Risk Is Off

Beginning of Day 2:

Me – 18 territories, control of Africa, South America, Australia

Reagan – 14 territories, control of Asia

Jenny – 10 territories, strongest position in Europe

• We open with my turn.  I drive up through Alaska and into Kamchatka, breaking Reagan’s hold on Asia.  “What happened to Rasia?” she laments.  Daddy happened is what.
• Jenny attacks in North America, despite having no strategic reason to do so.  She is stretched thinly there by the end of her turn.
• Reagan attacks in Kamchatka and is repelled.
• On my turn, I roll up Jenny’s overextended armies in North America, reducing her to a lone holding in Eastern U.S.  I attack her there three times at the cost of six armies.  I wonder aloud if this is my Stalingrad.  It isn’t.
• Jenny continues to ignore the obvious strategic imperative to consolidate Europe and tries to revenge herself against me in North America.  She fails.
• Reagan slogs away in Kamchatka.
• I complete the destruction of Jenny in North America and become master of the Western and Southern Hemispheres.  My empire is like a giant Pac-man preparing to chop down on Europe and Asia.  Let’s say Ms. Pac-man, because she’s more bad-ass.
• Too late, Jenny discovers prudence and does not hurl her newly recruited armies against unassailable positions.  She has only six territories remaining.
• Before Reagan’s turn, I gamely suggest Jenny agree to indissoluble political union with her sister, creating a Eurasian Empire to rival my own Ms. Pac-Land.  Much like the Reynaud government in 1940, she refuses.  Reagan invades Africa from the Middle East.  She is repulsed, but my losses are considerable.  Reagan is proving that she is a capable general.
• On my turn, I gobble up Scandinavia and then send wave after wave of human fodder into Ural, to no avail.  It’s the gold armies that fail me.  My black armies are consistently better performers; it’s like the black troops are my German regulars and the golds are the Italians.  “I’m never sending any gold guys into Earl again!” I shout.  “What about black guys?” Reagan asks.  “Oh, Earl’s going to be full of black guys; just you wait.”  A turn later, Earl goes black.
• Jenny takes a shot at North Africa for no reason whatsoever.  She loses four armies and now we are all tired.  We extend the game to a third day.

Beginning of Day 3:

Me – 28 territories, control of Africa, South America, Australia, North America

Reagan – 10 territories, all in Asia

Jenny – 4 territories, all in Europe

• Jenny declares that she goes first on the third day, which I point out is a load of crap since she went last on Day Two.  She presses this indefensible position with the same misdirected courage she has shown throughout our game.  She grumpily hands the dice to Reagan.
• Reagan attacks Earl once again.  Amazingly, she clears out 10 armies over the course of six rolls.  Jenny, impressed but also bored, turns over her European holdings and command of her remaining forces to Reagan.  She goes upstairs to re-watch Smallville.
• Reagan’s new empire now stretches across most of Asia and a large portion of Europe.  She holds 15 territories, up from 10 at the beginning of the day.  But all she cares about is that she gets Jenny’s armies, and so she gets to play with four colors instead of two.
• I load up on goldies in Australia and land troops in Siam.  I clear it and wipe out Reagan’s armies in China as well.  I take Iceland and fortify.
• Reagan annihilates an eight-army garrison in China.  She is better than I am, especially when she’s fighting goldies, but the numbers are beginning to tell.  I’m adding more than 20 armies every turn and they’re all massing in southern Asia and along the perimeter of Europe.  Reagan has also declared that she’s no longer going to fortify at the end of her turn because “fortifying’s stupid.”
• Now I am focused on my ancestral homeland, Europe.  My attempts to break German resistance with repeated assaults across the Rhine from France end in failure.  Reagan is able to replenish the armies she loses, but only just.  Eventually, I make like Gustavus Adolphus and invade Germany from the north.  It takes three more turns, but Europe falls.
• Reagan continues to fight bravely, sometimes attacking one against twenty.  I am pressing her from the west and from the south.  I retake China and Reagan is unable to recapture any further losses.  She refuses to yield, but soon I have driven her back to her last redoubt on the islands of Japan.  She holds out there for two turns, and then it is over.

What does it all mean?  I draw two conclusions about the girls: first, they are both devotees of l’offensive à outrance, and Maréchal Foch would have been as proud as I am; and second, while they cannot be united by need or opportunity, they will come together if one or the other of them is bored enough.