Chinese Domination

Wayne came up with a great idea a few weeks back for a game of risk. But with no Risk board to be found in China, we decided to make our own. The twist was that we'd go native and buy a map of China and break up into groups of provinces and foreign countries into regions like the old dynastic days.


The battlefield


The combatants: Lenny, another foreign teacher from the US, Wayne, John and myself.

For army markers, we creatively used edible products: I used sunflower seeds, John used macaroni, Wayne used watermelon seeds and Lenny used pumpkin seeds.

Some highlights of the game:

1. Before we began the game, John and I formed an alliance and agreed to a non-aggression pact. I would let him take Southeast China: Guangdong, Taiwan, Fujian, Guangxi, etc, while I would take Eastern China and Central China: Shandong, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Hebei, Hubei, etc. This worked well as Lenny and Wayne didnt' really form an alliance and only later out of desperate did Lenny perform suicide missions from Russia and Northeast China to try to break through my advancing forces from the south.

2. An epic battle of the Bohai Sea: my Shandong naval battlegroup was attacked by Lenny's navy and marines from Liaoning (province Dalian is in). I was outnumbered by about 25 to 20 armies but I slaughtered Lenny's invading troops.

3. Post match debate between Wayne and John/myself on why Risk is not a game of skill (sounds like Wayne is a bit of a sore loser eh?) but a game of luck because of the rolling dice aspect of the game. Wayne's quote of the night: "It is the best compliment to me that I'm bad at this game because it is a game of luck. I excel at games of skill (he's a good chess player). Checkers requires more skill than risk!" What the hell!?!

The game worked very well but we have to tweak the rules a bit; Wayne made it too easy to amass huge numbers of troops and once the game got going this just kept snowballing: John and I were getting somtimes more than 20 armies per turn because of vast territories and regions under our control. At the end of our game, John was in the best position to win the game but I could have given a run for his money but we stopped because we were all tired.

Honestly, I was planning to pull a surprise "Hitler move" and break my non-aggression pact with John a few moves later because he was too busy fighting out in Western China (Sichuan, Tibet, Xinjiang) but it never reached that point, luckily for John! haha

I'm going to make my own game when I get back to Dalian. It was a lot of fun but Lenny was a tad sick and wasn't really into the game much and Wayne was a lesser foe than I'd imagined. All in all a good, wholesome game of Risk, China style.