so you’re playing Risk and it’s manual placements. where do you allocate most of your armies? it’s online so no peeking!
I always like trying to control N. America with its three easy to defend entry/exit points. Then, prepare to invade S. America which, when conquered, still leaves you with only three points you need to defend, and easy access to practically the whole map.
Oh, and here’s a good image of the map, for reference.
thanks! for manual placements i prefer hanging around in Asia and watching while the dust settles. North America is good to have but it’s usually too big to wrestle control earlier on, and you’re guaranteed at least one enemy right off the bat since South America would not be empty.
Every other time I start in Southeast Asia and go for the Australian Chokehold. The other half, I try something different and lose horribly.
I usually go for South America, then try to take and hold Africa. From there I try North America…
I always start out with a foothold in Yakutsk, although establishing a bastion in Australia as a fall back is a second strategy.
for the first 6 polls we have
one each on Ontario, Venezuela, Brazil, Middle East, Siam and Eastern Australia. that means the players in South America and Australia will kill each other while the other two can claim N. America and Europe without contest.
I like to start in South America. If I can take that continent then I try to hold North Africa and Central America to prevent anyone from holding the continents those territories belong to. Then I usually drop (and supply) an expeditionary force in either North America or Asia with an eye towards securing Alaska. Then, while holding Alaska, I try to sweep North America from Central America to Greenland. Then invade Kamchatka from Alaska, Iceland from Greenland and now no one can control Europe or Asia. Then just wait everyone out, while defending just three points. The only continent you aren’t either holding or preventing from being held is Australia but you are out-earning whoever holds that continent by seven to two armies per turn. Your three border territories also have the advantage of bordering eleven other territories making your obligatory one-invasion-per-turn-to-get-a-card move inexpensive enough to make that profitable.
My ideal game would be to take Australia early on then, using South East Asia as a base, build up on India, China and Mongolia. This leaves North America, Africa and Europe within striking distance, useful if it looks like another player looks like they’re going to gain control of one of them.
It doesn’t always pan out that way though…
Definitely my favourite boardgame.
Friend told me about a game of Risk he played in college back in the '70s - took all year. The only time they touched the dice was at the very beginning, to determine order of play. Thereafter, any time someone attacked, he and the defender would play a game of Stratego. The loser of the Stratego game took an army off the Risk board. If the attack involved crossing an ocean (say, Greenland to Iceland), they played Battleships. If the attacker lost at Battleships, he removed an army from the board; if he won, his armies successfully landed - and they played Stratego…
If Siam in your poll is S.E. Asia in the picture (it’s been a long time since I’ve played, so forgive me), I would dump a boatload on Siam.
I have used this strategy with success in almost every Risk game I remember, since holding into Australia always gives you two extra armies, right? And at the beginning of the game, if you have ten armies sitting there, you are guaranteed to hold onto that little corner of the board until someone gets around to try to take you out. And that usually takes a while, since Asia is the largest and one of the most difficult to hold (I say Europe and Asia are equally difficult), so most players I’ve encountered don’t challenge my death grip on Australia until much later in the game. This gives me an advantage in cards and armies during each turn, and permits me to focus on something else while ignoring my SE Asia stronghold.
PS. Is that a new board? Didn’t Ukraine exist where Russia is now?
My grandfather said he played the game with Hitler, and his strategy was always the same: try to hold onto Europe and North Africa while ignoring the West… Then, once he feels he has Europe and N. Africa under his conteol, he invades to the east, where his game always falters.
Funny, but he never seemed to learn from this.
My vote was for Indonesia. The problem with giving a definitive answer is that it always depends on who you’re playing and [del]how mentally fucking retarded[/del] how devious their strategy is.
With my group of nerds you always worried about the kamikaze attacks to spread themselves out across a continent with ‘1’ man borders, oblivious to the fact they would get conquered by the next guy hoarding over you. The safe strategy was to hover over, but not into Australia, collecting cards and just maintaining a nomadic army in Asia. And whenever Australia or Africa was looking weak…BOOM! Bite into the prey.
Yeah, that board is apparently taken from a screencap of the Risk game from EA’s pogo.com online gaming site. It was the best quality picture I was able to quickly find in a Google image search.
The wiki entry for Risk has a recreated map with the territories numbered and listed in an index. They note that:
So Ukraine is sometimes not only a.k.a. Russia, sometimes it’s a.k.a. Eastern Europe, as well.
I always try to take Australia early, since it’s easily defended, so it’s basically free armies for expanding into Asia with.
So, I’ll generally start in Indonesia and Aus until someone blocks my attempt to pre-game continent build, then concentrate on Indonesia and Eastern Australia (if that’s not where the blocker stuck his army - in which case I’ll usually build in New Guinea).
If you’ve got nothing but Australia, it’s a prison. The same bars that keep everyone else out, also keep you in, and eventually, someone will be powerful enough to bother with you. I’ll usually put one down in Australia just to keep anyone else from taking it (and maybe take it myself from there, if the other players are fool enough to let me), but I always make sure to have a significant presence somewhere else to attack from. My preferred start is South America, since it’s relatively easy to control, but still gives good options. Ideally, I’d then take North America, but other players will rarely allow that, so I usually end up going for Africa next instead.
I just want to add that I’ve been playing this freeware version of Risk (titled Conquest) for years. Registration gets you more maps and the ability to play on-line but the free version is still pretty entertaining even if the starting positions are always the same.
it’s been a long while since i played, but i strongly recommend http://www.conquerclub.com/. it’s an online multiplayer browser game and it lets you play up to 4 concurrent games for free with a ton of maps and game options. i would start a game if there’s interest but i’m not sure i should approach that black hole again. it starts out as 5 mins each day, but once you succumb and start more games…