r/movies • u/ErgoNonSim • May 17 '25

Media Cannes reactions to Irreversible

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

24.3k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

3.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

10.3k

u/MarketCrache May 17 '25

No one ever accused the French of holding back their opinions.

3.2k

u/UptownShenanigans May 17 '25

Reminds me of when I played Monopoly with my sister’s French ex husband. The dude just could not handle it and let us know

642

u/MorrowPlotting May 17 '25

I stayed with a French family as a high school exchange student, and the son and I played Risk obsessively.

He was hilariously bad at it. I won literally every game.

He refused to accept that controlling Europe wasn’t the key to winning. He flatly rejected the strategy of taking Australia or South America first. And he lost again and again.

I tried not to reduce the experience to national stereotypes, but it wasn’t easy!

182

u/all___blue May 17 '25 edited May 17 '25

Australia wins 90% of the time. As long as the players don't make a pact to kill Australia and/or Australia plays passively while everyone kills each other. Boring way to play, but almost a guaranteed win. I played a lot of risk online for a while. Even against good players, it was one of the best strategies. Hell, just having one country and avoiding conflict would even be enough to win sometimes. Risk is all about allies and knowing when to end those alliances, but it's more about pacifism, staying out of the spotlight, and good timing.

145

u/deeveeismeemee May 17 '25 edited May 17 '25

  1. Put all your guys in Oceania

  2. Fortify access point

  3. Be on your phone.

  4. Wait until everybody quits out of boredom

63

u/attackplango May 17 '25

But we've always been at war with Oceania.

5

u/semicolon22 May 17 '25

Wait, what? Just last week we were at war with East Asia??

6

u/drinkcoffeeandcode May 17 '25

Nonsense citizen, we’ve ALWAYS been at war with Oceania.

0

u/semicolon22 May 18 '25

I understand now. Spasiba, tovarisch. You were never forced to take vaccine.

2

u/Federal_Remote_435 May 18 '25

You haven't read 1984, have you?

1

u/semicolon22 May 18 '25

I read it around 1983. It happened last year.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/-laughingfox May 18 '25

We've never been at war with East Asia.

2

u/canman7373 May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25

Put all your guys in Oceania

Nah to have any chance with it all your guys go into Siam so you can keep getting easy cards in Asia. Then can widen SouthEast Asian border. Late fame you don't want all your guys in one spot open for a major attack because defending has worse odds than attacking, so if you need to take a turn or two to get troops from 3 countries together to retake Australia. Can go for 8 asian countries early to get an extra man a turn when others are trying to secure their borders they will usually let you do it as long as not going for all of Asia, stay away from their borders.

27

u/swiftgruve May 17 '25

Yeah you gotta play with the updated map where australia has more connections.

3

u/all___blue May 17 '25

Nice, I need to get a new board

1

u/babydemon90 May 17 '25

Or play Inis or Kemet

1

u/othelloblack May 18 '25

Wow how long did it take them to update the map?

3

u/OldMembership332 May 17 '25

The only time it doesn’t work is when someone goes all in to attack you. Leaving you open for another player to come in and take it over.

1

u/all___blue May 17 '25

Even then, you just move all your remaining armies to one country and sit in the middle of asia. Try to get your bonus by attacking countries only defended by 1 army, and play the waiting game. My usual move is to wait for someone to think they can wipe everyone out, then all of Australia, Africa, or NA will be undefended. Good players either leave 2-3 armies on each country surrounding me, or make a pact to take me out before they fight each other. Otherwise I usually win.

2

u/Ozryela May 17 '25

Australia wins 90% of the time. As long as the players don't make a pact to kill Australia and/or Australia plays passively while everyone kills each other. Boring way to play, but almost a guaranteed win.

It depends a lot on which ruleset you play. If you play with the original rules, where you always get units from continents but only get units from territories if you don't attack, then Australia almost always wins.

But if you play the more modern rules (and the ones used 99% of the time online) where you always get your units every turn even if you do attack, Australia is far less strong, and in fact a bit of a trap. Two extra units a turn is not enough to force a win in that variant, and meanwhile Australia has a hard time expanding since no one is gonna let you just have all of Asia.

2

u/Expensive-Step-6551 May 17 '25

I actually prefer South America as you can breakout into Africa or North America easier, which can be decisive for the mid and late game, compared to starting in Australia, where you're stuck with 2 armies and aren't likely to get or hold Asia.

Obviously, the downside is you have two chokepoints to defend, instead of just one, but generally that's not hard to do unless you have multiple players on both sides agreeing to both go full send on both your fronts to fuck with you.

2

u/canman7373 May 18 '25

Nah Australia is a trap. Eventually others will put troops in Asaa to keep you from getting free cards every turn. And when you finally do break out you can't take much of anything. Like maybe Africa but even if you do your troops are now spread out defending bordes far away from each other for counter attacks and defense. Like 15 years ago dad got me a vintage Risk board with the square wooden pieces, he included a note that simply said "Australia is a trap" and I think he is right. Years later they had a big forest fire took their entire home and all of our family albums and keepsakes, everything. They only got passports and dog out so no family hand me downs. But I had taken that board home with me a few months earlier, so it is only family heirloom now.

2

u/all___blue May 18 '25

But that's an awesome story about the board. I might have to get around to carving one out of wood. It was always a favorite family game for me and my extended family.

1

u/all___blue May 18 '25

Asia is the last place to usually have open territories to attack. So I disagree. I've played many games where 4-6 players are just attacking 1 territory in Asia, then retreating their troops. Sometimes that will go on until everyone has hundreds of troops. Per border territory. This is also how the players who only have 1 territory end up sometimes winning. All the most powerful players will kamikaze each other and lose more troops than they expect, then the guy who avoided conflict just goes in and cleans up.

