Thanks for Everything

“Thanks for everything”

by ChefSmitty
(Long Time Major Command Risk Game Player and Valued Contributor)

 

“Thanks For Everything” is a message that was posted in the Private Support section of our Forums. ChefSmitty has graciously allowed us to share it with you.Originally posted in the forum on September 4, 2014
Howdy Sheriff,

I guess with the new regime taking over I feel the need to express my story to you guys, Sheriff or whoever might follow up on this.

I work in the food service industry. and I’m sure most of you have experienced this work yourselves, or at least know someone who has. It’s long, late hours. Staff usually consist of young “kids” needing a place to earn quick cash to well, party with. I used to be one of these kids. I did my time as the young and dumb and to be honest, I let it get the best of me. Long story short, I woke up one morning and realized that I was an alcoholic. It was a rude awakening that has seen many jobs lost, and a divorce that really sent my addiction into a tailspin. Anyway, October 12th will be 4 years of sobriety for me. Since then I begged my way into an opportunity to be Executive Chef/General Manager of a quite successful restaurant in my city. My girlfriend (who stood by me through all of this) have since bought a house and have a beautiful son Jackson who just turned 3. Yeah do the math, I can’t help think somebody was rewarding me for getting shit together. The hardest part of sobriety was not giving up the booze, it was finding something to do with the time I spent at the bars. It was finding an escape from a hectic and stressful job. Then came Major Command. I stumbled across the site by just wanting to play RISK online. It was a God-sent. I’m sure this sounds nuts to some of you, but it was the stress relief, the killing time, the thing that occupied me to keep me from temptation. I tell you guys this because though its just a game, and its just for fun, I just thought you should know that this little site has made a huge difference in someone’s life. You should be proud of it, as I’m sure in some way you may have helped someone else through tough times. Like I said; this might just sound crazy to you, but with everything I’ve have, I thank you. You have helped turn my life around.

So, I have had an issue with my payment before and brought it to Bado’s attention, as I feel I owe anything you ask from me to you. Believe me, I cant pay you enough for what this site has meant to me for the last 3 years. I’m just worried about games I’m currently in, or am awaiting, as I don’t want to be limited by them. Some are team games that would not be fair to the other players.

I’m sure you’re shaking your head wondering why this long ramble. I just thought the new regime should know that you’re doing good things for people…. and it is much appreciated!

Thanks for everything.
by ChefSmitty.

Play Risk Tips and Strategies

Risk Tips and Strategies

by Redstorm
(Major Command Risk Game Player and Blog Contributor)

Forward: Several players graciously shared their game knowledge with me. I have freely edited their remarks while maintaining their unique intent. Any mistakes are purely my own.

Playing Tactics

 

risk tips and strategies

Don’t be a command monkey compulsively reaching for a command. While securing commands certainly has a great deal of importance in escalite and flat rate games, chasing them in escalate games is a recipe for disaster. I tend to employ a combination of the following tactics, depending on how the first couple rounds shake out:

Path of Least Resistance:

If I see a region with one troop in it adjacent to me, I take it. Quite often, I lose no troops. After a few rounds of this, I often find that I’m the troop leader, primarily because everyone else is going through the pain of taking regions defended by three troops, and losing half of their allowance or more each turn. They’re also leaving behind regions with one or two troops in them, which I’m happy to attack. If you haven’t already, try this out. It’s as easy as taking candy from a baby. Stack and Wait: If the game is nine or more players, it may not be worth burning troops early to get a card in the first round or two. I’ll just spread my deployments out across the board, boost my threes up to fours, then to fives, making myself a less appealing target. Once I’ve established a solid foothold, I begin my expansion.

Be Everywhere:

I want to be near weak players when the reserve bonus starts to grow. An opponent with three regions totaling nine troops isn’t going to be the first link in my chain of eliminations if he’s on the opposite side of the board from me, and I have to go through a bunch of other players to reach him. Instead of wasting time and troops securing a command, I try to keep a region or two in every command on the board. It’s easy to be in the right place at the right time if you’re everywhere.

