Risk

A terrible, terrible board game of Napoleonic world conquest where you move around tiny plastic soldiers and cannons and pretend you're making any sort of strategic choices. Even though the pieces are different, every unit is exactly the same. All your fate depends on dice rolls and how soon you manage to hog the best territories.

For all the awful that is Risk, most of us were raised on it, and learned tactics by playing it, much the same way a caveman learns that banging one rock on another makes noise. Or a kid learns what tastes good by putting everything in her mouth.

What Parcheesi is to race games, and "Asshole" is to trick-taking games, Risk is to wargames.

Rules

Pieces

• Units are a bazillion identical plastic bits. Everyone has plastic bits of a different colour so you can tell who owns what. Some plastic bits are different, but those just represent five or ten units.
• five six-sided dice: three white for defense, two red for offense.
• the map of territories. Every territory is adjacent to at least one other territory. The territories are grouped into "continents," and there's a bonus for owning an entire continent at the start of your turn.
• a deck of cards. Each card bears the name of one territory and one of three symbols, or few cards have no territory and all three symbols. The symbols are used for making sets; the latter cards are like "wild cards."

Setup

• Divide 120 by the number of players; that's how many units in each player's starting army
• Players take turns placing one unit each on an unoccupied territory.
• When all territories are occupied, players take turns placing two units in territories they occupy.
• Keep going until everyone's deployed their starting army.

Turns

• At the start of your turn, you get reinforcements. These reinforcements can be distributed among any territories you occupy.
  • one unit for three territories you occupy
  • some more units if you still own an entire continent
  • even more units for trading in a set: three different symbols, three identical symbols, or any two cards with a "wild card". The first time a player does this, it's worth 4 units, then 6, then 8, 10, 12, 15, 20 and +5 more each step. If you hold five cards at the start of your turn, you MUST trade in a set right away.
  • +2 armies on any territory you occupy that is mentioned in a card set you turn in; this is an exception to the "any territories" mentioned above.
• Now you get to attack as many times as you want or can get away with.
  • Pick a territory that you own with more than one unit in it. Pick one of it's neighbours that you don't own. Declare that you're going to fuck shit up.
  • You commit one, two or three units to attack. The defender commits one or two units to defend.
  • Each side rolls as many dice as units they committed to the fight (usually red for attack, white for defense).
  • Compare the highest die from each side. Lower number removes a unit from the attacking/defending territory as appropriate. Defender wins ties.
  • If the attacker and defender each committed at least two units, compare the 2nd higest dice. Remove units, blah blah.
  • Commit units again, lather, rinse, repeat, unless attacker decides to stop early.
  • If defender is eliminated, the attacker must move in at least as many units as dice she rolled in the last attack.
  • Attacker must leave at least one unit behind; that means if you're attacking from a territory that has only two units, you can roll only one die, and you must stop when only one attacking unit is left.
  • If you still have a surplus of units, repeat the attacking thing from the same or another territory.
• When you're done being a bully at your neighbours, you may take one card if you conquered any territories this turn.
• At the end of your turn, you may fortify a territory by moving one group of units from a territory you own to an adjacent territory you own. You must leave at least one unit behind -- you can never abandon a territory.

Winning

• When you've eliminated all the other players.

Since you need to attack to really move your units around, and you can only do a fortify move once, and card sets explode as the game drags on... the game REALLY drags on. And it's no fun for the players that got kicked out early, and when it's down to two player's it's pretty obvious who's gonna be whose bitch. The only person who wants to keep playing at this point is the bitch, who thinks for some reason their next card set of 55 units might make all the difference even though the other guy owns Asia AND Europe.

If you play Risk as a drinking game, people care less about how long it takes.

Any game that needs alcohol to be good enough to play is made of suck, Q.E.D.

Maps

Most "improvements" on the game just create new maps instead of actually fixing or adding to the mechanics.

• 

  the original map without names

• 

  the naked original map

• 

  Playing Risk as a LARP

Variations

There have been many versions of Risk made, because people keep believing that there's a good wargame somewhere in this simulation built with twigs and grass, and by god they keep looking. And failing. The only successes at making Risk into a somewhat deep or stimulating game all move it far enough away from Risk that even the play-map becomes unrecognizable.

• Nuclear Risk: after each player has had a turn, draw the top card of the territories deck. All units in that territory are eliminated, and the territory is uninhabitable. Last person standing wins.
• Castle Risk: uses capital cities, and action cards you play out of hand.
• Hyborian Risk: same old risk, with a Conan-themed map.
• Narnia Risk: WORSE than the original, somehow managed to make it even more dumbed-down for the kiddies.
• Risk Godstorm. You get four superunits that are Greek gods. Your dead armies are reinforcements in an "afterlife" map where the dead duke it out for a chance to return and reinforce on the real map.
• Risk Revised Edition: The official "Risk plus splatbooks." Has optional rules for missions, castles, new units, etc.
• Risk Transformers. Not as cool as it sounds.
• Risk: Star Wars. Three sides: Rebels vs. Empire vs. Hutts, each with a different deck of cards. Force-meter to swing advantages to Rebels or Empire, different objectives for each side... this isn't Risk anymore.
• Risk: Star Wars Clone Wars. See Risk Star Wars, only it's just Rebels vs. Empire, and Rebels are fucked when Order 66 happens.
• Risk Middle Earth : forces players to be allies (men & elves vs Sauraman & Sauron), has a count-down timer as a ring unit marches across the board to mount doom.
• Risk Édition Napoléon. One player is Napoleon and everyone else tries to beat him up. Tries to be historically accurate, only, y'know, Napoleon isn't an idiot this time around. Or nearly as short.
• Risk: Halo Wars Collector's Edition. (gagging noises)
• S.P.Q.RisiKo! Risk of Ancient Rome. Only sold in Italy; seems someone else has the copyright on Julius Caesar in America.
• Risk 2210AD. Actually a decent game, and doesn't look or feel like original Risk at all. Surprise surprise.
• Risk Balance of Power. 2 player wargame with missions and a third dummy player. Again, better than Risk by being not Risk.
• Risk Express. Risk without the armies or the world map. Just dice and drink coasters. I'm not making this up.
• GoCrossCampus. Risk as a LARP. I swear to god I'm not making this up.
• Axis & Allies. Okay, not actually Risk, but Risk looks up to A&A and wants to be like that when it grows up.

Also, the 40k Dawn of War games Dark crusade and Soulstorm implement the same structure but instead of a territory's conquest determined by 1-4 dicerolls, it is determined by a 40 minute game of 40k. Needless to say, it's much better.