Ok, ok, one month is better than three, right?
When last I showed my face around this blog we were talking about RISK Legacy. The promise of the game is that each time you play the game changes irrevocably in new and exciting ways. It's interesting territory, stuff that I haven't really seen games doing before. So I'd been waiting to play the game for a couple months before we finally got a chance to.
Dramatis Personae:
Havoc Jack, playing myself
Barbarossa
Zerg_Rush
Napoleon
The game comes with five factions, so maybe if we had been able to rustle up a fifth conspirator that'd've been better, but you go to war with the generals you have. Or something. We divided factions between ourselves.
Each faction starts with a special power. Which you have to choose from two. Then you physically peel the sticker off of the card it comes on and place it onto the faction's card. So, for example, Die Mechaniker (which, for those of you who don't "spreckinze Deutsch" is German for "The Mechaniker"), they get to treat the space with their headquarters as fortified. That is, they get a bonus on their dice rolls when defending home. Oh yeah, you get a headquarters when you start the game, to place on a space of your choice. I went with Russia, recently upgraded from being Ukraine on previous boards. The board itself starts the same as standard RISK. It doesn't stay that way for long.
In the game we each also got scar cards, at first they're just two types; a space gets declared "fortified" by putting a bunker scar on it; that gives all defenders +1 on their higher die roll. Or you can have a space with an Ammo Shortage on it, which gives it a -1 to it's defense instead. In the first game, due to a border war I was having with Barbarossa Brazil got the fortification and North Africa the Ammo Shortage. Each player gets one scar per game to place on the board (provided there are enough scar cards left) and each territory can have only one scar. They remain on the board permanently, affecting future games.
To cut to the chase, Napoleon took this one down. He owned Australia. He got to sign the board (They provide 15 lines for signiatures), and he founded a major city (Erik's Land) in Greenland, because he he heh, those suckers are gonna be soo cold. I founded the city of Scandiland in Scandinavia, Barbarossa founded Jaynestown down in Argentina, and I can't quite recall which town Zerg_Rush founded. Possibly the Prussian Consulate in Siam, but maybe that happened in a later game. There are other options for changing the board at the end, (in a later game, which Zerg_Rush won, he renamed North America to "Twelvepakistan". Or you can choose to upgrade a territory card; upgraded cards count as multiple when trading in cards for armies.)
Anyways, with the first game over there are some changes. Cities on a territory mean that the territory is worth 2 or 3 for purposes of counting for armies at the start of your turn. So if I held Scandiland it'd be worth two and Erik's land worth three. And Napoleon gets a missile instead of a red star. The stars act as victory points; if you control four you win the game. You start with one if you haven't signed the board yet (that is, if you haven't won a previous game), and controlling someone else's headquarters counts as one, and you can get them in other ways. By giving Napoleon the missile (which can be used once a game to change one die roll into a six) you make it harder for him to win in the next game.
So we played the next game. Barbarossa took this one down, (holding S. America), and put up a major city in Russia, named Syktyvkr. (This is a running joke from our playing of Russian Rails, basically that any word with eight consonants in a row doesn't deserve to be pronounced correctly. I'm looking at you Kyrgyzstan. So we tend to pronounce it something like "Skeer-ki-veer-ki-verk-i-gard." Or something longer.) And the game evolved more.
In the box they have some cards blocked off in containers with tantalizing instructions. "Don't open until all the minor cities have been placed." "Don't open until a faction has been eliminated." "Don't open until the world capital has been founded." (How do you open the world capital? It must be in one of those containers.) And my personal favorite. "Don't open. Ever."
After the fourth game we were able to open three of them. In the fifth game we had one faction with another special power (having gained one from being eliminated) and a couple new scar types. Due to repeated provocations by Napoleon, who somehow tends to end up down there, Barbarossa scarred West Australia with a toxic waste dump that removes one army from that space every time he takes a turn. Essentially it means that holding the continent is only worth one extra army, a change I think we can all get behind.
So after five games what does the world look like? It's surprisingly more populous; there are cities all over Southeast Asia, various scars all up and down South America, a continent renamed, and five signatures on the board.
Napoleon
Barbarossa
Zerg_Rush
Napoleon
Zerg_Rush
Yeah, I'm still irked by that.
So what about the game from a design perspective?
Interesting.
So, I really like the idea of future games proceeding from the way the first one changes. Or, more generally, games that take more into account than the movement of pawns on the board. Richard Garfield's quest to make a game larger than the box it comes in is what gave birth to Magic.
