Australia is the key.
Europe is for losers. Everyone who tries for a continent there will not win.
The ideal strategy is to play in a multi-player game and convince the other players to fight each other while you consolidate your power. The best method is to be the second best player in the game and convince everyone else they should be worried about the best player.
Defense is good as long as the other players are still fighting each other on an semi-equal basis. But don’t let some other player or alliance get too far ahead of you because it’s very difficult to come back from behind in Risk.
The edges in the game are collecting cards and getting continental bonuses for the extra armies and holding contiginous blocks of territory so you can focus on your frontiers rather than spreading your armies out defending every country you have.
Amen, Brother! Amen!
If your memory of Risk is ‘fun, but can never finish a game in an evening’, then try it on a computer. All the strategy, backstabbing, and gloating over being absolute ruler of the world, with none of the boredom of endless dice-rolling and arguing about where armies belong after somebody bumps the board.
Europe and Africa are hard to hold separately, because the Mediterranean is a big border.
However, holding Europe AND Africa is easy. Reinforce Iceland and West Africa / Brazil, and you only need to worry about two or three territories on the Asia border.
Similarly, Asia is hard to take over, but it has four border territories – which can be quickly reduced to three, since Australia is such a juicy target at that point.
There is an online version somewhere at the bbc website. Does anyone know of a downloadable version? There used to be a terrific one for the Mac.
Australia is nice to hold and forget. It contributes four countries to your tally, you can accumulate armies, and eventually take over the next over in Asia to prevent anyone from getting it. But winning from Australia? I’ve never seen it happen.
I prefer North America myself. It takes a while to hold, but once you have it for a turn or two you can build up Central America, move into South America, and then you have two continents with no more border countries than you had with one. Kamchatka/Alaska is usually not a big problem to defend, so all you have to worry about is Iceland/Greenland.
I wonder how a Risk with a Peru-Australia border would be? It would change strategy quite a lot.
I’ve played a similar varient that included a Madagascar-Australia link as well. It actually improved the game (IMHO) by limiting the scramble for the obvious southern strongholds.
When you are trying to maintain hold of a continent, instead of trying to hold the borders from entirely within your continent, there is often a country or countries belonging to another continent that will reduce the number of viable attacking points to a more resonable number. The exact contry for this can vary depending on troop placement and board positions. These “border countries” make excellent targets for you, after conquering a continent to take a territory and get another card. There are a number of bottlenecks on the board (eg. Siam for Australia) that should always be considered crucial for maintaining control of a continent.
I have played in a few Risk tournaments and I have always placed pretty well (finals). I competed as a high schooler mainly against adults. As an adult I haven’t ever lost, but now no one will play me anymore. It’s probably been 5+ years since I’ve played a game. I used to be able to name every country on each continent, continent bonuses, card bonuses etc. off the top of my head, but not any more.
There’s a version of Risk called Lux that’s OS X ready. I’ve played it a lot; plenty of nice features, all kinds of maps and scenarios, seems very stable. Just do a Google seach for Lux and you’ll find it. It’s pretty cheap, too.
I am certain Africa has three border territories. I recall that there was some question about this when I used to play as a kid, and I recall with certainty that we found compelling reasons to believe that the designers intended East Africa to border Saudi Arabia.
What those compelling reasons were, however, I do not recall.
-FrL-
East Africa was always supposed to be adjacent to the Middle East, but in the original version that wasn’t clear from the board. LAter versions had a dotted line connecting the two.
I really liked Risk precisely because there was no guaranteed winning strategy. Winning required adopting to the conditions at hand.
Yes, you can hit Egypt from the Middle East. Although it’s possible that that aspect has changed over time. I know that Africa has been redesigned at least once in the history of the game.
When my friends and I play (and we used to play ALL THE TIME), we have a house rule we implemented that made it much more strategic…
The Blitz Rule
In an effort to create a more strategtic game out of Risk, the Blitz Rule is the end all be all.
The Blitz Rule works like this: When you move forces, you can take a territory, and then from the taken territory, you can spread out one more time to any territory that borders your newly conquered land. Once that has happened, that particular mass of troops can go no further.
