The War Rages On; or, In Which Mr. T Screws Over Everyone
This time, Mr. T won the dice roll and took Western Australia as his base. Mr. V placed his HQ on his Major City in Argentina; Mr. J once again chose South Africa; Mr. Q chose Japan. Since Mr. T had taken my preferred spot in the Australias, I chose Eastern US as the country to place my HQ.
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Mr. T occupied Australia, Mr. Q spread out a bit, Mr. J spread out to occupy some more of Africa, and Mr. V occupied the rest of South America and moved up with the majority of his army to occupy the bunker in Central America. Not having any threat from Europe and limited threat from Asia, I decided that my first order of business would be to expand down and deny Mr. V of the South American bonus. The battle did not go well for me, mostly due to the bunker. I ended up winning, but with few troops to spare, and not enough to try and take Venezuela. On his next turn, Mr. V placed all 5 of his reinforcements in Venezuela and drove up into North America, capturing my HQ, and knocking me out of the game.
It is at this time that I find it necessary to explain to my audience another of the strange rule changes to be found in Risk Legacy. This is that when you are knocked out (have no troops left on the board) but there is an empty country that is as yet unoccupied, at the beginning of your next turn you may place half of your starting allotment (in this case, 4 troops) into one of these unoccupied territories.
So when my turn came around again, I decided to place my four troops into Northern Europe. I spent the rest of the game slowly trying to spread out into the rest of Europe, allowed to live mostly because every else had other things to worry about.
Mr. J, once again was in major trouble, the this time not from Mr. V, who had instead decided to focus on occupying North America. This time it was Mr. T who was gunning for Africa, deciding to leave Mr. Q alone in upper Asia. Mr. Q, for his part, decided that his calling was to invade North Africa.
The other aspect of Risk Legacy is that it has envelopes that the players are meant to open when, and only when, certain criteria are met. It is unknown what they contain beforehand. However, the one that we had had our eyes on during this game was the one that stated it was to be opened the first time a player is eliminated from the game (they loose all their troops, with no empty territories for them to come back into next turn).
So by this time, Mr. Q had driven his way into the heart of North America (through Alaska); Mr. V was barely able to hold on to my HQ, which was still located in Eastern US. He quickly struck up an alliance with Mr. T, who held the majority of Africa, allowing Mr. V to focus his troops on the fight in North America. Mr. J was in serious trouble; he had only 2 territories left, with barely more troops, and no empty territories left. We were all (Mr. J included) getting excited about the prospect of opening our first envelope.
But then Mr. T had a revelation. he realized that he was in possession of 3 red stars already (the one he received at the beginning of the game, his own HQ, and Mr. J's HQ in South Africa which Mr. T had already captured). He only needed one more to win, and Mr. V, having just made an alliance with Mr. T, had all of his troops in North America, not South America.
Mr. T decided that rather eliminating Mr. J and allowing all of us to open the first envelope, he would rather just win.
Placing all of his sizable number of reinforcements into North Africa, he drove straight down into Argentina, capturing Mr. V's HQ and ending the game, with Mr. J still un-eliminated.
Great amounts of rage followed. Mr T. attempted to justify his decision by appealing to the joke between himself and Mr. J of the "'Bear-Mech' Alliance" (having to do with the shapes of the pieces belonging to their respective races) claiming he had allowed Mr J to live in the spirit of this alliance, so that Mr. J would be able to collect the (more-or-less unimportant) bonus for not being eliminated.
Mr. T decided as his bonus for winning that he would re-name the continent of Australia, meaning that when he held it he would gain an extra troop as bonus (this bonus doesn't extend to anyone else who holds the continent). Everyone else chose to place Minor Cities.
Game 3 coming soon! Link to Game 1 at top!