Speaking of Magic, you've got to be careful treading in these grounds. You know how they did a parody set called Unglued? Well, you know what the two least popular cards from that set were? Blacker Lotus and Chaos Confetti. You know what those two cards have in common? Yeah, they both refer to Alpha cards*, but really what I'm saying is they both require you to tear them up to play it. People don't like getting rid of perfectly good stuff. I know I was unhappy to toss away the cards with one sticker still on them, one special ability never to be played. We even went so far as to look up the price of multiple copies of this game in case we wanted to play through it again. Beyond my price range.
Another concern with the game is, once we're past 15 plays, will we be able to continue to play the game? Probably, but if it's still changing at that point it'll only change for the worse. One of the options you have if you win the game is you can tear up a territory card. Literally tear it up. No word as to whether you need to sprinkle it over your opponent's permanents... anyway. You can make them better if you lose a game, so taking that option if you win (instead of renaming a continent, founding a major city, or raising or lowering the army bonus of a given continent) helps you control an out of control territory card. But if you play the game an infinite number of times (in this case, infinity is probably close to 40) you'll run out of territory cards.
Using stickers to modify your cards is probably the best way to handle that, but it does make them harder to shuffle.
How do we manage a play group? Taking the life of the game as fifteen games, it looks like we're going to keep on with the same four players throughout. Most games we invite people over to play, let them play, let them see how things are going, etc. In this one? I sort of want to keep the same group together, because it feels like the 15 games are really all part of one larger one.
Anything else? I think the changes could be a bit more radical. That is, I don't think they're doing enough to change the game. Or maybe I've got enough lingering resentment for how RISK worked beforehand that I could use more change. Still, it'd be nice to see "Nuclear Wasteland: Remove Great Britain from the board." You could print a "cover this up with a sticker" sticker large enough while still fitting it on those cards.
Even so, I'm still pretty happy with the game. Odds are I'll steal some of it's ideas in the future.
If we go 15 games without opening it, I'm cracking the "don't open. ever" pack.
*Hanging Asterisk. I don't see a good place around the web to link to for the chaos confetti legend, so this is a reminder for me to write it up someday.
Showing posts with label RISK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RISK. Show all posts
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
RISK and its updates
Let's talk about RISK. You've played RISK, right? Everybody has. You take your armies and you conquer the world, only someone backstabs you and it all ends in tears. I've even talked about it once or twice on the blog here.* I've played a lot of RISK, probably running the gamut of potential game states. I've played innumerable games, including the time I brought it winter camping with the boy scouts. I've made alliances and nonagression pacts, been backstabbed, broken up other people's alliances, had bitter arguments over the rules and the terms of agreements. I kicked the board over once when I got eliminated on the first turn. I've played once on a double world with two boards, and I even organized my own RISK tournament. (Napoleon won. Oh, don't bother sending in for their tournament information; it's useless. The only thing I learned from it was that the proper spelling of RISK is in all caps.)
Given my longstanding connection to the game, it might come as a surprise when I tell you that the game sucks. Ok, not that much of a surprise, it's not like i didn't foreshadow it by telling you I'd be surprising you. But back to the point. Judging by the standards of today and the other war games you can find on the market, it's a wonder that anyone plays the game at all. Quick rundown of the problems with it:
-Australia. Friggen Australia. You get someone set up there and it becomes prohibitively expensive to go in and root them out. Meanwhile they're getting extra armies every turn.
-The cards. In the long term, it doesn't matter what else you do, the cards is all that matters.
-Diplomacy. I gotta say, I learned a lot of things about negotiations from this game. Trouble is, a lot of those lessons came via harsh penalties; you table talk because if you don't you're screwed. You don't form alliances because if you do, they screw you. You don't break a promise because that's a great way to lose friends. In a permanent sense.
-Only one kind of unit. Makes the strategies pretty straightforward.
That'll do, for now. The point is, while RISK was innovative and exciting when it was introduced what, seventy years ago? Game technology has moved on since then. You've got dozens and dozens of more modern war and strategy games that are a lot more interesting to play. There's a reason why we never seem to stop talking about Axis and Allies here. So why do we still play RISK?
Because everybody plays RISK. Everybody's got at least a passing familiarity with the game. So if you're forced to socialize with those long lost cousins, and they're having trouble coming to grips with the fact that you don't go to the bars for a good time, instead you stay up all night pretending to be a wizard or some such, well, it's something that they'll play. And it does have some merits. I griped about only one kind of unit above; inasmuch as that bothers me as an advanced gamer, the simple rules structure that that entails makes it a lot easier to play with just about anybody. The fact that at least one of them has probably played RISK before is also huge; it's always harder to get your foot in the door with an unknown anything; it's why I've played so many Axis and Allies franchise games, it's why comic book movies are the thing this decade, and it's why when I go to the grocery store and want pickles, I pick up Vlasic ones. Not because I know anything about pickles, but because I've seen their adds before and the comforting warmth of already knowing the brand name is enough to steer me in their direction. I hate advertising so much.
