War Games

Stephen was my best friend for a good number of years. Generally, if I wasn't doing something alone I was doing it with Stephen. Even when doing nothing, often it was with Stephen. But Randy was a big part of our team, too. I always found it interesting that the initials of our last names made up my real initials: B.J.D. And, if we added the initial of Chris's last name it made up my pen name initials: B.B.J.D.

As Steve Martin said in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles": Isn't that something?

I no longer remember who's idea it was, but shortly after graduating from high school the three of us began playing Risk at my apartment. It was probably Randy or myself who came up with the idea. Stephen generally was not the one to purchase strategy games although he would play them. Both Randy and I liked to pit our mental abilities against an opponent, and so the three of us would play monster rounds of Risk. Some of these marathon games would last eight hours - or more. It wasn’t until I had a big “Risk Party” at my apartment in which several of my co-workers came over to play that I realized most people concluded a game of Risk in an hour or so. Personally, I couldn’t see how they could do it and still enjoy the game.

Of course, we changed the rules to make the game more interesting. For one thing, we didn’t much care for the fact that the prize for taking a risk was so small. There should be greater incentives for marching across the world in search of global conquest. And what about all of those oceans? Shouldn’t they come into play? And then there was Stephen’s cu-de-gras: the addition of The Moon.

Because our games would last so long they were a continual see-saw battle of advantage. No one could hold the advantage long before he would be railed on and attacked on all sides by the other two. And with the army deployment only getting larger and larger and larger, that made it much easier for the player who was floundering to get back into the game quickly. And so it went.

Incredibly, I always won. Every time. I didn’t win because my strategy was necessarily any better than Stephen’s or Randy’s. I won because Stephen would usually abandon his strategy on a whim and leave himself too exposed. Randy was just plain unlucky. Also, Stephen liked to pick on Randy, which kept him in check for me. (My suspicion - then and now - is that Stephen ultimately wanted me to win and worked to that end.)

Eventually the board that came with the game got too small for us. I had purchased a second game so we would have enough army tokens to support our campaigns. Once we realized we could “cash in” for two or three hundred armies it was apparent that the rule of “no more than 15 army units on a country” would have to go. So we allowed unlimited armies on each country (but only ten on the moon). This meant the small countries simply weren’t large enough to hold all of the armies. So Stephen utilized his artistic talents and created a larger version of the board on a 3' x 5' piece of plywood.

He added grids in the oceans and a special section to represent the moon. Now we could stretch out and play on the floor (which we had to do anyway as I didn’t have any furniture in my apartment except for a bumper pool table and a box spring and mattress – no bed frame). I wish I still had that board. I don’t recall what happened to it. I suppose it was damaged during a move at some time.

Stephen’s main strategy was to goad Randy and/or I into doing stupid things. He would tempt us with various easy targets to break us out of our established plans. Randy was more susceptible to this than I, which was one reason he was not able to win. But sometimes in his zeal to undo our strategy Stephen would go too far and leave himself too weak. At that point either Randy or I would pounce and he would be out of the game. He and Randy took turns going first. But a one-on-one confrontation suited me better then the other two, and after the first was out the second usually didn’t last long.

I think Stephen knew that I fared better against a single opponent than in having to deal on two fronts. That is why he seldom put Randy out. The only times he did was when he thought he had enough units to win the game. Then he would blitz the world. But his efforts to win in a single move were more motivated by his impatience than in sound strategy. He wasn’t able to calculate in the inevitable loss of some of his own troops when marching across the world. Thus, he would fall short and have nothing left with which to defend himself. In those cases he would sometimes see that he wasn’t going to make it and gather all he had left into a single country to make a last stand. But by then he didn’t have enough troops left to make an effective last stand.

Probably his best tactic was when he would “cash in” and get a hundred or more armies and simply put them all into a single country. Then he would sit and wait. Such a fortified stronghold was impossible for regular army strengths to go up against. And to mass a force strong enough to take it meant leaving the rest of the world unguarded. So he was able to sit and wait. But that eventually worked against him as Randy and I would be slowing gathering army strength through attacking and defeating each other here and there. When the time was right, one of us would suddenly have the army strength to deal with Stephen’s fortification.

The addition of the ocean made it possible for us to make a couple of more rule changes which resulted in one of the two memorable games we played. Our rule about the ocean was that a player could take his armies out onto the ocean. That would be a turn. Or a player could attack an adjoining country from the ocean and “land”. That would be a turn. Or a player could simply “land” on already owned territory. That would be a turn. Or, for armies already on the ocean at the start of a turn, armies could move one grid space for each army in the force up to ten spaces. This allowed the back door attacking of naturally fortified places such as Australia and Argentina.

