47 Board Games

Roland was pleased by the popularity of the card games he had introduced. The witches had all taken a liking to it and they often played card games in their free time. Now, Roland was thinking about some more ideas. Perhaps he should introduce some board games.

After considering his options, Roland decided that he would invent Risk, a fun board game which simulated fighting a war with players controlling different armies trying to capture territories. He felt that the game would be fun and interesting for people to play.

Roland had some people make pieces for the game. A basic soldier would be represented by a person with a gun, a horse would represent multiple soldiers, and a cannon would represent an even larger group of soldiers. These pieces were not very detailed like the ones on Earth were, but they would be acceptable for now. Since he didn't have plastic yet he would have to have the workers make it out of clay; fortunately, that was something they knew how to do.

Roland then searched his memory and began writing down the rules for the game. Eventually, he was confident he had gotten everything after he checked it over multiple times. Now it was time to make the map. Although Roland's artwork was not the best, the map of Risk wasn't very precise anyways and Roland was able to recreate the map from his memory. Then, he called over Soraya to make some proper copies of the map.

Soraya entered Roland's office. She bowed and asked, "Your majesty, what do you require of me."

"I am developing a new board game", Roland said. "The board needs to be made out of sturdy paper. I made a drawing of the map here. Could you make several copies and reinforce them with your magic power?"

"Sure", she replied. Soraya proceeded to make several copies of the map. Then she asked, "What is this a map of?"

Roland opened his mouth to reply but suddenly froze. He realized that he had used the map of Earth from the original Risk game. He quickly thought of what to say.

"This is just a simple test map", said Roland. "You can take these back with you along with the rulebook and pieces. You can try playing this with your friends. In a few days I will have finished making a proper map with of the Four Kingdoms which will be the map for the main game. Try out the game and tell me what you think of it"

Soraya nodded. "Alright, I will make sure to diligently test out your new game", she said before leaving the room.

Roland was a bit surprised and felt he might have misspoke there as Soraya seemed to be taking it too seriously.

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Several days later, Risk had already spread amongst the witches. Many of them had started playing it in the afternoons and some of them had even started betting chaos drinks on games.

"This game is very fun", Iffy said. "It never gets boring because people always do different things."

"Yes", replied Agatha. "Predicting the actions of your opponent is a critical skill in warfare. Even though it is a bit simplistic, this game does manage to simulate a war. It can be good training."

"It is pretty good", said Phyllis. The Taquila witches had started getting into it as well. Most of the day they didn't have much to do. "I just wish it had maps of the world instead of whatever this is."

Then, Soraya entered the room. "I just brought back some more pieces and the new maps." For the past few days, there weren't that many pieces so only a few people could play while other people watched. Now there were more pieces and boards for people to use.

"Oh, this is a map of the Four Kingdoms", said Lightning. "Maybe once I finish exploring the world, what I discovered might be on the maps of future Risk games."

Everyone tried out playing Risk on the new map. The map was of familiar places which made it appealing. However, there were still some people who liked the old map better.

"I like the old map", Annie said. "This map has everyone clustered together onto one continent. The previous map was more interesting because of the different choke points and how you could better guard areas of the map since it was difficult to get to."

Then, Iffy had an idea. "What if we made our own maps!", she exclaimed.

"Make our own maps?" Annie looked confused.

"Yeah. As we can see, we don't have to use a single map. We could make maps of different places and draw our own connections and make our own bonus values. This would make the game more interesting." Iffy was excited as she thought about the possibilities.

Soon, the witches were all eager to draw their own maps to play on. While plenty of games were still played on the standard maps, some of them started bringing in their own maps to play with. Lightning decided to make a map of the Fjords and use it to play some games. It was a map dominated by islands and made for interesting play.

Scroll decided to make a map of Neverwinter. Each of the city blocks was a separate territory. The map ended up being very regimented and ordered. Most of the witches didn't really like that one because games weren't that interesting on it.

One day, Agatha came in with a map. She unrolled it and showed it to everyone. "Ta-da, here is my map", she yelled.

Everyone looked at the map with confusion. It looked like a bunch of random circles with lines going through them. Nobody said anything for a while. Finally, Maggie spoke up.

"What is that? It looks like a bunch of random circles", she said.

Agatha looked sad that nobody liked her map. "It is TNT", she said.

"TNT?" Maggie was confused. "What is that?"

"TNT. It is trinitrotoluene", said Agatha. "My map is a drawing of the chemical structure of TNT. You see, here is the nitrogen atom, this is an oxygen atom, and you can see here the bonds between the atoms. You can see the three nitro groups here, here, and here." Agatha pointed at the paper. "And in the center there is a benzene ring with another carbon attached. That is the toluene."

Everyone else had blank looks on their face as the ad hoc chemistry lesson went over their heads.

There were plenty of other maps that were made. Some problems arose as well.

After a game where Scroll won on her own map, Mystery Moon started complaining. "That's no fair. You knew the trick to winning on this map and you took that place in the beginning of the game!"

Scroll had a neutral look on her face as she replied. "I did nothing improper. All of the information that you needed was presented to you. You could have known that the area was advantageous as well. I was simply the one that did more studying."

"Of course you studied it more!", Mystery Moon grumbled. "You made it."

Maggie also tried making a map. When she showed it to everyone, they were not impressed.

"Ummm, Maggie…", Iffy began saying. "Why did you make this territory worth 40 armies. It isn't special in any way and nowhere else is worth anywhere near as much."

"Its imbalanced!", Mystery Moon yelled. "Whoever starts there is going to win. Imba. Its Imba. Imba Imba Imba", she repeated.

Despite the minor issues, the use of different maps spread quickly amongst the witches. Then, Maggie had an idea.

"What if we put a bunch of maps together?", Maggie said. "We could link them and create one big map. Then we can have everyone play on it at once."

"But there aren't enough colors for everyone to play", said Scroll. "There are only six colors."

"We can have Soraya paint more colors onto the pieces", Maggie replied.

The other witches liked the idea so on one weekend, they decided to do just that. They decided to have a Risk All-Stars game where all of their maps, excluding the imbalanced ones, were put together.

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Roland went downstairs one morning and saw a strange sight when he entered the great hall. He saw a bunch of witches playing Risk on the floor. There were a bunch of pieces of paper on the floor. They appeared to be Risk maps, though some were crudely drawn. Roland rubbed his eyes and looked again. It seems that the witches had made maps of their own and were now playing a massive game of Risk.

Roland cleared his throat. The witches all jumped up at the noise and panicked when they saw the king watching them.

"What are you doing?", asked Roland.

The witches all looked around nervously. Finally, Annie spoke up. "After you gave us another map, we realized that we could play on any map we wanted to so we all made our own maps. And now we decided to play one big game of Risk."

"I see…" Roland was surprised by the creativity of the witches. "You can keep playing with your maps", he told them. "If one of them is good I might even consider including it in a new edition. However, please check with me before using the great hall for a risk game. I might need it sometimes."

The witches were relieved that Roland was okay with what they were doing. Soon, they managed to get back into their game, even though they were nervous since Roland seemed to have taken an interest in watching them play.