That brand name recognition is huge in terms of marketing the game. RISK is never going to leave the Walmart shelves because of that. Supposing your nephew is turning eight. You don't know a thing the kid, so what do you get him? Maybe you want to get him a game. If you know absolutely nothing about board games you wander into the toy aisle and look at the familiar names, and get him one at random. You pick one you recognize, maybe you dimly remember playing twenty, thirty years ago. What did you pick up? Monopoly. Or Clue. Or RISK. Maybe Yahtzee. Scrabble is for a more mature audience. You know- when they're old enough to snigger endlessly about spelling out dirty words. But back to the point; these games generate huge amounts of revenue for the companies that publish them.
So we've got a cycle going on; kid plays RISK, kid grows up, kid buys RISK for his kids. And while the player base is large enough that you can get steady revenue from this cycle, well, wouldn't it be better if you could turn these kids into true gamers, people who will shell out again and again for your games? To that end, Parker brothers, or Hasbro, or whomever, anyways, they've been publishing variants on RISK to patch up some of the rules, and to hopefully convert their occasional customers into more steady sales.
The first one of these that I ever played was called RISK 2210. "OK, so, you're in the future, right? You fight with giant robot armies. And you get generals with special powers and stuff. Oh, and you can conquer the moon."
Conquering the moon is one of my longstanding goals.
Later I got to play RISK Godstorm. In this one you're in the ancient world, and you summon gods. Which interact much like the generals. Come to think of it, it's suspiciously similar to RISK 2210. Anyways, in this one when your armies die, they get sent to the underworld, where you get to fight it out. When they die there? Then they're really dead.
I gotta admit, being able to sink Atlantis is pretty cool.
While these games are all right, they haven't exactly revitalized my interest in the brand. Sure, I'll play them, but they aren't exactly as exciting as I'd like.
Now, now a new one comes along. RISK Legacy. This one promises that the game will change, irrevocably, depending on how it's played. Interesting. I wonder how they'll do that. Or at least I wondered. I'm five games in now, and some interesting things have gone down. But I've spent too much time yammering about RISK in general, so I'll talk about that. Next post. Which won't take three months, I swear.
*For the people who are bored enough to click and are still curious, I haven't gotten much further with my Markov Chains. I've done some fiddling with simulations rather than actual solutions, which has met with limited success. Unfortunately, I don't trust computer simulations almost at all.
Given my longstanding connection to the game, it might come as a surprise when I tell you that the game sucks. Ok, not that much of a surprise, it's not like i didn't foreshadow it by telling you I'd be surprising you. But back to the point. Judging by the standards of today and the other war games you can find on the market, it's a wonder that anyone plays the game at all. Quick rundown of the problems with it:
-Australia. Friggen Australia. You get someone set up there and it becomes prohibitively expensive to go in and root them out. Meanwhile they're getting extra armies every turn.
-The cards. In the long term, it doesn't matter what else you do, the cards is all that matters.
-Diplomacy. I gotta say, I learned a lot of things about negotiations from this game. Trouble is, a lot of those lessons came via harsh penalties; you table talk because if you don't you're screwed. You don't form alliances because if you do, they screw you. You don't break a promise because that's a great way to lose friends. In a permanent sense.
-Only one kind of unit. Makes the strategies pretty straightforward.
That'll do, for now. The point is, while RISK was innovative and exciting when it was introduced what, seventy years ago? Game technology has moved on since then. You've got dozens and dozens of more modern war and strategy games that are a lot more interesting to play. There's a reason why we never seem to stop talking about Axis and Allies here. So why do we still play RISK?
Because everybody plays RISK. Everybody's got at least a passing familiarity with the game. So if you're forced to socialize with those long lost cousins, and they're having trouble coming to grips with the fact that you don't go to the bars for a good time, instead you stay up all night pretending to be a wizard or some such, well, it's something that they'll play. And it does have some merits. I griped about only one kind of unit above; inasmuch as that bothers me as an advanced gamer, the simple rules structure that that entails makes it a lot easier to play with just about anybody. The fact that at least one of them has probably played RISK before is also huge; it's always harder to get your foot in the door with an unknown anything; it's why I've played so many Axis and Allies franchise games, it's why comic book movies are the thing this decade, and it's why when I go to the grocery store and want pickles, I pick up Vlasic ones. Not because I know anything about pickles, but because I've seen their adds before and the comforting warmth of already knowing the brand name is enough to steer me in their direction. I hate advertising so much.
