So yesterday the aspies group had a games-night meetup. Now just why somebody who doesn’t believe ADHD or Aspergers exist and deems it to be a form of propaganda invented to make those with exceptional abilities feel ill and turn perfectly common variations in personality into diseases that can be medicated, in particular those personality traits that promote a dislike for authority and creative, independent thought (things that the average teacher can’t cope with)… well why do I go to aspies support group meetings then ?
Well because even though I don’t think any of them have a disease, I do know that I get along wonderfully well with them. They are people like me, we click. We’re the same. Some will say that means I am probably aspergers myself… but over my dead body will I ever put another psychiatric drug in my body – that lesson was learned through extreme suffering, and I refuse to believe that the basic, fundamental defining attributes of who I am – is some kind of disease. I have no problem coping with the world, none of them do – it’s the world that has trouble coping with us, and the answer to that is so simple as to be frighteningly obvious. Realize that if the world has a problem with you – it’s the world that has the problem, not you. Those who will not accept you as you are, aren’t worthy of your thoughts. Or to put it even simpler: there is no problem with any of us that can’t be resolved quite adequately by a nice big dosage of self-respect and a swollen ego – it takes some effort to undo the years of self-image-destroying conditioning that we aren’t good enough for the world… and realize it’s the other way around – but it’s such a liberating realization.
So these are people I love to hang out with – and since this particular support group is non-therapeutic and more of a social club for people whose social lives are otherwise rather empty, a monthly meeting to hang out, chill out and have fun with likeminded people – I love going there and try to make it every month.
So anyway, last night was a board-games night – and my first introduction to risk. What an awesome game. Best board game I have ever played. Of course, my liking of it could have gained by the fact that after nearly 12 hours of playing… ultimately, I owned the entire board, I guess it seriously appealed to my evil-genius side and proved that when I launch my attack to take over the world, I’ll probably win 
My first round I made a very big mistake, I scattered my forces way too thin, within two rounds I realized the value of consolidating them, chose my strongest region and happily abandoned the others to focus on building up that region. I was the last to own a continent (I took Europe), but then within three rounds of acquiring it, I took over about 80% of Asia – and didn’t leave any teritory, not even the central, defended ones with less than three armies in it. The result was that I had an almost impregnable stronghold there, nobody attacked the parts of Asia I controlled again until the very endgame, it was just too impossible, even with a large army you would run into one strongly defended territory after another.
The game has a very large human element to it, with alliances and deals made between players, and then ended and broken as it makes sense. A lot of my victory came from smart alliances… I had a habit of allying with the underdogs, and using them to keep the strong players occupied so I could continue my mass consolidation of forces on two adjacent stretches of land. In the second phase of the game Camera_Obscura took a similar path, beginning a huge consolidation of forces into Africa, while Whizper2me owned most of North America – but lacked manpower. I made a deal with anib giving her free passage through the far-side of Asia to get to North America in exchange for letting me take over Australia which she had held until then – while she got herself out of my way and got to survive (a confrontation with me would have wiped her out). When she reached into the Americas with most of her forces, I took the rest of Asia and the entirety of Australia in a single round.
Finally Camera_Obscura struck out, attacking me in both Asia and Europe – the immediate message was clear, we couldn’t predict a clear winner and as we were so evenly matched we had to make a deal – if we’d fought it out, whoever won would have suffered such losses as to be an absolute pushover for the other players.. He left Asia alone in exchange for me abandoning Europe (which included my first sortie into North America via Greenland). Meanwhile Whizper2me trapped Anib into South America and she was taken out less than two rounds later. Now Whizper2Me however faced a direct problem defending against both me and Camera_Obscura and I made my coup-de-grass, I allied with her. I put my biggest card-set yet almost entirely into Greenland and the Middle-East, then I struck a massive attack right on Camera_Obscura’s strongest territory, with enough numbers to take it over, I knew I couldnt’ hold it, but I didn’t need to – I just needed to weaken him, and break his continental hold. Another attack launched from Greenland took Iceland and broke the European continent. Whizper2me in return for my direct assault on Africa left me North America and wiped him out in South America (she had lots of manpower but a serious shortage of territory)- and then hammered him in North Africa, leaving them both very weakened. Then I had a card-set, which I placed just right, in one round I finished the remainder of his forces, playing him off the board, and then took her weakened forces out as well.. it was perfect.
The sweet bit is … ultimately the reason it all worked was the alliance with Whizper2Me – while I had a massive lead on both of them – if they had ganged up on me, I could not have fought them together, but I only had to use a small subset of my forces to really hurt him – and with her immediately exploiting the advantage created, we could take him to all but destruction – but she had to really weaken herself to do it, when my turn came round again, and I had a card-set to boot – there was simply no enemy left who could stop my continuous onslaught of forces.
For most of the game, everybody was giving everybody else strategic advice on every round, I think the turning point was when I decided I understood the mechanics well enough – and ignored everybody’s advice. I took nearly all of Asia when I was ready despite protests that I could never pull it off, by then – I knew exactly what my goals were and in time I achieved them all – despite the occasional setbacks – which is why I was in the final-three endgame, where ultimately, the right alliance at the right time left the world open for conquest by an unstoppable force.
If you like strategy games but find them to lack some depth, miss some of the real politics, betrayal and human elements that is as much part of real-world political strategy as military activities… well Risk is a game I would heartily recommend – I definitely want to play again – even if it does take hours or even days to finish a game.
PS. If I sound like I’m boasting, well I am a little, I had a very bad start, and recovered and managed to really get the game – and formulate an ultimately winning strategy the first time I played (against much more experienced players) so I’m proud of this, and would love to see just how far I can take it.
