The story of the Two Board Risk Game
1998-1999
As told by Greg Irwin:
Once upon a Saturday night, about 6-7 PM, in the lobby of Jennings Dormitory for men at Howard Payne University, seven people decided that they wanted to play Risk. Risk has a maximum of 6 players. Therefore we decided to play using two boards. As I remember, it was Greg Irwin (me), Frank Wacholtz, Shawn Gafford, Jon Fox, Matt Carey, Becca Wacholtz (nee' McDonald), and a seventh player whose identity currently escapes me. It might have been Dauber, Jerome, or anyone.
Summer Irwin (nee' Herrington) was there in the role of an observer.
To distinguish the seventh army (which was black) from the other black army, we put a dot of white-out on the head of each piece. The extra army which was dotted belonged, I believe, to Mr. Carey. We used both boards to accommodate the larger than usual complement of armies. We decided that the two maps were parallel worlds joined by hyperspace bridges at Australia and South America. Therefore, the two Western Australia territories were considered to be one territory. The same was done for Eastern Australia and (the territory at the southern tip of South America).
The game began with the usual strategy of kill-Frank-as-quickly-as-possible-so-the-rest-of-us-can-actually-score. Players eliminated continued to hang around for the purpose of social interaction. Becca had to quit when the game exceeded the lobby hours for those who were Y-chromosome challenged. Someone took her place, I don't remember who. I think that it might have been Fox.
About 2:00 AM, we were beginning to get giddy due to tiredness, so I remarked that we were so worked up that we would probably laugh at someone coming in the door. That very instant, a guy came in the door, and we burst into laughter. He quickly got an incredibly confused and slightly paranoid expression on his face. We hastily explained: "at 2:00 AM, everything's funny." He seemed to buy it.
From then on, every time the door opened, we thought that it was hilarious. We laughed, then repeated the same story every time the door opened. Of course, we adjusted for the current time.
Once, around 3-3:30 AM, somebody added: "except him," and everyone simultaneously pointed at Matt Carey. (It was almost like telepathy.) That then became part of the standard response.
Finally sometime around 6:00 AM, after everyone had been eliminated except myself and Shawn, the rest of the group decided to go to bed. Shawn and I continued to battle until well after the sun had come up. The game continued until I controlled all of one board and half of the other.
Finally, around 8:00 AM, I decided that I was really tired, and that I needed some rest before church. I proposed that since Shawn and I each controlled one Scotland (an important fact, since we are both of Scottish extraction), that we might have a cease-fire. Since we each controlled one of the Scotlands, and we could get along just fine, we mutually decided to end hostilities. In all, the game lasted somewhere around 14 hours.
We put the game away and said goodbye. I returned home to my apartment and managed to get a small amount of rest. I then picked up Summer and went to Sunday School.
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