That brand name recognition is huge in terms of marketing the game. RISK is never going to leave the Walmart shelves because of that. Supposing your nephew is turning eight. You don't know a thing the kid, so what do you get him? Maybe you want to get him a game. If you know absolutely nothing about board games you wander into the toy aisle and look at the familiar names, and get him one at random. You pick one you recognize, maybe you dimly remember playing twenty, thirty years ago. What did you pick up? Monopoly. Or Clue. Or RISK. Maybe Yahtzee. Scrabble is for a more mature audience. You know- when they're old enough to snigger endlessly about spelling out dirty words. But back to the point; these games generate huge amounts of revenue for the companies that publish them.
So we've got a cycle going on; kid plays RISK, kid grows up, kid buys RISK for his kids. And while the player base is large enough that you can get steady revenue from this cycle, well, wouldn't it be better if you could turn these kids into true gamers, people who will shell out again and again for your games? To that end, Parker brothers, or Hasbro, or whomever, anyways, they've been publishing variants on RISK to patch up some of the rules, and to hopefully convert their occasional customers into more steady sales.
The first one of these that I ever played was called RISK 2210. "OK, so, you're in the future, right? You fight with giant robot armies. And you get generals with special powers and stuff. Oh, and you can conquer the moon."
Conquering the moon is one of my longstanding goals.
Later I got to play RISK Godstorm. In this one you're in the ancient world, and you summon gods. Which interact much like the generals. Come to think of it, it's suspiciously similar to RISK 2210. Anyways, in this one when your armies die, they get sent to the underworld, where you get to fight it out. When they die there? Then they're really dead.
I gotta admit, being able to sink Atlantis is pretty cool.
While these games are all right, they haven't exactly revitalized my interest in the brand. Sure, I'll play them, but they aren't exactly as exciting as I'd like.
Now, now a new one comes along. RISK Legacy. This one promises that the game will change, irrevocably, depending on how it's played. Interesting. I wonder how they'll do that. Or at least I wondered. I'm five games in now, and some interesting things have gone down. But I've spent too much time yammering about RISK in general, so I'll talk about that. Next post. Which won't take three months, I swear.
*For the people who are bored enough to click and are still curious, I haven't gotten much further with my Markov Chains. I've done some fiddling with simulations rather than actual solutions, which has met with limited success. Unfortunately, I don't trust computer simulations almost at all.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Markov Chains
Today we're going to talk about gaming theory. What we're going to do is try to solve games, or small portions of them. Some games can be solved completely. This isn't necessarily true with other games; either because they're computationally too difficult to master, or because there are elements which can't easily be reduced to equations. By and large though, I'm not interested in completely solving games; when you have a computer that will play the game for you then necessarily you're not playing the game, which isn't an outcome I'd like to end with. So I'm only going to attempt to solve bits of games.
We start with RISK. If I take one soldier and attack one soldier, what are my odds of winning? Two dice are rolled, one attacking and one defending. this gives us 36 possible outcomes:
Every (vertical) pair of dice gives you one possible pair of rolls. Each of these pairs has the same chance of occurring, and each one defines a winner on that roll. As ties go to the defender, everything on that center line (and everything below it) constitutes a kill for the defender, and everything above it a kill for the attacker. So your gladiator has a 15/36 (about 42%) chance of winning, and a 21/36 (about 58%) chance of dieing gloriously and pointlessly.
So there you go; pure math has taught you the same thing that you knew instinctively about 30 seconds after playing your first game of RISK. And it only took several times as long. If you're so inclined, you can work out similar dice arrays for 2v1, 3v1, 2v2 and 3v2 battles. It'll take you a while though. But you'll still be left with problems; what happens if you have seven attacking five? It won't be over in just one round, so you'll be left with a new problem. And you can't exactly map out a dice array to number that. Well, you could, but it'd get incredibly large and complicated. So to do things properly, we'd have to resort to the math.
No no, come back! I promise I'll only describe the math! Please?
The solution is to use Markov chains. It's a way of diagramming out these sequences of probabilistic events. Here, let me show you one:
Russian Roulette; a classicer example there isn't. Every time you spin your chamber you've got a one in six chance of finding the bullet with your name on it. As long as you don't, you stay in the alive state, once you do, you transfer to the dead state. Once you're dead, you don't go back to the alive state. Unless you're Hindu. And right. But back on track here, you can set up a matrix with representations of your states and the probability of transfer from one to the next, and use that matrix to answer questions. Questions like "How long will I keep spinning this damn revolver before something interesting happens?" Or more germane to the blog, questions like "If I invade Siam, will I win the battle and how many guys will I have left over afterwards?" That's the sort of answer that can help you win games.