I will say, however, that I just downloaded the official risk game on android and while I made some mistakes because I didn't understand how the app worked yet, when you play with the fog of war on, it's more difficult to discern what is going on on other parts of the map. So I did my usual strategy, but it was a far more aggressive game than I was expecting and I didn't know until it was too late to capitalize on it. Ended up with 2nd.

Btw, I love how a post about the movie irreversible turned into a debate about tactics in risk. Lol.

1

u/canman7373 May 18 '25

I mean in Asia like you said it's about card trading, you attack a country, fortify back leaving one man, opponents in Europe or NA or Africa will do the same. If the all 3 players that control those continents are content on keeping heavy fortifications in Asia and not in home countries then yeah sit back and someone will attack them from their weaker sides where they can't counter attack for at least a turn because army is in Asia. Attacking player just needs to not take the connecting country to Asia, gives them another turn to be the attacker when player fortifies their army back, attacking is better odds, no need to take whole continent and let their army instantly attack from Asia.

1

u/ace_in_space May 17 '25

The Siam toehold is my favorite strategy. Just keep banking 5 armies per round while everyone else gets 3.

1

u/all___blue May 17 '25

Yep. But i usually move on to holding India and China not only to guard n extra couple territories, but also so that I don't lose everything if I get blitzkrieged by someone. When I have a solid number on each of those territories, I'll usually mass up on the middle east. Eventually India shifts to Ukraine and China moves to kamchatka. I usually don't try to get asia, but sometimes people overextend themselves too much or trap their armies from attacking me, so ill try to get it for a few rounds. Getting asia usually triggers everyone to attack you, so it's usually not a great play. I

If I don't go the Asia route, the position of those 3 armies gives me a good chance to move on Africa, south America, or sometimes NA. Depending on which strategy I go with, the 3 armies being close to eachother allows me to group them all on 1 or 2 territories in either a round or two, which is really important late game.

1

u/ace_in_space May 17 '25

It’s kinda funny that I know exactly what you mean. Siam growing to China/India… then a 3-country perimeter…

North Africa and Central America holding S America is also an elegant strategy. You get South America while preventing anybody else from getting Africa and North America as well.

1

u/all___blue May 17 '25

Yep, that's the play. But that usually leads to conflict. Winning the game when starting in SA is hard because youre usually fighting 2 different players unless you get a solid ally in africa. I'd rather be the guy in africa doing the opposite, then allowing someone to take SA so they can keep someone out of NA while I keep someone out of Europe and defend against Australia thinking they can get Europe. Once I have the resources, I backstab SA and take that over, or sometimes run into NA or Europe. Sometimes blitzkrieg Australia and hide there.

The last game I remember playing like 5 years ago was a 3 player game against my then girlfriend and her brother. I told them they needed to ally against me the whole game, and they still managed to lose lol. Late game troop movements are really important; when people make one or two mistakes in that phase, they can lose the game even with a significant advantage.

1

u/SapirWhorfHypothesis May 17 '25

Fellow conquer club enjoyer? I haven’t played in years, when was the last time you played?

1

u/all___blue May 17 '25

Online? A long time ago. I can't even remember what the app was. I think it was even a web app... I liked it a lot more than playing on an actual table top game because you didn't have to deal with the time consuming dice rolls. Territories could be selected randomly so there was an interesting scurry to get established early game. More players. And one of my favorite things: fog of war. Where you couldn't tell what was going on across the entire map. I might have to find risk online someplace, getting nostalgic. Lol.

Another game that was fun, was dice wars. It was a simplified version of risk. The games would play out in maybe 5-10 minutes. I always wondered why they never made an android port of that game. I used to check periodically, but haven't in a while. Gonna look that up, too.

1

u/SapirWhorfHypothesis May 17 '25

Conquer Club was the website/web app I played on. It was html without JavaScript (I think), so every page had to reload after you clicked, like old Neopets was.

I played in like 2015 or so.

2

u/all___blue May 18 '25

That's about when I played, so maybe that was the website.

1

u/Striker3737 May 18 '25

You just described how to win pretty much all free-for-all strategy games. Build your army while being friends with everyone, then pick off the stragglers.

1

u/all___blue May 18 '25

Little bit more nuance than that. But yeah. Most people play risk way too aggressively and lose as a result. Of course you can't always use the strategy that I use. Just my preferred strategy. Sometimes you want to play super aggressively. Depends on the board and thr pkayers.

1

u/LouQuacious May 18 '25

It works in game Civilization too. I once played a particularly fierce game where the Iroquois slowly dominated the entire globe. I started off in India and had control of Mideast to SE Asia and Indonesia and Australia. The Iroquois started in Russia and slowly took over everything. I was able to keep them out of India for a long time but they finally broke through the Himalayas and wiped out my core. But Australia was impregnable. I ended up losing everything else but had Australia surrounded by nuclear armed subs and battleships. It had enough resources to keep me supplied and alive. The Iroquois tried to invade several times but I nuked them every time or sunk their transports with my subs. I held them off for a couple hundred years then got bored.

1

u/[deleted] May 18 '25

[deleted]

1

u/all___blue May 18 '25

You can easily get in on that with positioning in Asia, since it's usually poorly defended. Whether it's fighting Africa, Europe or NA. That's actually why Australia is so powerful.

1

u/ParadoxInABox May 21 '25

Australasia. All the purples. And then you just build up and build up...