Example- Chronos has amassed a large force in North Africa. Using that force, he moves against South America, taking Brazil. From there, he can either 1- Fragment his forces, using smaller forces to take Peru, Argentina, and Venezuela, or 2- Keep his forces massed, and move all but the required one piece into one of the other territories.
What he cannot do is take Brazil, move to Venezula, and then once more hop into Central America.
The Blitz Rule makes for long games, and using this varient makes Austrlia key.
Some other house rules we have implemented (all due to the consequences of the Blitz Rule) are no more than 50 troops per territory, and when using the escallating card a turn in, once you have reached the end of the board (or 65 troops, if not using a marked board) numbering, the sequences starts over (simulating a collapse of the global infrastructure from continued warfare).
I am willing to answer any and all questions on this variant, if anyone has any.
Man, I wish I could find some folks to play with out here.
In my 40th Anniversary edition, they are not connected, nor is there a dashed line between them. However, in the map on the Hasbro website, they are.
When it comes to Risk, I find you can accomplish more with a good strategy and a bunch of sixes than you can with a good strategy.
True, but my strategy has to allow for the 1s and 2s I usually get.
Tristan, when I played in high school, we used a very similar rule. It gives a lot more strategic flexibility than the official free move rule.
I was sure that East Africa and the Middle East were connected, since East Africa is the one territory in Africa adjacent to every other territory, and thus a prize.
I can say that in the Mac version of the game, Kenya and Arabia are definitely connected.
One of my officemates always insists upon taking Arabia, no matter the cost, claiming that it gives him control of the world’s oil, and hence the world. Oddly, he usually seems to win, too.
And it’s definitely not a great idea to rely upon Australia. You can’t go anywhere from there. And “just get a card every turn” is not that easy to do, from Australia: After you take the two countries which border Siam, your opponents can just not bother to take them back, forcing you to split your defenders in two (at which point you might as well be in South America) if you want to continue to earn cards.
I’ve been playing Risk online at a site called warfish.net (which I don’t particularly recommend, but it’s ok) with some friends.
I’ve won 5 of the 9 games we’ve played (5 or 6 player games). Some of them were with classic rules on the classic map, some were on a different map, some were with different rules. I won all three of the original rules/original map games we played.
I won 2 starting from S. America and going through N. America. I won one of them starting from Africa (not my first choice, but it was random initial placement, and I had no troops in the Americas). While Australia is very good, too many people know that. You want to secure a continent as soon as possible, which means you want one you won’t have to fight over much. The other main strategy that I used was to pay close attention to how many cards each player has, and attack when you can eliminate someone. I won two of the three games by turning in cards for 8 or so armies, attacking one player to get their cards, turning in for 10, attacking another player to get their cards, turning in for 12 and 14, and just winning outright.
An important thing to remember is that the odds favor the attacker when attacking 3 dice to 2. So, if you’ve got a bunch of guys in a standoff against another bunch of guys, attack into them to reduce their numbers more than yours.
heresy! Nothing like the metal pieces on the Aniversay edition. It makes the game real.
At any rate, Australia has the problem that there is always someone else who wants it besides you. It always turns into a game of chicken and there you have the first two guys who get eliminated. South America is king of starter continents.
We always played with the rule that there could be no more than 12 armies per territory at a time. Made for some long games, with every country maxed out. I’ve won more games using N America as a base, because it’s worth 5 extra armies per turn, and only three points it can be attacked from. Yeah, I’ve played me some Risk.
Agreed. I always try to start with South America.
I played Risk on a Mac back in college with friends, and almost always won.
I played on a board just recently over the holidays, and beat three friends. They were all fighting to get Australia and pieces of the other continents. I got S. America right off the bat, and took North Africa and Central America on my first move. A few moves later, I had only one army on each of my S. American territories, and all of my reinforcements that I’d acquired going to N. Africa and Central America.
Everyone else was too weak to take on those two countries, and by the time I broke out of S. America, I was strong enough to take all of N. America.
I actually took Australia last, which is usually how it goes with my games. I ended up with something like 180 armies on Siam, all the while insisting that “the Siamese are peaceful people–they have no quarrel with Australia.” Despite the Siamese best efforts at diplomacy, the Australians attacked for some reason, so my armies were forced to pacify this last corner of the world. 