So get out your graphing calculators and-- Just kidding. I won't make you do any of the math. The short version is that the numbers work out the same for most values of attacking and defending; you're favored on the attack when you're rolling all three dice, and that you want to hit single unit defenders as often as possible. In general, you'll lose one unit for every defending unit you kill when they're rolling two dice. Oh, and bring as many armies in as you can manage so you don't get pushed below three dice.
Again, these aren't that useful of revelations. You probably figured most of them out on your own playing the game. I mean, attack when you are strong where he is weak? That's out of frikken Sun Tzu. The really useful one is the losing one for one bit. I mean, I get that impression playing the game, but I only trust my impressions so far. So having actual numbers helps me plan that sort of battle accordingly. But the theory ought to give more interesting results in a different context. Say, Axis and Allies.
Talking with Barbarossa we discussed two hypothetical battles tonight.
1) Russia uses it's transport to sneak attack Germany: Battleship bombard, infantry, tank and fighter against three tanks. Who wins? How many units die?
2) Germany attacks a British cruiser and battleship with two subs, a fighter and a tactical bomber. What are the odds that Germany gets out of it without losing any air units?
And on and on. The major conflict of the game is based on stretching your resources as far as they can go without bursting them. (Oh, and storywise a little altercation called the Second World War) So if you could make and solve a matrix for these battles you could figure out much more precisely your odds, and hopefully give yourself an edge in future games.
I say that generally, because so far my attempts at building an algorithm have come to naught; there are vastly more potential game states with a given number of Axis and Allies units than with the homogenous RISK units.
I'll let you know if I figure anything out.
We start with RISK. If I take one soldier and attack one soldier, what are my odds of winning? Two dice are rolled, one attacking and one defending. this gives us 36 possible outcomes:
Every (vertical) pair of dice gives you one possible pair of rolls. Each of these pairs has the same chance of occurring, and each one defines a winner on that roll. As ties go to the defender, everything on that center line (and everything below it) constitutes a kill for the defender, and everything above it a kill for the attacker. So your gladiator has a 15/36 (about 42%) chance of winning, and a 21/36 (about 58%) chance of dieing gloriously and pointlessly.So there you go; pure math has taught you the same thing that you knew instinctively about 30 seconds after playing your first game of RISK. And it only took several times as long. If you're so inclined, you can work out similar dice arrays for 2v1, 3v1, 2v2 and 3v2 battles. It'll take you a while though. But you'll still be left with problems; what happens if you have seven attacking five? It won't be over in just one round, so you'll be left with a new problem. And you can't exactly map out a dice array to number that. Well, you could, but it'd get incredibly large and complicated. So to do things properly, we'd have to resort to the math.
No no, come back! I promise I'll only describe the math! Please?
The solution is to use Markov chains. It's a way of diagramming out these sequences of probabilistic events. Here, let me show you one:
Russian Roulette; a classicer example there isn't. Every time you spin your chamber you've got a one in six chance of finding the bullet with your name on it. As long as you don't, you stay in the alive state, once you do, you transfer to the dead state. Once you're dead, you don't go back to the alive state. Unless you're Hindu. And right. But back on track here, you can set up a matrix with representations of your states and the probability of transfer from one to the next, and use that matrix to answer questions. Questions like "How long will I keep spinning this damn revolver before something interesting happens?" Or more germane to the blog, questions like "If I invade Siam, will I win the battle and how many guys will I have left over afterwards?" That's the sort of answer that can help you win games.
So get out your graphing calculators and-- Just kidding. I won't make you do any of the math. The short version is that the numbers work out the same for most values of attacking and defending; you're favored on the attack when you're rolling all three dice, and that you want to hit single unit defenders as often as possible. In general, you'll lose one unit for every defending unit you kill when they're rolling two dice. Oh, and bring as many armies in as you can manage so you don't get pushed below three dice.
Again, these aren't that useful of revelations. You probably figured most of them out on your own playing the game. I mean, attack when you are strong where he is weak? That's out of frikken Sun Tzu. The really useful one is the losing one for one bit. I mean, I get that impression playing the game, but I only trust my impressions so far. So having actual numbers helps me plan that sort of battle accordingly. But the theory ought to give more interesting results in a different context. Say, Axis and Allies.
Talking with Barbarossa we discussed two hypothetical battles tonight.
1) Russia uses it's transport to sneak attack Germany: Battleship bombard, infantry, tank and fighter against three tanks. Who wins? How many units die?
2) Germany attacks a British cruiser and battleship with two subs, a fighter and a tactical bomber. What are the odds that Germany gets out of it without losing any air units?
