Since the John Cleese thread was becoming derailed by Risk, I decided to start my own thread about the game. First of all, the game is so addictive it should be outlawed, and is the first board game I've played that's made me swear at the other players.

But it's always fun when you win!

So what are your strategies? I personally always like to get Australia early on, because it's easy to defend and guarantees you 2 armies at the beginning of each round, which can be quite helpful during the early stages of the game. I also like to withhold a set of risk cards until everyone else has turned their's in and thus get more reinforcements!

Finally, have you ever seen how many troops you can get on Iceland before they spill into the North Sea? :p

Whoever controls Madagascar, will control the world.

Seriously...

Oh, and what's the most mind-blowing victory you've ever had or witnessed? Most armies in one game/territory?

Well, it was a 4 man free for all. It came down to me and a friend, each with well over 200 armies in one country. He was protecting the entrence to austrailia, and I was attacking it. Well, let's just say that taking each one of those territories took well over half an hour each. I had to use toys and such to represent 25, 50 and 100 armies. The reason we had so many was because we didn't limit the bonus from trading in cards >_>

Our Risk games ceased to be about playing the boardgame and begame ego struggles involving Byzantine power politics.

In our most memorable game, poor Kaiser Grismath was almost beaten to submission back down to one German territory and declared neutrality. The powers of the world had pretty much united to wage war on some manipulating fiend, and they had gotten him down to one territory as well, bordering Germany. He had cards to cash in on his next turn, however, that would make him once again a formidable foe to the balance of power, and only one player was left to go before him: me.

The unholy alliance urged me to deal the killing blow on the terms of my nation's survival, so the German armies marched forth for the first time in a while and won the day. Luckily for Kaiser Grismath, this fellow's cards rolled over to me, and before anyone could stop me, I was master of a black fortress Europe.

My hordes stood ready to sweep out over the world, as I had forged a non-agression pact with America and had started colonizing North Africa and the Urals, but it was really late, so we decided to sleep on it. Unfortunately, we were camping and the Risk board was next to my bed.... when I woke up, I was ON Europe and all the armies were scattered off the face of the planet.

I am the only one I know who enjoys risk, so I never get to play it. I'm sure if I played it more when I was young, I'd be at least half decent at RTS games. Instead I just play them for fun, because I will NEVER be good at them. Ever.

My victories have been relatively non mind-blowing, but I did have a crazy defeat once...

I had started in Australia, and was working my way up through Asia. Victory seemed certain, but then one of the girls yelled out "Aaron's the biggest threat, so go after him!" Damn her soul to Hades! Mark, who was a tool of this particular girl, proceeded to tear into me from above. It didn't seem like a big deal, since I outnumbered him at least 4 to 1......but the ******* rolled 5 sixes in a row! Sufficed to say, my army was decimated, and I was no longer a superpower.

Good times, still.

ah, the face that launched a thousand d6...

I always find it's a good strategy once you control a whole continent to take one territory out as a buffer zone. leave one unit in the buffer territory, and put your main mass of forces in the territory just behind that. this accomplishes two things. first it keeps your opponents from getting a continent bonus, and second it protects your own continent bonus, because once they've attacked and taken your "buffer" territory, you come back on your next turn with youre main force and take it back. they never begin a turn with the full continent and you never begin your turn without yours.

But what if they massed an equally ugly force on their side of the buffer, took it, then proceeded to wreak havoc on your main continent? I agree that it's good to have a continent and then some, but I try to keep my forces at the farthest reaches possible without exposing a weak flank. For example: taking North America and the top of South America, then putting the bulk of troops in South America.

Risk: Godstorm > Risk

:em321:

[QUOTE=Glyde Bane]Well, it was a 4 man free for all. It came down to me and a friend, each with well over 200 armies in one country. He was protecting the entrence to austrailia, and I was attacking it. Well, let's just say that taking each one of those territories took well over half an hour each. I had to use toys and such to represent 25, 50 and 100 armies. The reason we had so many was because we didn't limit the bonus from trading in cards >_>[/QUOTE]

When I play, we usually have no more than 12 men in a territory. There's a little more strategy involved when you aren't trying to out number your opponents.

Same here. We never have more than 12 per territory. It forces people to distribute their forces a bit more.

Btw, has anyone played that newish Risk computer game (I say newish, as in the last couple of years). I had the first one, but it was horrbily old. Is the new one any good?

That's why you have your main force there. They can't get through. They take the buffer territory, and if they have a large force massed behind and are somehow able to push it forward far enough to attack that same turn, they come right up against your main force. I admit if they manage to get past that, then you're pretty much screwed, but it's not like you can do anything about that. It's very unlikely that they'd ever make it past your main army.

Axes & Allies > RISK

But RISK is still a kickass game, just nobody wants to play me

Risk is for the unimaginative. Play Diplomacy instead. :p

lol, that's the most confusing game ever invented.

Yeah, and probably intentionally so.

True dat!

Diplomacy is better than Risk.

There's no chance factor, a turn takes 35 minutes, and an average game lasts eight hours.

except you have to have a masters degree with a joint major in logic and video game etiquette in order to play it.

No you don't

They have one thing in common, however:

Both involve the sweeping black armies of Kaiser Grismath!


*shakes fist* I may be the old sick man of europe now, but I can still write pamphlets!

My greatest risk victory was when I wasn't even playing at all and somebody quit. He had been backed down into Australia and had one little territory left in North America. The other three world powers decided to have mercy on me and let me just sit in Australia as long as I attacked no one... needless to say, after several turns I had amassed a formidable force. I allied myself with one of the major powers and served as his minion to overthrow Asia and Africa. It was then that I turned on him and was able to become the victor.

You sir need to run for president

You'd expect that most major nerds have played risk. Unfortunately I haven't (I've played riskopoly though), but I still joke about risk all the time. I once wrote a story about the UN settling all controversies over a game of risk. The main point of the story was that the winner of the game would become a world dominating empire. Later my friend told me the moral of the story was "don't play risk".

Riskopoly... A game I once played at a party. This game is basically a conglomerate of risk and monopoly. Both of these games take astronomical ammounts of time to play. We played for hours and got around the board maybe 2.5 times. I had to leave the party eventually. When I left we took a picture of the board in hopes of, oneday, finishing the game. I doubt it will happen... Well anyway. There's my worthless two cents. Hope you enjoy.

Anyone played Star Wars Risk?
It's not like monopoly where all theyve done is change the names, its got its own set of rules.
But my freinds and I decided those rules were pretty screwed up, so we made our own rules instead and put in hero units who had force moves

This we only did just last week, about a week after we had played Risk for the first time ever.

I played Risk all the time when I lived in the dorms, especially freshman year. My friends and I managed to get the game down to about 90 minutes, max. The key was to get Australia every time. Eventually, it would get to the point where there's two players left, and one man on each country except for two giant armies amassed somewhere. If the first guy didn't manage to take the board in his turn, the second guy was almost guaranteed the win, especially if he had cards to turn in. Though I've seen a game go on for several turns with each player taking almost the whole board each turn, but failing to get a couple of countries each time.

I have also been the subject of much cursing due to my tendencies to roll 6's several times in a row. I have had powers that be invoked in my name by my friends during their battles as well. Pretty funny.

Yeah, I always hated when the entire world would swap hands every turn, and it really came down to whoever rolled better on offense to get those last couple territories.