Thank you for your kind words.
Yes, definitely well worth the time. Note that we didn't always have the same five players. Fred substituted for Erik in three games of the 15. Two other games of the 15 had only four players. You don't need five, but putting five factions on the board means you get into battles quickly. On those games when we had four players, we were like, where'd all this room come from? :)
It did take from July 2016 to January 2017, so 15 divided by 7 = about 2 games per month. On two occasions we managed to play two games in one evening. All games were during the weekday evenings. Dan's house is centrally located about half hour to 45 minutes, so you can head out on a Tuesday evening for a couple hours of gaming. And this was quite the clever variation -- I mean, we played 15 games. It's that good (and we wargamers are a picky lot).
fear of spoilers left me with quite a few questions…From what I read it still looked pretty much like old style Risk.
Well, since it was an AAR of our campaign, the main spoilers are in there -- labeled to give warning, although if you read that far, you likely read farther. :)
Its basic mechanics are the same. Get armies on 1 army:3 territory ratio (minimum 3), with continental bonus. Attackers roll up to three dice vs defender's up to two dice, defender wins ties. Take a territory from another player and gain a card for later trade in for more armies.
One difference: You start with ALL your armies in one territory (with your HQ). I'm not sure I made that clear in the AAR. You need to leave at least one army when you capture an empty territory.
However, different "powers" (benefits and detriments) specific to a particular faction alter these basic mechanisms. For example, one power allows you to grab a card if you take a city (minor or major) -- the city itself being a variation of basic Risk. Another power allows a free move in the middle of the turn, not at the end.
In addition, mission cards give a VP to the player that completes whatever is on the card -- like take a number of territories, or capture all major cities. You don't have to take over the entire board to end the game, just 4 VPs. We learned that in Game the First.
Event cards switch up things during the game -- the alien bombardment of my city in Brazil being a prime example of derailing my plan. Plagues, extra armies, and so on keep you guessing.
There's a lot more variables, including those we *don't* even know. For example, when each faction received a special power at the set up of game 1, the "power" card actually contained TWO powers -- you picked one, stuck it on the faction card, and tore up the other unused power. So, our 15-game campaign had one set of powers, while an entirely alternate set ended up in the trash. Check the fifth paragraph of the AAR/review -- I brought up that exact question even before we started Game the First.
That means that some other group would have a different experience because of their combination of powers placed on their faction cards.
And when you are done, you have a Risk game that is uniquely yours, rules, board and game narrative.
Precisely, although you need a player who takes photos and writes up the recap the next day. If you don't, you end up with my Game the Seventh description -- pretty much a blank! :)
Overall, I think it's a neat little narrative for us five (six) gamers to re-read sometime in the future. I've been writing up my recaps/AARs/reviews of various miniature games, board games, card games, etc for the last few years (in PDF format, before that it was Word). It's a nice little collection of memories for me, and hopefully offers some evaluation value to others.
has lost everything.
