Risk: Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim

Here's a cut throat competitive game for 2-5 players that I originally just got awhile ago because I like all things "Skyrim" but haven't had a group to play it with until now. So, first of all it is RISK. A game of putting little figures on a map and then moving said little figures into territories of your frenemies to do some dice battle in a bid for map-wide domination.

Dice determines a lot of things here like who goes first and who survives combat. After "spawning" the map with your little dudes each player can then invade sending up to three of them into neighboring hostile territory (and some neighbors are connected by daedric portals). Attackers roll a dice per dude they sent while the defenders can defend with up to two. Compare the highest die pairs with defenders winning ties and remove the losing pieces. Then if there are still defenders, continue the dice rolling fest!

So far that's just regular Risk on a Skyrim map. What makes it more Skyrim though is that each faction has a hero and each turn other than gaining reinforcements you gain magicka which lets you buy and cast spells (all one shot) or buy important objective cards. You start with two of these and at the end of your turn if you've completed one you announce it and gain the indicated victory points. First to 10 wins, which is a lot faster than map-wide domination. For ridiculous hi jinks you can also shuffle in the "End of Game" card in the reward pile that people draw from if they won any territory on their turn.

Heroes are pretty tough with 10 HP each but they can only move where you have a little dude, and while enemy little dudes can attack them they can only defend against the little dudes (even if they were invading). Attack or defend, heroes always use max dice. Wait, if heroes can only defend against little dudes what do they attack? Other heroes (and heroes slain by other heroes get all their gear [you can buy armor and weapons too] taken by the victor).

Heroes can also fight dragons. There are four that randomly spawn at the start of the game and no little dudes can enter their territory without a hero to try slay the dragon. Dragons also have 10 HP and will only ever defend. Killing one grants the victorious hero a powerful dragon shout that they can use once per turn like, convince enemy little guy to become your little guy or Fus Ro Dah all enemy little guys out of a territory! 

Alas the rules need some interpretation and I house ruled only three invasions per turn to keep turns shorter and have each player engaged (which also invalidated at least two objective cards as they needed 4 and 6 successful invasions respectively). The VP win condition thankfully makes the game more manageable but it still took 4 of us maybe three and a half hours to finish. 

Better than I thought it would be, but it still doesn't beat El Grande or the always excellent and fast paced Lords of Waterdeep.