And on and on. The major conflict of the game is based on stretching your resources as far as they can go without bursting them. (Oh, and storywise a little altercation called the Second World War) So if you could make and solve a matrix for these battles you could figure out much more precisely your odds, and hopefully give yourself an edge in future games.
I say that generally, because so far my attempts at building an algorithm have come to naught; there are vastly more potential game states with a given number of Axis and Allies units than with the homogenous RISK units.
I'll let you know if I figure anything out.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Tales of RISK
While poking through older files on my computer today I found this account. It tells of an unusual game of RISK, which predates the blog. Rather than, y'know, do actual work and write something up, I'm going to post it here. I'd say the names have been changed to protect the innocent, but there's a rather large assumption there. Matter of fact, I'm not entirely sure why the names have been changed.
The thing about RISK, it’s all about the cards. You might think that taking one extra country to deny Steve his fourth army next turn is sound strategy, but it hardly matters when Steve turns in cards, takes out John, turns in his cards and gets an extra seventy five armies. Even if he says “There’s nothing that can stop me now!”, well, there’s not much you can do to actually stop him.
I played in an awesome game of RISK today. Y’see, the guy in North America had to leave, so he went on one final rampage, which pushed me out of South America and weakened me in Asia. Since Napoleon was going next, and didn’t have to worry about that other guy anymore, he took me the rest of the way out. This put him up to eight cards, forcing him to turn in in the middle of his attack. He turned in cards, and got four armies. Four armies-- it was the first set of cards of the game.
Maybe I should start from the beginning.
There were four of us playing RISK. It’s been a while since we’ve played, having generally moved onto other games. I suppose a dramatis personae is in order. To my left is Barbarossa, I’ve known him from High School, and we’ve played many, many games of RISK together. Across from me is McClellan, a highschooler himself and currently an unknown quantity. To my right is Napoleon, so named for his proficiency at this game in years past; when in high school we organized a RISK tournament, Napoleon emerged victorious. Lastly is me, Havoc Jack, a man who talks entirely too much. Four players, thirty armies, shuffle and deal the cards, four piles of eleven. I got a pretty bad mix of countries; five in Asia, two in South America, two in Europe, Ontario, and one wild card. Barbarossa to my left got two in Australia and Siam, so he went the Aussie route. McClellan, after him had four or five in North America. Napoleon had North Africa, Egypt and East Africa, so he was building up in that continent. I put in enough to make sure I could take South America, without leaving so much in there that I’d lose if either of my more powerful neighbors wanted to take me out. The rest I spread over Asia and Europe.
When people first start playing RISK, they tend to go for continents. Two extra armies per turn buy you a significant advantage in the early to middle game. But these extra armies are dwarfed by the card turn ins that happen later in the game; two armies each turn for ten turns only nets you twenty armies, while a single set of cards late game is worth thirty, forty, fifty armies. So later on in their strategic development, people focus on staying alive, making sure nobody can gut them for their sweet, sweet cards. This game was odd in that, since people weren’t really worried about the number of armies that continents generated, people nobody did much in the way of continent breaking, so people actually got to use those extra armies.
See, I was in a pretty bad position; South America is a death trap. In the first turn, I took South America, Barbarossa took Australia and Napoleon took Africa. Naturally, I was the only one who didn’t manage to hold their continent. McClellan consolidated North America over the first couple turns. With strong North America and African neighbors, South America really doesn’t have the wherewithal to defend itself. The other option, taking Asia one neglected backwater at a time, mostly doesn’t work. For one thing, you’re not getting the whole continent. Australia always holds it’s army in Siam, and you won‘t lever them out of it. And you don’t want each and every player eyeing your seven armies a turn and deciding that you are winning. But the continent bonus isn’t the objective, the objective is to stuff yourself into enough nooks and crannies that you’re annoying to root out, and maybe hold enough countries to get four armies a turn. It’s possible to succeed with that strategy. It doesn’t help if you’re legitimately weaker than each other player, and that they’re all eyeing you to see if they can carve off a slice.
In the first couple turns, neither Africa nor Australia were strong enough to break into the other person’s continent and deny them the bonus armies, so the continents held. When McClellan finally unified North America, Napoleon decided he wasn’t going to play world police and unduly weaken himself by denying McClellan armies. Napoleon owned the most armies, and he was factoring in McClellan’s relative inexperience with the game (which, sad to say, by that point was obvious.) Barbarossa in Australia took a poke or two at America, but he couldn’t unseat McClellan. In the second round I had lost a significant force in South America (six armies without getting one kill!), and more armies in Asia just trying to get a card for the turn. I went from pretending to be weak so people would look the other way to actually being weak and desperately hoping that people look the other way. Not a good place to be. Still, I had my options.
