Starting the game, it wasn't initially clear to me which army I was playing but as soon as I began to deploy my armies I figured out that I was blue - maybe this should have been clear to me as it was the left most color on a bar of colors in the bottom left corner of the game window. Regardless, I know now. I had the usual 3 armies to deploy and deployment was as simple as clicking on the territory that I wanted to bolster and watching my pile of guys in the lower left corner deplete until they were all on the board.
Attacking is achieved by clicking the territory I want to attack from and then clicking on the neighbouring territory that I wanted to invade. Fortification is achieved in much the same way, click on an army and then on a neighbouring territory that you own and the requested number of armies move to protect the new territory as designated.
So, how did the game go? I was playing on the classic Risk map and had an initial cache of guys near enough to Australia so thats where I headed. Black quickly took over Africa and then South America by the time I held Australia. Green had taken Europe. I was buffered from them by the thinly spread Pink army. I proceeded to hold and fortify Australia against my stronger adversaries, hoping they would weaken themselves against each other before turning my way.
Pink turned in cards just ahead of me and blew away Siam before stalling out on my doorstep. My cards maxxed out on my next turn and I was able to use the additional armies to reinforce the smaller army that I had moved out to China and turn force back to retake Siam. This was going to be a little harder than I thought! Next turn Green decided to head my way, chewing up some of their resources by moving through the Pink army. Not as much of a threat as they had been as their extra 5 armies a turn had been taken away by Black on her card turn. Pink was rapidly deteriorating and my initial plan of whittling away on Pink while Black and Green wore each other out seemed to require a little fine tuning. And now for my first gripe about the game. When I take over another territory then I have to click for each army that I have to place when I take over a territory and have 100 armies left this means a lot of clicking. However, a quick consult of the online help tells me that there are multiple speed ups for placing five, ten, fifty or even all of my armies at once (right mouse button, natch).
At this point in the game black are the clear board leader holding Europe, Africa and South America. Green and Orange are weak and squabbling in North America so I take a chance and punch through Scandanavia, Central Europe and North Africa to Peru. Blacks continent earnings will be crippled for a turn but I have left myself thin and with too many armies in Kamchatka on the Russia/North America border which I don't really need to be defending. I fortify back to North Africa and hope for the best. Fortune smiles upon me as Black only takes back Africa and I catch a wild card for a turn deployment of 31 armies. I place'em all in Afghanistan with the intention of wiping out a last pocket of Green in the Middle East to temporarily hold Asia while pushing on to create havoc in Africa and going on a bit of a land grab. Gaining Asia gets me a text message that Asia is worth 14 and I pause try to hold the big continent with my remaining 28 armies or push into Africa to cause more havoc and land grabbing? At this point I would like to take a screenshot to show my humble reader the whole picture and, sure enough, under Board is an option to take a screenshot - neato!
I stop and fortify into Scandinavia to see if I can't hold it all!
At this point I also make a little stumble and fortify too heavily in Scandanavia. An interesting variation on standard Risk lets me redeploy from multiple positions. Black decides to not attack my Asia and the game is basically over, I take a couple of turns to wear away his strongholds and then scoop Africa, South America and Europe. New games start with different redeployments so even this map has proven challenging and beaten me in subsequent games. It's a very good game of Risk and I look forward to delving into all of the maps, online play and even the user created AI's that may address a few weaknesses that I saw in the above described game. As an added bonus, Sillysoft also hold periodical Lux tournaments - you can bet I'll be signing up for the next one! Get Lux by clicking here and, as an added bonus, get a free copy of the full version of Battle Castles (ad. edition)!