Turtle/Spider:

 

turtle-shell risk tips and strategies

If I’m getting abused early, and I’m already the weakest player alive in round three, I’ll often pick one region and just stack and stack there, turn after turn, and refrain from attacking. A big number looks intimidating to other players, and once I have a strong presence there, I’ll attack adjacent regions, advancing either one troop, or all of them. The key is to keep the stack together. With luck and a reserve set, I can sometimes turn a weak start into a glorious chain of eliminations. Sometimes, I can start this without even turning in reserves myself at the start of my turn, simply because I already have enough concentrated force to kill somebody who holds the cards I need.

Maps

 

Philippines:

Watch out for the sea lanes. I usually try working the map from 1 side to the other; southeast or northwest. I usually prefer the southeast area for starting.

Far East:

Keep an eye on the 2 mini bonuses within commands (India and Indonesia mini bonus). They can be a bitch if they catch you off guard. The Mongolia command is decent.

12 Domains:

 

12 Domains Risk map

1st round: add all armies on 1 castle, castles with 4 hit a 2, if takes, advance 1, if draw, hit 1 more time with the 3 if lose stay with the 2 on the castle. For the castle with the 7, take as many territories as you can until you get to 3 remaining troops then move those 3 back to the castle. The basic rule of thumb is with an army of 4 or above you can attack anything; with an army of 3 you only hit territories with 1 troop and only if necessary. Try to conquer the domains as efficiently as possible, meaning doesn’t block your exit. That’s why Bruichladdich is the hardest domain to conquer followed by Calofar. If you start out with 2 domains connecting to the same town, you develop those domains first and try to get to the town ASAP because 2 connected domains are insanely strong in the beginning. After you just got done conquering the entire domain, you should end up with like 24 troops on the frontline of that domain, 1 turn later, move the 8 from the castle to that frontline, the turn after that you take the town depending on whether enemies are threatening to take over that town immediately, move the 8 from the castle to the town.

WATCH OUT if you’re joining a match on the Twelve Kingdoms map, and it’s set to low or no movements (like Border One or Border None). The trick to this map on those settings is to NOT capture up all the territories in your starting area. LEAVE A PATH OF NEUTRALS BETWEEN THE TOWER AND THE OUTER MAP, and only capture the territories to the side of this path.

If you want to leverage the auto deploy feature on the tower, then you should only capture the terts to the top and bottom, and leave the ones that are left for when you’re ready to “break out” from the starting territory. With six or fewer players on the map, you’ll start the game with more than one tower which means that, once you’ve capped the side territories for a single region, then you can focus your attention on a different tower while this first one racks up all the auto deploys. Twelve Kingdoms on Border One/None is a noob trap. Anyone going into this situation without knowing the trick almost always starts with a disadvantage.

You can bombard opponents’ terts, turning them neutral, in your domain. Bombard the terts that you don’t border first because you can kill those with no loss to yourself. You don’t get the dragons until your next turn IF you hold it. ALWAYS look for easy ways to take away your opponents deploy. For example, if I’m holding 2 villages with only 1 man on them, take them and take 4 deploys from me. In a close game, those 4 men are important. In the beginning of the game, look for the places where you outnumber your opponent. If you start with 2 domains in the west to my 1 you should concentrate on that area and make it a priority to take that domain away. You do that, you win the game.

A disclaimer:

Please keep in mind that my badmouthing of commands in escalate games doesn’t apply to all maps, just the medium sized ones. In Classic Massive, I absolutely go after commands. Hope you liked the Risk tips and strategies given above.

My Experiences From Years of Gaming

Years Of Gaming – My Doubles Experiences

by legionbuck
(Major Command Risk Game Player and Blog Contributor)

After all these years of gaming I have a regular doubles partner here on Major Command, and we both migrated here from another site. Edsdad and I fought about 4 games against each other on the old site, then joined forces. That was on July 10, 2008… and we have been doubles partners for all these years of gaming. Playing with a partner for that long can get more involved than just playing tactics and styles.

