by sheeted_kid
We were playing game #5 of our Risk Legacy campaign last night, when something pretty cool happened.First, some background info (spoilers ahead, in case the subject line didn't make that clear): we've already unlocked the Alien faction, and Alien Island was placed in the Indian Ocean so as to connect Western Australia and Madagascar. I was playing Die Mechaniker, with my HQ in South Africa. My brother was the Aliens, with his HQ in Western Australia; one of our nephews was playing the Enclave of the Bear, with his HQ in Great Britain. A few turns into the game, I controlled all of Africa, plus Western Europe; the Aliens controlled all of Australia (aka "Transylvenomia") as well as Alien Island, Ural (which got cut off from the rest of his forces when the Saharan Republic, played by my brother's girlfriend, conquered China), and Russia. The Enclave, as you can imagine, was struggling to regain the continent bonus for Europe (aka "A-bear-ica").
At this point, I sensed that the Aliens were poised to take over A-bear-ica, which I feared would give them an unbeatable lead. When my turn came around, I stationed my reinforcements in Madagascar and sent them to take Alien Island (which they did without much trouble, thanks to some lucky dice rolls). I tried to push into Western Australia, both to grab the Alien HQ and deprive my brother of the continent bonus, but had no luck. I ended my turn with a few troops apiece in Western Europe, North Africa, and Alien Island, but the remainder of my troops were spread pretty thinly across the rest of Africa.
My brother swore that he was going to wipe both the Enclave and Die Mechaniker out during his turn--which came next. He proceeded to turn in his resource cards, which allowed him to field something like 15 troops. He put about half of them in Russia, with the other half going to Western Australia. He proceeded to take Scandinavia and Northern Europe, but had to stop his conquest of A-bear-ica thanks to some bad rolls. Then he attacked Alien Island from Western Australia. I survived for the first couple of turns, but then rolled pretty poorly on the defense and (sensing he would sweep through Africa if I didn't do something) used both of my missiles. He used his missile then, because he really wanted to open the "Use 3 missiles on a single combat roll" packet--the result being that Alien Island was nuked. It wiped out my remaining defenders, but it also stopped the Aliens from pushing into Madagascar that turn.
All in all, I was pretty pleased with how that turned out, since a.) it meant I got to survive the turn, and b.) I didn't like Alien Island being there, since it meant Africa was vulnerable to attack from four continents. Granted, we realized a minute later that Alien Island is still there--but people are less likely to want to take and hold it now (unless they're the Mutants), which makes Africa and Transylvenomia slightly more secure again.