When you’re in the position I was in, odds are you’ll be able to keep South America, less Venezuela or Brazil. Y’see, it’s in both Africa and North America’s best interest to leave you there; you provide a buffer against incursions by the other side, and having a little pocket of your guys there hedges against your annihilation. Since you obviously don’t threaten their empire, they’re in favor of that, since they want to knock you out and steal your cards yourself.
Then McClellan had to leave. Since it was his last turn, he went on one final rampage, kicking me out of South America and weakening me in Asia. Napoleon went next, and he had enough forces to take me out. So I handed my four cards over to him, bumping him up to eight, mandating a mid turn reinforcement, getting his four armies. All this had happened within the first five turns, that was the first card turn in. If he had gotten forty armies, he’d have taken out Barbarossa and won it right there, but he didn’t have the resources.
At this point Napoleon controls all of Africa, half of Europe and most of Asia. Barbarossa controls Australia, and Siam. More importantly, he’s got an army of about twenty units there, and four cards. McClellan controls Americas both north and south, some in Asia and the other half of Europe. Since he left, his forces degenerated into an inactive neutral side. Barbarossa can’t turn in cards, but he conquers into Africa.
What followed were a series of attempts by Barbarossa to break Napoleon in one or two turns before Napoleon turned in too many cards, and a series of attempts by Napoleon to try to break Barbarossa in one or two turns before Barbarossa turned in too many cards. Barbarossa would push Napoleon mostly out of Africa, Napoleon would push back at Australia, only to be stymied in Siam. In one memorable battle, Napoleon easily took down four of Barbarossa’s troops, but lost ten trying to pick off the last one. Ten! Roughly speaking, the odds of that happening are six in a million. If it hadn’t been for the escalating card values, it’d have settled down into a steady state of warfare eerily reminiscent of 1984. We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia.
In the end, it was the card reinforcements that ended the game; the incursions got deeper, the comebacks more dramatic. Napoleon got up to five cards, turned in, pushed Barbarossa back to one territory in the Australian outback, with one soldier left to defend it. One soldier attacking one soldier; Napoleon rolls a six, Barbarossa rolls a six! The day is saved, temporarily. Barbarossa turns in cards, rolls back Napoleon as far as Great Britain. Napoleon turns in cards, drops down to zero left, and rolls Barbarossa all the way up.
The final battles were dramatic, and this was one of the most memorable RISK games I’ve ever played, but the thing I keep coming back to was how little a difference the cards made for such a long time that game. Napoleon held Africa for four turns, netting him twelve armies, which outshone all but the last two sets of cards. The little things like taking that twelfth country so they don’t get a fourth army really did make a difference.
The thing about RISK, it’s all about the cards. You might think that taking one extra country to deny Steve his fourth army next turn is sound strategy, but it hardly matters when Steve turns in cards, takes out John, turns in his cards and gets an extra seventy five armies. Even if he says “There’s nothing that can stop me now!”, well, there’s not much you can do to actually stop him.
I played in an awesome game of RISK today. Y’see, the guy in North America had to leave, so he went on one final rampage, which pushed me out of South America and weakened me in Asia. Since Napoleon was going next, and didn’t have to worry about that other guy anymore, he took me the rest of the way out. This put him up to eight cards, forcing him to turn in in the middle of his attack. He turned in cards, and got four armies. Four armies-- it was the first set of cards of the game.
Maybe I should start from the beginning.
There were four of us playing RISK. It’s been a while since we’ve played, having generally moved onto other games. I suppose a dramatis personae is in order. To my left is Barbarossa, I’ve known him from High School, and we’ve played many, many games of RISK together. Across from me is McClellan, a highschooler himself and currently an unknown quantity. To my right is Napoleon, so named for his proficiency at this game in years past; when in high school we organized a RISK tournament, Napoleon emerged victorious. Lastly is me, Havoc Jack, a man who talks entirely too much. Four players, thirty armies, shuffle and deal the cards, four piles of eleven. I got a pretty bad mix of countries; five in Asia, two in South America, two in Europe, Ontario, and one wild card. Barbarossa to my left got two in Australia and Siam, so he went the Aussie route. McClellan, after him had four or five in North America. Napoleon had North Africa, Egypt and East Africa, so he was building up in that continent. I put in enough to make sure I could take South America, without leaving so much in there that I’d lose if either of my more powerful neighbors wanted to take me out. The rest I spread over Asia and Europe.
