Introduction

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."

Abraham Lincoln

Risk is a game of strategy. It is one the most flexible and abstract games. Once played, it leaves the player a very long lasting effect. Risk is a game about war, but even more so about diplomacy, politics, alliances and sometimes simple brute force. The game itself is usually played using a Risk set with the card-board map of the world.

Initially, Risk may seem to have many complex and detailed rules. However, after a couple of times of playing, the game tends to become obvious and the rules self-explanatory. Unfortunately or fortunately there are many different set of rules for risk as there are countries on this planet! In the end, it is a matter of taste and past experience to choose a particular set of rules. Depending on the rules used, the game might last very short or very long.

The set of rules that I use are based on the classic game. The target for each player is to conquer the entire world to win. It usually takes 3 or 4 hours to play but this depends on the number of players as well.

I have divided the guide into two three main parts:

·        A guide for beginners. The beginners guide concerns the tactical side of the game. It covers the usual techniques used in the game and is essential to know if anyone wants to win the game.

·        A guide for more advanced players. The advanced guide concerns the strategic goals of the game. This part is intended for players who are experienced and are now seeking to find more elaborate schemes to defeat the enemies.

·        Diplomacy. This guide addresses the advanced issues in regard with diplomacy: The art of winning the game without the use of brute force.

This guide in general addresses the issues encountered for a player that dreams to conquer the world. The differences between different set of rules could be ignored since the strategy would roughly apply to any set of rules in this game.

I assume that the reader is already familiar with some set of rules and knows the basic principles of the game. Knowing the Risk world map (or having it in front of you) will help in following this guide.

The rules 

In this section the rules of the game that I use are explained. Many variations exist for Risk, though my favourite is as follows: The rules are based on the classic game which is to conquer the whole world. I use the standard map and also most of the classic game rules.

In the first stage of the game countries are chosen one by one by each player until all the countries are divided between players. This will then continue until the correct number of armies are placed on the board (depends on the number of players).

Hence, countries are not divided between the players in a random order. In practice this helps the players in forming their strategies right from the beginning of the game and adds a lot of fun as well since some players may try to compete with each other right from the beginning. It also gives you a chance to see what everyone is after and you can then plan ahead to see which players you may be confronted with in later stages of the game.

The attack and fortification stages of the game give a lot of flexibility to the player. When a player conquers a country, he/she can move as much armies as one likes to the conquered country. The player can also attack as many times and with whatever armies as one likes during the turn.

As for the cards, if a player conquers at least one country in one turn, the player gets a maximum of one card. For cashing them, the first person who has the set would get 4 and the next player with a set would get 6 and then 8 and so on. If the cards are finished, they would be shuffled and reused again. Experience shows that with this rule the game usually finishes before the cards are finished which is just about the right time.

At the start of the turn, if a player owns any countries marked on the cards, he/she can place two extra armies only into those particular countries, irrespective of the other armies the player may collect. This means that some player might decide not to cash their bonus card, so to keep the cards and collect these extra armies for the specific country. The random presence of some breeding armies on the map adds a lot more fun to the game. Notice that this is slightly different from the classic version.

After the attack stage, fortification is carried out. The fortification allows a player to move any number of armies from only one country to another one country only once, provided that those countries belong to the player and also they are connected to each other by countries that belong to the same player. This could only be done after the attack is finished, and basically is the preparation move for the next turn.

When a player is wiped out of the game, the conqueror will get the cards. If by this, the total number of cards exceeds 4, then the player should immediately cash a set of cards for the current bid and place them onto the map. The player can continue attacking other players after placing the armies. This is why, getting rid of a player towards the end of the game becomes extremely lucrative. This rule also serves to shorten the game. After all nobody wants to play a very long boring game only to loose!