I live in the Pacific NW, and Edsdad lives in Ottawa, Canada. We have never met face to face, and yet his family and mine have become intertwined. Through those years we have celebrated Canada Day and the Fourth of July via e-cards and video calls, have exchanged photos of stuff we do, discussed family events ( good and bad ), and have conversations on a weekly basis.

When you play on sites like this you might be surprised at who you play with that might become a part of your family. The members here are a friendly bunch ( one or two bad apples IMHO ), so when you are doing team games you might be surprised at the camaraderie that is possible from players you have no idea can become your friends.

500 Games at Major Command Risk

“500 Games”

by Redstorm
(Major Command Risk Game Player and Blog Contributor)

500 games risk online

Approaching my 500th game on MAJORCOMMAND.COM there are a few things I would like to share. First would be “WOW, what a great site to play live or at least semi-live risk like games with new friends from the world over who, as a whole, enjoy the games and site as much as I do. I find myself hopelessly addicted and actually will check for my turns throughout the day. I’m quite sure I’m not the only one. The maps are the first rate, game options are plentiful and varied, several different options exist for the number of game players, etc.

As a newer player, I find the most difficult thing for me is to learn, mostly the hard way, the myriad of strategies to be successful in these games. No one strategy will work across the board with all the different options and maps. I’ve found the best way to get the knowledge is through team games such as doubles and to simply ask the more experienced players. I’ve yet to encounter one who didn’t eagerly pass along their experiences and opinions. Even more difficult than learning the strategies is to internalize them and remember to use them in the heat of battle. I still am guilty of attacking too aggressively only to find myself eliminated because I didn’t secure my gains properly.

dice rolling risk online games

Oh, those damn dice! I’ve read all the discussions and wiki notes but like a lot of players, I think there is something imbalanced about the random dice. Maybe it’s just human nature but too many times I have been doing quite well rolling once in assault mode then try to finish it with the blitz mode only to lose heavily. Meh, the bottom line is that we all have to deal with the dice so it evens out I suppose in the long run.

Real-time (RT) versus casual games. RT games are a whole different environment and too often I think newer players start there and get discouraged then leave the site. I’ve heard it referred to as “the wild west” but I think it is more like a shark pit. This is where you can find some of the less honorable players preying on the unsuspecting player. A favorite tactic is to open a 4 player game with one or two players then when the unsuspecting ‘victim’ joins the game another shark will enter to close the game. Usually one goes AWOL and the other two attack the newer player. It’s never a fair game from the beginning. My best advice to newer players is to always check the profiles of all the players in any game you want to join. The honor and diplomatic rating is a dead giveaway with very few exceptions. Thankfully the fair and honorable players far outnumber these few brigands. The good news is that you will never hardly see that happening in casual games so I would recommend those for the newer player.

by Redstorm

Major Command Second Family

Major Command as a Second Family

by legionbuck
(Major Command Risk Game Player and Blog Contributor)

psychology session sign vector

Recently I have read a few posts in The Mess that has a player venting about family issues . We all can use some vent time for various reasons. What I find so amazing is the fact those issues expressed in The Mess show a depth of personal experiences that someone would not disclose unless they felt completely at ease with posting them in public ( so to speak ) and carry a heavy dose of personal pain that normally no one would disclose to people.

zen stone water relax

I will not name that player out of respect for them, but be it known that Major Command contributing to being an outlet for this kind of discourse is therapeutic in more ways than the usual game site can provide. We have some very special people as members, and [some challenging ones]. With that said, it goes to show that our members have experiences and lives that sometimes need an ear to relieve stress, The responses I saw to that particular thread were compassionate and encouraging. THAT is what makes Major Command special ! Players form partnerships, friendships, and count on there being the same type of members. Ya just can’t find that on other sites, or at least that has been my experience.

zen relax clouds peace

The people here are fantastic, and Major Command will continue to not only provide gaming fun but when ya need a friend you can find one here. I might suggest another forum slot… for personal stuff that would be considered classified info and posters can send “read permission” passwords to others they want to discuss things and keep it private. Just a thought… Semper Fi !

by legionbuck