made up our own rules, sometimes, too. Most of them were silly, and probably made for what was technically a worse game (I believe there were rules for machine guns at one point that made the role of luck, already fairly high in such a dice-heavy game, grossly more so), but they were fun for a boy and his grandfather. When my grandfather played with my uncle or my cousins, they sometimes set up three boards side by side (perhaps even five boards, according to legend, but I never saw that) with different rules for getting from one board to another. Nonetheless, as experienced players, they could usually tell who would win a game withing fifteen minutes, and finish a game (assuming the apparent loser did not concede) in 30-45 minutes, then play again (they usually played many series of games, keeping track of wins and losses).
Risk was a fun, fast, family activity, and I miss those days.
As I entered elementary school, my family spent several years moving from place to place, and while I still saw my relatives fairly often, we did not play board games much (preferring card games when several of us were together--we mostly played Risk as a two-person game), and I let my copy sit, rarely used, for a long time.
II.
As a teenager, I began to get back into board games (as well as collectible card games and role-playing games), and returned to Risk while away at Governor's School (a month-long structured summer school/summer camp on a college campus for nerds whose parents wanted them to buff up their resumes). I quickly came to hate it.
A friend at Governor's School either brought his copy with him or bought one on one of our rare excursions from campus, and we played late into the night, usually 4-6 of us at a time. We used the standard rules, I think, with each player beginning the game with many more armies than starting countries, and generally trying to gain control of a particular continent and then defend it until, through small skirmishes, gaining enough cards to make a massive, world-smashing set. Diplomacy and pacts with other players was essential, and breaking agreements was heart-wrenching.
At least to other players.
I won a lot of the time (the second most frequent winner was a fellow who was patient enough for me, or someone else, to nearly win aggressively but overextend himself in the process). Eventually I explained how I beat everyone else: I did not play to win (as they did, carefully building their armies and protecting their continents), but to make everyone else lose (and thus win by default). It was better for me to bust up their continents quickly than to build up my own over the course of hours, until one person finally got the right combination of cards to risk an attack. I did not like making agreements I knew I would have to break, and I eventually broke agreements I did end up making, because there was no choice in a game based on wiping out all the other players' armies. This really angered some of the other players, and eventually stopped our Risk-playing, which was a shame, but probably also saved us many late hours and some friendships.
I played Risk (and playing it with the original rules) with some of my other friends in high school, but it tended to come in behind Axis and Allies (especially once we had some of the variants), Dragon Dice, Dungeons and Dragons, and the old collectible card game Dixie.
III.
As a young man in my twenties, finally come back home from graduate school and with a home and life of my own, I found time to play games casually with my old friends again (time I had not often had in college, and time that was spent, when it was available, on big games that made it worth getting together for a weekend), and Risk became a good choice from time to time.
I do not claim that Risk was, or is, our favourite game, but it is one we can pull out and play quickly, especially if there are only two of us (or if two of us are waiting for more people to arrive). With the original rules, we can easily play in under 45 minutes, and understanding that it is a game of attacking, no-one has his feelings hurt if his colour is destroyed, particularly in a two-player game in which there is no point at all in negotiation.
Once when undertaking a project for my second Master's degree (which I was able to do at home) I had to simulate having a disability for a day, and I chose blindness so I could have a real challenge. To make the most of it, I invited two friends over and I played Risk against them blindfolded (because it has such a static board and simple rules that I thought I could keep up with it in my head). I beat one of my friends and could have beaten his brother, I think, if my memory was just a little better, so I would have caught him slipping a few of my pieces off the board, weakening my armies just enough for me to lose. Still, it was the most fun I'd had in weeks.
IV.
Hopefully in a few years I will have children and will, three or four years after that, begin teaching them Risk. There are certainly better games today, but that does not make Risk a bad game (if it is played right--and others may prefer playing it with the standard modern rules, too: as long as they enjoy it, that is also playing it right), and I think it is a great introduction to gaming, including, as it does, multiple decisions, set-making, dice-rolling, and clear victory conditions.
Now that I have inherited my grandfather's games, Risk also has brightly-coloured wooden blocks, and those of us who have come to love Euro-games all know how much fun those are.
I have enjoyed Risk for twenty-five years, and am saddened to see that it is so unpopular in these parts [Board Game Geek]. This has led me to think over Risk's role in my life over the past quarter-century as I have grown from a boy to a man. I suppose I will have to post a follow up about the time I retire.
I.
As a boy of four, I learnt to play Risk from my grandfather, and occasionally played it with some of my cousins and once or twice my uncle. I rarely won, but considering that I was playing against people ranging from 9 to 59 years my senior, I do not (and did not) feel bad about it.
