Geek Quotient

My most glaring geek deficiencies: I've never made it past the first hundred pages of Fellowship of the Ring. I've never played Risk. And just hearing the Dr. Who theme song makes me uncomfortable. Recently, I decided to kill the first bird and wing the second with the stone known as Lord of the Rings Risk. My friend Mary bought this for her husband Eugene and the three of us sat down last Friday for a little game of Middle Earth domination.

First off, it's been awhile since I've played a game where the object is to wreck the other people. Although we started off good naturedly, there was some tension as the little elf battalions started dying by the handful . This was probably exacerbated by playing with a married couple ... lots of idle "If you invade Rohan, I'll divorce you" threats. Also, even though we were playing the 'quick' version, it still took over 4 hours. That's longer than the movie, for crissakes. In the end, I lost horribly, Mary almost fell asleep and I think we all learned an important lesson about the futility of war. Except for Eugene, who won, and would do these little dances after successful rolls of the dice.