Risk Reward

Hey guys! It’s been awhile since I have posted and a ton of things have happened. (Note to Ron: This is not an apology!! :P) The most significant change in my life has been moving my mother-in-law in with us. I converted our barely used dining room to my new office (FYI, the family room functions as a dining room), and the old office is my in-laws room now. She has Alzheimer's. It was my suggestion to move her in as the previous situation was just not working. I am now a stay at home care giver *and* dad. At times it is an easy job, at times it is tough. But we are holding strong.

On to lighter news, my Dark Heresy campaign is plodding along at about 1 session a month (the best my group can manage), but I am having a blast!! We are planning to start our next session earlier than usual (by about 2 hours) and to drink less beer (so the last 2 hours is productive!!). We have also added a new player to the mix and I will showcase the work I did on the miniature in a later post.

My 1980 version of Risk with Roman Numeral pieces
(Image taken from BoardGameGeek.com without permission)

The other day, my son and I played his first game of Risk. He is 8 and has ADHD, but did really well for his first game. However, about 3/4's the way through the game, my son looked at me and said "Daddy, I am a boy who plays with soldiers, not a boy who plays with clock numbers." I about fell out of my chair laughing. We finished up the game and I spent the next two weeks researching how I could supply soldiers to my version of risk.

After spending most of my time pouring through what boardgamegeek.com had to offer, I decided to get the pieces from the 1993 version of Risk, and the entire 2008 version of Risk for the new rules and components.

Pieces from the 1993 version of Risk
(Image taken from BoardGameGeek.com without permission)

Pieces from the 2008 version of Risk
(Image taken from BoardGameGeek.com without permission)

The 2008 "revised" version adds major and minor objectives, along with cities and capitals, plus rewards for completing objectives. It has also balanced the reinforcements rules. The only real "down side" is that the armies are simply arrows!?!

After about a week of searching, I found what I was looking for on eBay for a great price. The items arrived, and my son and I have played 2 more games of Risk. However, I found the 1980 2-player rules to be too simplistic, the 1993 version was the same but introduced a neutral ally, and the 2008 version doesn't even have a 2-player option!! Fortunately I was able to download the 2003 version of the rules because it has an extensive active neutral rules set.

I am working on writing up rules essentially blending the ’93 and ’03 2-player variant within the mechanics of the '08 rules set. Once I have it finalized, I will discuss it in a later post. 

My OCD kicked in and I also started working on a new map heavily influenced by the PC game Risk II. When I get further along, I will post it.

Its good to be back in the blogosphere!!