My grandfather had an old set of the game, presumably purchased in the 1960s when the game was young, with a garish board and wooden cubes to represent armies. I asked for my own set for my fifth birthday, and got one with plastic Roman numerals (and pink pieces replaced by brown ones). Among other things, this helped my learn my Roman numerals (something I have discovered, to my shock, that many young people no longer know how to read). Risk as a whole also taught me about making sets of card and reading dice, both of which gave me a basic introduction to probability that would be useful in learning and playing many later games (and it was sometimes useful in school, as well).
We played Risk with the original rules (which even then were given as an option, not the main way to play) in which each player was dealt an equal number of cards and then put one army on each pictured country. We then went on to play an aggressive game with increasingly large armies sweeping across continents (not, for the most part, huddling up in defensive postures).
We made up our own rules, sometimes, too. Most of them were silly, and probably made for what was technically a worse game (I believe there were rules for machine guns at one point that made the role of luck, already fairly high in such a dice-heavy game, grossly more so), but they were fun for a boy and his grandfather. When my grandfather played with my uncle or my cousins, they sometimes set up three boards side by side (perhaps even five boards, according to legend, but I never saw that) with different rules for getting from one board to another. Nonetheless, as experienced players, they could usually tell who would win a game withing fifteen minutes, and finish a game (assuming the apparent loser did not concede) in 30-45 minutes, then play again (they usually played many series of games, keeping track of wins and losses).
Risk was a fun, fast, family activity, and I miss those days.
As I entered elementary school, my family spent several years moving from place to place, and while I still saw my relatives fairly often, we did not play board games much (preferring card games when several of us were together--we mostly played Risk as a two-person game), and I let my copy sit, rarely used, for a long time.
II.
As a teenager, I began to get back into board games (as well as collectible card games and role-playing games), and returned to Risk while away at Governor's School (a month-long structured summer school/summer camp on a college campus for nerds whose parents wanted them to buff up their resumes). I quickly came to hate it.
A friend at Governor's School either brought his copy with him or bought one on one of our rare excursions from campus, and we played late into the night, usually 4-6 of us at a time. We used the standard rules, I think, with each player beginning the game with many more armies than starting countries, and generally trying to gain control of a particular continent and then defend it until, through small skirmishes, gaining enough cards to make a massive, world-smashing set. Diplomacy and pacts with other players was essential, and breaking agreements was heart-wrenching.
At least to other players.
I won a lot of the time (the second most frequent winner was a fellow who was patient enough for me, or someone else, to nearly win aggressively but overextend himself in the process). Eventually I explained how I beat everyone else: I did not play to win (as they did, carefully building their armies and protecting their continents), but to make everyone else lose (and thus win by default). It was better for me to bust up their continents quickly than to build up my own over the course of hours, until one person finally got the right combination of cards to risk an attack. I did not like making agreements I knew I would have to break, and I eventually broke agreements I did end up making, because there was no choice in a game based on wiping out all the other players' armies. This really angered some of the other players, and eventually stopped our Risk-playing, which was a shame, but probably also saved us many late hours and some friendships.
I played Risk (and playing it with the original rules) with some of my other friends in high school, but it tended to come in behind Axis and Allies (especially once we had some of the variants), Dragon Dice, Dungeons and Dragons, and the old collectible card game Dixie.
III.
As a young man in my twenties, finally come back home from graduate school and with a home and life of my own, I found time to play games casually with my old friends again (time I had not often had in college, and time that was spent, when it was available, on big games that made it worth getting together for a weekend), and Risk became a good choice from time to time.
I do not claim that Risk was, or is, our favourite game, but it is one we can pull out and play quickly, especially if there are only two of us (or if two of us are waiting for more people to arrive). With the original rules, we can easily play in under 45 minutes, and understanding that it is a game of attacking, no-one has his feelings hurt if his colour is destroyed, particularly in a two-player game in which there is no point at all in negotiation.
Once when undertaking a project for my second Master's degree (which I was able to do at home) I had to simulate having a disability for a day, and I chose blindness so I could have a real challenge. To make the most of it, I invited two friends over and I played Risk against them blindfolded (because it has such a static board and simple rules that I thought I could keep up with it in my head). I beat one of my friends and could have beaten his brother, I think, if my memory was just a little better, so I would have caught him slipping a few of my pieces off the board, weakening my armies just enough for me to lose. Still, it was the most fun I'd had in weeks.
IV.
Hopefully in a few years I will have children and will, three or four years after that, begin teaching them Risk. There are certainly better games today, but that does not make Risk a bad game (if it is played right--and others may prefer playing it with the standard modern rules, too: as long as they enjoy it, that is also playing it right), and I think it is a great introduction to gaming, including, as it does, multiple decisions, set-making, dice-rolling, and clear victory conditions.
Now that I have inherited my grandfather's games, Risk also has brightly-coloured wooden blocks, and those of us who have come to love Euro-games all know how much fun those are.