>> GAMES > GATHERING OF GEEKS

Everything but the Basement*

The clock showed a few minutes past 8pm on a cool Portland summer night. Backspace was already filled to the Warp Core with Geeks of all sorts, gamers, fraggers, hackers, and that dude who plays chess against himself. The lovely Illusionaire and I didn’t wait long before the Amazon beauty that is Artimis walked into Backspace, soon followed by the local celebrity that is Klingon Rockstar. Within the time span of one quickly sucked down Camel, we secured ourselves a table. The first official Gathering of Geeks had begun.

It was time to nuke the planet!

The game was Risk 2210 and while many people know of my own terribly Geeky admission about Risk, it has literally been a decade since I attempted to take over the world with little plastic cannons and a D6, (although Risk 2210 has upgraded the cannons to Mechs and added a D8, sweet). Slowly we opened the massive game and expanded the board that filled the table we had since procured, much to the annoyance of the dude trying to pick-up on the cute Geek girl beside him. (Attention dude: If said honey has a Transformer tattoo and you attempt to impress her with your mad Cybertronian wisdom, better get it right. Megatron DID NOT become a cannon, that was Galvatron and any real Transformer fan would know that. Snap!) Illusionaire and Artimis looked a tad concerned over the tome sized rulebook and various cards, but being true Geeks to the core, they were not daunted. Unlike the women next to us who were trying their best to learn the rules to Munchkin, a painfully rules-heavy card game from Steve Jackson Games. (Don’t feel bad ladies, it's not you, it's Steve).

After a quick telling of the rules, the game began. As is a tradition and cliché with Risk, the lands of Australia and Papa New Guinea are prized for the ease of conquest and holding. You’d think I would have remembered that and not allowed the Rockstar to take it all within the first round. Oh well, lesson learned. Besides, I was starting a blood feud with Artimis over control of North America and I was not to be concerned with world events. Within two rounds, Illusionaire had completely taken Europe and was making a play at the moon against the sly Klingon Rockstar. It didn’t take long for us all to start speaking “in character”. Now, I realize that this was not a role-playing game, but as any Geek will tell you, get enough of us together at a game involving world domination and we all start speaking like the Borg and Emperor Palpatine. It was interesting that our early comments were upsetting the “pop culture intellectuals” at the table next to us. Course, within a few minutes they couldn’t keep their eyes off the game.

Round after round passed and considering half the people at the gathering had never played Risk, the game went pretty smooth (and was more then challenging). By the fourth round, the formidable Klingon Rockstar had taken the most lands. However, not after having been heavily bloodied by the ever-dangerous Illusionaire in what will go down as the bloodiest battle for the moon of all time! As for myself, well, while I could never hope to defeat the mighty Artimis in the real world, I had my way with her on the Risk board. (She’s gonna’ kill me for that). Long giving up conquest of the moon and the entire Eastern Hemisphere, I decided to claim all waterways and North America. In a final desperate act, Artimis took to nuking anything and everything in her path. If she couldn’t have it, not one would! By the final round we had a good size crowd of people stopping by asking what game we where playing, each and every one of them wishing they had a copy of the game at home. In the end, experience won the day as Klingon Rockstar emerged victorious for the entire game. Not that it mattered. Everyone involved had a great time and I am certain this was only first of the Gathering of Geeks.

The final tally:
4 countries rendered uninhabitable.
1.5 billion (estimated) people wiped out.
.5 a moon
168 oz. of Jolt Cherry Bomb Cola in the awesome battery shaped can consumed

It was like the gaming of old, but without the taunting and musty basements. I’m sure there will be more, be there!

*Geek names used to protect the “innocent”