A classic boardgame. A simple concept. Requires strategy, intellect, and tenacity. At the Ashworth household, Risk is ceremoniously played on New Years. What never fails year after year, is that someone either breaks a piece of furniture, throws the board on the ground, knocks the pieces off the board in one swipe of fury, not to mention all of the screaming, broken alliances and arguments which makes it such a cherished family tradition.
Last night we began a game of Risk around 830 pm. It took an hour and a half to re-read directions and have all the territories manned. (Now granted this was the new and improved RISK game that I begged and convinced my mother that was a necessity, and since we were not accustomed to the strange new rules it took a little longer to set up). Its now 11:00 pm, there are four players: myself, papa ashworth, paige and michael. The attacks finally begin, we place our capitals and I placed my fortress in Kamchatka. Dad always starts in Australia so I didnt really take him seriously.
1:00 am Papa ashworth is tired, so he hands over his legacy to my little brother John. Let me tell you something about my little brother. My little brother is a 17 year old 280 lbs and 6ft 6 inches tall. Not only is he a big guy, but very sensitive. When it comes to playing risk hes the one that’ll through your pieces across the room and then say “NO im NOT playing this stupid game.” Well he usually reacts like that when he is losing. But THIS time…this time, papa ashworth had set him up perfectly all John had to do was control his territories and gain a couple more.
1:30am The fun begins. Now John is set up perfectly, thanks to Dad. He has control over two continents, two enemy capitals, and more than 15 cities. Another thing that comes into play is when John plays RISK, there is no mercy on the board, or on anyone else. He ignores rules and does what he wants. Then the yelling starts when one tries to reason with him. My favorite part is that for some reason he listens to me when I pinkie-swear him and say that I promise not to attack him. Then he is listening to Paige, we are all enemies keep in mind. So after I piss John off with re-negging on the pinkie-swear he is seeing red and retaliates with him infamous dice rolling which knocks everyones pieces off the board.
2:30 am John is winning and then tries to wipe me out of Asia, but that didn’t work out for him too well. In the meantime he control South America, Africa and Australia. Everyone is getting tired at this point it was about 300am. John getting excited breaks his chair. Paige and Michael decide to “let” John win, so they didnt attack him and he gets the third objective to win the game. Preposterous. John is usually the one having a meltdown because he cant ever get close to winning, and what happens? he wins. I think ive lost now for the years, maybe its time to return to Kamchatka and think strategy.
The Seascapechronicles 