When people first start playing RISK, they tend to go for continents. Two extra armies per turn buy you a significant advantage in the early to middle game. But these extra armies are dwarfed by the card turn ins that happen later in the game; two armies each turn for ten turns only nets you twenty armies, while a single set of cards late game is worth thirty, forty, fifty armies. So later on in their strategic development, people focus on staying alive, making sure nobody can gut them for their sweet, sweet cards. This game was odd in that, since people weren’t really worried about the number of armies that continents generated, people nobody did much in the way of continent breaking, so people actually got to use those extra armies.
See, I was in a pretty bad position; South America is a death trap. In the first turn, I took South America, Barbarossa took Australia and Napoleon took Africa. Naturally, I was the only one who didn’t manage to hold their continent. McClellan consolidated North America over the first couple turns. With strong North America and African neighbors, South America really doesn’t have the wherewithal to defend itself. The other option, taking Asia one neglected backwater at a time, mostly doesn’t work. For one thing, you’re not getting the whole continent. Australia always holds it’s army in Siam, and you won‘t lever them out of it. And you don’t want each and every player eyeing your seven armies a turn and deciding that you are winning. But the continent bonus isn’t the objective, the objective is to stuff yourself into enough nooks and crannies that you’re annoying to root out, and maybe hold enough countries to get four armies a turn. It’s possible to succeed with that strategy. It doesn’t help if you’re legitimately weaker than each other player, and that they’re all eyeing you to see if they can carve off a slice.
In the first couple turns, neither Africa nor Australia were strong enough to break into the other person’s continent and deny them the bonus armies, so the continents held. When McClellan finally unified North America, Napoleon decided he wasn’t going to play world police and unduly weaken himself by denying McClellan armies. Napoleon owned the most armies, and he was factoring in McClellan’s relative inexperience with the game (which, sad to say, by that point was obvious.) Barbarossa in Australia took a poke or two at America, but he couldn’t unseat McClellan. In the second round I had lost a significant force in South America (six armies without getting one kill!), and more armies in Asia just trying to get a card for the turn. I went from pretending to be weak so people would look the other way to actually being weak and desperately hoping that people look the other way. Not a good place to be. Still, I had my options.
When you’re in the position I was in, odds are you’ll be able to keep South America, less Venezuela or Brazil. Y’see, it’s in both Africa and North America’s best interest to leave you there; you provide a buffer against incursions by the other side, and having a little pocket of your guys there hedges against your annihilation. Since you obviously don’t threaten their empire, they’re in favor of that, since they want to knock you out and steal your cards yourself.
Then McClellan had to leave. Since it was his last turn, he went on one final rampage, kicking me out of South America and weakening me in Asia. Napoleon went next, and he had enough forces to take me out. So I handed my four cards over to him, bumping him up to eight, mandating a mid turn reinforcement, getting his four armies. All this had happened within the first five turns, that was the first card turn in. If he had gotten forty armies, he’d have taken out Barbarossa and won it right there, but he didn’t have the resources.
At this point Napoleon controls all of Africa, half of Europe and most of Asia. Barbarossa controls Australia, and Siam. More importantly, he’s got an army of about twenty units there, and four cards. McClellan controls Americas both north and south, some in Asia and the other half of Europe. Since he left, his forces degenerated into an inactive neutral side. Barbarossa can’t turn in cards, but he conquers into Africa.
What followed were a series of attempts by Barbarossa to break Napoleon in one or two turns before Napoleon turned in too many cards, and a series of attempts by Napoleon to try to break Barbarossa in one or two turns before Barbarossa turned in too many cards. Barbarossa would push Napoleon mostly out of Africa, Napoleon would push back at Australia, only to be stymied in Siam. In one memorable battle, Napoleon easily took down four of Barbarossa’s troops, but lost ten trying to pick off the last one. Ten! Roughly speaking, the odds of that happening are six in a million. If it hadn’t been for the escalating card values, it’d have settled down into a steady state of warfare eerily reminiscent of 1984. We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia.
In the end, it was the card reinforcements that ended the game; the incursions got deeper, the comebacks more dramatic. Napoleon got up to five cards, turned in, pushed Barbarossa back to one territory in the Australian outback, with one soldier left to defend it. One soldier attacking one soldier; Napoleon rolls a six, Barbarossa rolls a six! The day is saved, temporarily. Barbarossa turns in cards, rolls back Napoleon as far as Great Britain. Napoleon turns in cards, drops down to zero left, and rolls Barbarossa all the way up.
The final battles were dramatic, and this was one of the most memorable RISK games I’ve ever played, but the thing I keep coming back to was how little a difference the cards made for such a long time that game. Napoleon held Africa for four turns, netting him twelve armies, which outshone all but the last two sets of cards. The little things like taking that twelfth country so they don’t get a fourth army really did make a difference.
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