Thursday Evening Galactic Domination on a Friday

What with schedules getting slammed around a bit this week, the boys convened their usual beer and pizza Star Wars Risk event on Friday. Without early morning obligations, we blasted through three wars in a single night--kinda like the Ghosts of Christmas.

Game 1. When Darth Nadir aka Ric moved the Death Star off of Kessel, it opened the way for the Hutts to run up 9 resource planets each of two rounds. That meant 5(!) faction cards per turn. With that kind of support it was only a matter of time until Horak the Hutt swept into the Core Worlds and picked off a 10th planet and a victory.

Game 2. Shuffling the players, Kent went over to the Dark Side while Ric turned to the Rebel cause. Karl remained a Hutt. This time the Hutts had the dice rolls and mounted a significant lead that ended only in their victory.

Game 3. Karl as Rebel leader, Ric as the Evil Emperor, and Kent as the Hutts. Kent played the Hutts too much like his usual Rebel strategy: one or two large concentrated garrisons and mostly singletons everywhere else. The Rebel strategy was to match and destroy any significant Imperial concentrations. Combined with the Hutt failure to protect outliers, this let the Rebels pick off a Hutt planet each turn and garnered extra faction cards. A lucky break let the Force Meter slide to the Light side, helping even more.

Given this, its not surprising that the Rebels were able to destroy each Star Base as it appeared. The third one on the fourth turn held the Emperor. Score a Rebel victory.

Rebels Go Down Fightin'

The weekly battles for galactic supremacy continue. In Game #1 the Hutts appeared to have an advantage, but in the end, a straight of faction cards let Darth LaBan sweep the board of the last few pesky Rebels. Interestingly, the Empire suffered 42 casualties, the Hutts only 21, while the Rebels under Major Ursa took 55 losses. This was the first Imperial victory since December.

Meanwhile, in Game #2 a variant was played that left a large number of planets unclaimed, something that's unheard of in standard Risk. The result was an initial setup with few garrisons in the Mid Rim other than the resource planets. When Major Ursa destroyed the Death Star, the Hutts quickly capitalized on the defenseless Gamorr and swept up the Mid Rim resources. Then, in an astonishingly easy move, Horak the Hutt moved into the ungarrisoned systems of the Mid Rim, locking in the sector. With 5 additional troops per turn, the Hutts quickly overran the remainder of the galaxy. All said, not a very balanced variant.