And I soon will. Oh, yes.
In this doldrummy period of nothing-to-do my best friend The Choirboy has arranged another game of Risk this afternoon.
The last time we did this, it resulted in strained friendship and lost sleep. Today, we're aiming for an earlier start - but it's likely to be a very long and bloody and boozy affair that will write off all of today and, quite possibly, a fair bit of tomorrow as well.
My Bengali nemesis will be absent this time, but a number of the finest minds in Beijing (make that Evil Geniuses) will be joining battle, and it should be.... challenging.
But I shall prevail. Oh, yes, I shall prevail. Unless I get too many shitty dice rolls....
5 comments:
Good Luck!
But DIPLOMACY is smuch better. It's not turn-based, so you don't have to wait for idiots to make up their minds, and there is no element of luck (no dice). Perhaps this is not always an advantage: losers cannot blame God for ignominious defeat.
I have a WW1 Prussian apiked helmet which I don when appropriate.
I'd love to see the helmet. Has it appeared in your 'Hats' series on the blog?
I haven't played Diplomacy since I was at college, but I recall its merits.
However, as a feeble pretext for afternoon drinking, the protracted waiting-for-turns and cursing-god-for-bad-die-rolls of Risk is well suited.
I was roundly abused by Fate in a key series of battles, but dug in stubbornly in Australasia. The chap with the Americas built up a massive superiority in forces and was clearly going to roll over us all eventually, but after about 6 or 7 hours, with all the booze gone, we lost the stamina to see it out to a final conclusion.
I don't think I ever saw Diplomacy out to a final conclusion. Or anything else in my life, for that matter.
Sorry, I should have referred to my pickelhaube in the past; it got lost in a move some years ago.
Probably one of the starkest indicators of my socially inept nature: when I finally got the message that no one I knew liked playing Risk more than once or twice, I got into the habit of playing against myself.
In my defense, I didn't do this OFTEN, and haven't done it for many years. (I don't think I even own the game anymore.) It was a phase, like browsing the encyclopedia.
Still, it was an adult phase.
I don't think that's at all an uncommon vice, JES.
During the session on Friday a couple of my friends were expressing relief that a departed American acquaintance of theirs was not around to take part - because he had gone through a lengthy phase (in his undergraduate days?) of playing Risk online almost every day, and had become well-nigh invincible at the game.
I don't think I've ever played Risk solo, but I have played a number of more elaborate war games solo; not for extended periods, though; just a few times, to get the hang of the rules, and test out ideas about optimal strategies.
And then, of course, there's Civilization... ahem.
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