by Shawn Forno

Created on: March 27, 2008

RISK is dangerous.

Not in the traditional sense - it's just a game (although some of the pieces are pretty pointy), but it's a WAR game complete with rules and guidelines, and advantages go to players that use strategy, cunning, planning, and knowledge - all the essentials of victory. However, luck - cruel Fate - the inexplicable string of double 6's that leaves a staunch pair of defenders laughing in the face of a force of fifty invaders left crippled and bleeding as they sought to march Shermanesque through Brazil, Venezuela, and into Central America to rob you of your seven extra men, can be all that turns a brilliantly timed and choreographed strike into a shambling slow collapse like a dying star. One failed attack, one botched defense that strips your borders bare can be all it takes to bring your robust society; your neo-Sparta to its knees, remnants of a glittering world bestriding colossus now left clinging to a chunk of the Ural and Siberia - bonusless and powerless.

I say again, RISK is dangerous.

It breaks even the sharpest minds with rapid fire twists of fate, deviant alliances, and kamikaze opponents. For the select few who play with zeal, the hours spent formulating a plan only to have it turn to ashes in your mouth as your once impenetrable borders are overrun by the rogue Icelandic contingent of a flailing enemy can make a "game" a crushing arena of defeat. And without that passion; without something to lose - something to risk - the game might as well Shoots and Ladders.

The game is dangerous - it says so on the box, "The game of global domination."

A player must crush all opponents, all factions - every foreign element needs to be removed - the game is designed that way. Whether it's achieved through the naked force of North American or Asiatic control or serpentine maneuvers like Australian neutrality or continent hopping, the goal is the same - "domination." Not "occupation," "assimilation," or even "decimation" (the ancient Roman notion of killing every tenth person) - the game demands only one course of action. Complete control. Absolute dominion. Unchallenged supremacy. It accepts nothing less.

So if you feel up to the challenge, light a cigar, pour a snifter of brandy and pull up a seat to the most dangerous game in the world to see if you've got what it takes to be the last one standing.

In the words of Bertrand Russell, "War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

Is it you? Take a chance and find out.

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