Lord of the Risk

So much for world domination...

Last night I played Lord of the Rings: Risk with DH and DsD. LotRisk is a variant of the normal Risk (obviously), with a different map, special cards, and a few extra things. There are leaders, which give a +1 to the highest die roll on either attack or defense, and strongholds, which give a +1 to the highest die roll on defense. The special cards can allow special things to happen - extra armies on attack (or defense), steal some of your opponent's armies, get bonuses to attack or defense. There are 'good' and 'evil' players, even if it's a free-for-all, and some of the territories (for instance, most of Gondor) are given at the beginning of the game to one side or the other.

And then there's the One Ring, which moves along a predefined path until arriving at Mt. Doom for destruction. This puts a time limit on the game, and for a couple of the variants allows for alternate victory conditions. For example, if the Ring is destroyed and you're playing the team "Good vs. Evil" variant, Good wins even if they only have a handful of territories. And some of the special cards affect the progression of the Ring.

Anyway, it's a lot of fun...even if I am not all that good a player. DsD and I were the two 'evil' players - in a 3-player game there is one 'good' player and two 'evil'. So DH, being 'good' started with all the Good territories. Fortunately not all of Gondor is automatically good - Ithilien, South Ithilien, and Druwaith Iawr are neutrals and could end up with any player. Unfortunately DH ended up with all three of those, so he started the game with all of Gondor....which is 7 extra armies.

I actually had the first turn of the game, and expended most of my reinforcement armies to take away one of the Gondor provinces - can't have him starting *his* turn with those 7 armies, now can we precioussss? In the short term, that was probably a good tactical move. The bad tactical move, and the one that likely resulted in my being eliminated first, was that during deployment DsD and I had both dumped lots of armies into our territories in Mordor - so when I had an opportunity to eliminate her hold in Mordor thanks to turning in a set for 10 extra armies, and a special card that removed her stronghold bonus, I seriously weakened myself trying to take her out. Which left both of us so weak in Mordor that DH was able to come in and mop up.

I should have just put those armies in Mirkwood and built a stronger power base in the north..