How to Play RISK with Your Girlfriend

After playing a game of RISK with two other couples, I put together this little primer. It applies to other strategy-based games as well, but RISK is the focus here.

Here’s how to play RISK with your girlfriend:

1. Don’t play RISK with your girlfriend. If you follow this rule, you can disregard the others.
2. If you foolishly choose to play RISK with your girlfriend, the objective of the game is no longer world domination. It is: Don’t upset your girlfriend.
3. If you are compelled to pursue both objectives, make sure to place your men in countries that are nowhere near your girlfriend’s countries, and then wait for her to lose before taking over the world. If you pull this off–it’s only been done once in history (yesterday)–you are the modern-day equivalent to Alexander the Great, who had both land and women.
4. Don’t ever attack your girlfriend’s countries (unless she has one guy on Irkutsk. Nobody cares about Irkutsk).
5. Don’t get mad at her if she attacks you. She’s playing this stupid game for you, so get over yourself.
6. Don’t criticize your girlfriend’s decisions, even if she has left the Ukraine weak and vulnerable to attack after an overly ambitious campaign in Europe.
7. If your girlfriend asks you for advice, don’t say, “Do whatever you want.” Rather, give her specific guidance, like, “Attack the Northwest Territories, get your card, then fortify back to Central America.”
8. If she doesn’t follow your advice, tell her she did the right thing.
9. If/when your girlfriend is eliminated, don’t tell her she can “join your team.”
10. Just don’t play RISK with your girlfriend. Play a fun game where no one loses and there’s no real strategy, like Apples to Apples or Cranium, and then compliment her on how well she hummed the theme song of Family Ties and that you really should have guessed it and that everyone thought she was great. I promise you the drive home will be better than if you had played RISK. Hypothetically.