For some reason, at no point in my very geeky boyhood did I ever play "Risk." Despite hours of comic books and Dungeons & Dragons, and with no natural talent for any sport, I never played one of the most popular strategy games of all time. How this happened is beyond me, as I had many close friends who used "Risk" as a gateway-game to get into even harder strategy titles like "Axis & Allies." For me though, I led a Risk-free childhood.
In part I think it was because I knew that a game of "Risk" was tantamount to a week of summer vacation, which is quite a valuable commodity and shouldn't be wasted on any one board game- regardless of whether that meant world domination.
My interest was piqued when I recently learned that Hasbro was revamping the original "Risk" in order for games to be played in under two hours- perfect for a game night. Jumping on the chance to play with a few other friends who had also not been "at-Risk" as kids, five of us sat down to play.
For the uninitiated, "Risk" is a "game of global domination" where each player controls multiple countries on a map and uses their armies, represented by plastic pieces, to overtake enemy countries. As each player builds his empire, bonus armies are awarded for players who control continents. Traditionally, "Risk" was a game that only concluded after one player wiped all opponents off the map. This often meant that the first person out of the game had to go buy pizza while the rest of the game went on for hours, even days. Eventually a war of attrition would decide the winner between a player who controlled 80% of the map, and the player who made his last stand in Australia.
The revised version of "Risk" changes the slow plod of global domination by offering players multiple objectives to complete that end in victory. Now, instead of the winner being decided by the last-man standing, the winner is determined by the first player to accomplish three of the eight randomly selected objectives on the board, ranging from "Control North America" to "Take over an entire continent in one turn." For each completed objective, an additional bonus is awarded which can have a dramatic effect on players' attack or defense. In making the game have multiple objectives, this dramatically reduces the time it takes to play through an entire game. Additionally, because all of the objectives are randomly selected at the beginning of the game and viewable by all players, strategy to accomplish those goals has to change with every game. This avoids the guy who's strategy is to hole-up in Australia and bleed everyone dry for the next 15 hours.
The revised rules won't sell you on "Risk" if you already don't like the set up of "Risk." The gameplay is virtually unchanged: drafting, attacking, defending, and reinforcing phases of the game are all the same. What is different is the initial start to the game and the impact of moves: the game starts all players off in a scenario that resembles the mid-game portion of play, which again speeds up the game to get players to the "good part;" also gone are the days where "power moves" could change the course of the game in one turn, now each turn is less powerful, but more impactful on the overall game.
Of course, traditional-rules "Risk" can still be played as the countries on the board and their attack routes aren't any different from the original classic, but when multiple games can be played in the span of a game-night, why would you want to go back? Leave that for the kids on summer break.
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