There was one other rule change which came about because of the oceans. We removed the restriction on having to leave at least one army unit in a country. Now, a country could simply be vacated. That meant it was free for the taking to anyone who moved in. But it also meant that one didn’t have to leave army units to be sacrificed when another player made their move to conquer a larger portion of the world. This made Stephen’s most memorable game possible.

It was one of those games in which he simply could not find a working strategy. He had begun the game with no real plan in mind and the dice and the strategies of Randy and myself just didn’t give him much of an opportunity to come up with anything good. And so he was getting beat up pretty badly. I had ousted him from Asia and Africa and Randy had forced him out of Europe and North America. This left him with most of South America (Randy was already moving in for the kill), but nothing else. And with Randy positioning himself to come down and sweep Stephen away, Stephen knew he was about to exit the game early. (We did have occasional games when things just came together and we were able to finish in less than three hours, but those games were rare.)

But Randy had left the coastlines of North America undefended. He had mustered his strength and come down in force to Central America and Venezuela. He had forces up in Alaska and scattered throughout Europe to protect the land bridges, but he had forgotten about the ocean. Randy had a hard time dealing with the oceans. Stephen probably used it the best. I only used it on occasion as my strategy usually didn’t require it.

Well, Stephen looked over the map and saw that my coastlines were well defended. I always kept them defended once the ocean came into play because Stephen was always taking his armies out on the ocean and attacking weakly defended coastal countries. He also saw that Randy’s coastlines were weak. So Stephen abandoned South America. He took all of his army units and created a single force on the ocean with the obvious intent of taking the entire western coast of North America. Randy was going to have to scramble.

The rules still favored Randy. Stephen was only able to launch his armies to the ocean, which ended his turn. This gave Randy a turn to deploy his forces and protect himself. It also gave me a chance to jump on an opportunity. As I indicated, I usually kept a fair amount of army unites along the coastline to protect myself from a sea attack. And as I had already taken Africa I had armies along the coast of Africa to protect myself from Stephen in South America. So when Stephen jumped into Pacific Ocean to go north and land in Randy’s territory, I jumped into the Atlantic Ocean to cross and take South America.

Stephen’s plan was a nice idea, but things were not going well. Randy was able to continue south with his main force and take most of South America. I was able to land and take Brazil to protect the natural bridge to Africa. Meanwhile, Randy had enough troops near his coastline to deploy a reasonable defense against Stephen’s armada. Stephen had enough units to land and take a couple of countries, but his nerve was failing him and he turned west in order to cross the pacific and land in Australia or perhaps the eastern coast of Asia.

I was already in Australia with a good-sized force which I was able to strengthen by cashing in some cards. Randy already owned a good share of Asia, particularly the eastern coast, and he also was able to fortify. So now Steve had to cross back to North and South America to try and land. But now Randy and I had strengthened our positions and it was no longer clear if Stephen would be able to land. So he was left to wander around on the oceans looking for an opportunity to land which never came.

Now the rule of abandonment which I have not mentioned was that you had to own at least one country to remain in the game. You were free to abandon this country and go out onto the ocean, but you only had three turns to find a place to land and make a foothold of some kind. So Stephen had no choice but to pick a place and attack. To my fortune he chose Randy in North America.

The reason it was my fortune was that Randy was actually winning at the time. He had all of Europe and all of North America and good portion of Asia and South America. I had all of Indonesia (including Australia) and all of Africa, a few countries in Asia and just Brazil in South America. But it was clear that Stephen was going to attack Randy in North America (aside from his verbal assurances of this it only made sense given that he only had one turn to decide), so Randy was moving all of his forces to North America to retake whatever Stephen would win from him.

Stephen’s ocean force was fairly good-sized. He had split it into two armadas and attacked North America on two fronts. He decimated Randy’s forces in Western United States, but in the end he lost and Randy held his country – albeit with only a couple of units remaining. He also attacked in Alaska, again reducing Randy’s forces to just a couple of units. But again, he was not able to land his forces and was out of the game.

But between Randy’s removing strength away from my fronts and Steve decimating his forces in North America I was in a good position to made serious damage to Randy’s position as frontrunner and I made the best of it. The game did not last long after that and we were able to begin another in which Stephen fared better.

Don't play Risk much anymore. Tried to with Spouse's family, but that's no fun at all. They all become a coalition in which I am the enemy. They have the attitude that if any of them win they all won. That's the way they play all games, so I no longer play any when we visit.

I still have a few versions of Risk: the Original and Lord of the Rings. But we don't play them much. Spouse is horrendous, and while Son puts together some good strategy, when things don't go his way I feel horrible crushing his armies. So we don't play them much.

It's the way real war should be played: using small pieces of plastic and some cubed dice. And when the war is over everything returns to the way it was so it can be fought again on another day. Life's not like that. Pity.

I think Stephen, Randy and I had the best way.