Risk board game

At some point, it is likely one player will pull ahead of the pack. The only way to survive at this point as one of the weaker players is to forge an alliance. Forging alliances with other players is a tried and true Risk board game strategy, and honestly is where most of the fun of the game comes from.

Watching the alliances shift over the course of a game is always a wild ride. There can only be one winner in Risk, so every alliance is by nature a temporary one born from necessity or convenience. When somebody is clearly winning, players have a tendency to build alliances against them to bring them down to their level. It stands to reason that a good Risk strategy involves flying under the radar to avoid that result! You have to strike a careful balance of expanding aggressively, but not so aggressively that everybody at the table is looking at you sideways.

Sometimes you have to put everything on the line for a big pay out in a game of Risk. Not a good situation to be in! In this situation, when the moment is right, it might be a good idea to pull all your forces from one border for an all-out attack on the other depending on which neighbor is weaker. This will sacrifice your hold on South America, but you may gain a larger continent and free yourself from your isolated position.

The problem with a tried and true strategy is that as soon as it becomes well-known, it becomes useless. As an example: I read an interesting strategy where, rather than battle it out for the small starting continents of Africa, Australia, or South America you instead drop all your soldiers in Asia. Instead, let the others fight their battles for the smaller continents.

Conquer easy-to-take territories in Asia to gain your card each turn, and wait. For the base, you take the total number of territories you control, no matter where they are, and divide that number by 3.

Round down to a number and that is what you get with the minimum always being 3. Then you add your bonus points. These come from controlling one or more continents. You control a continent by having at least one troop in every territory of a particular content. Some are easier than others, like Australia is only four and has one way in so it is worth 2, while Asia has twelve territories and five ways in so if you can get that you get 7.

See Below. You combine your base and bonus troops and then add them to any territory you control in any combination. Put all in one or one if many different territories, or lots in one and a few in others.

It is up to you. Once your troops are out you move onto attack. You can attack as much or as little as you would like. You get a red attack die for as many people as you are attacking with up to three dice. So if you attack with 1 you get 1 die, 2 you get 2 die, 3 you get 3 die, 4 for you get 3 die, 5 you get 3 die, etc.

This is because you only attack with up to three at one time. It is the same with defending except it is only up to two instead of three. Once you determine your attack each player rolls their dice at the same time for that battle, the attacker with the red and defender with the blue. If it is the max three dice on two, each player takes their two highest rolls and compares them. The highest red goes against the highest blue, and the second highest red goes against the second highest blue.

Whoever has the highest number in each comparison wins the fight, but a tie is won by the defender this is what makes the 3 dice against two fair. So in this scenario, two troops will be lost because there are two battles. If red rolled 5, 4, 4 and blue rolled 5, 3, there would be a loss of one troop on each side because the 5 vs 5 blue wins tie and 3 vs 4 red wins for being higher.

You remove the lost troops and go again as long as the attacking player wants. This is where the most meat in how to play Risk lives. After you have decided to stop attacking you move into the final fortification stage. Here you get ONE move. You can move any amount of troops leaving at least one from a territory to one other connected territory. So you can move very far away as long as the start and end territory is connected by a string of places you control.

When your turn is done, if you successfully took over at least one territory that turn, you get to draw a risk Bonus Card. When you get enough of these, they give you big one time troop bonuses and what will eventually win you the game.

It is only ever one card, even if you took fifteen territories this turn, you just get one. These are so key, if you are not getting these every turn, you will lose. If there is one thing you should take away from this how to play Risk guide it is to do whatever it takes to get a bonus card every turn.

You may have noticed numbers around the edge of the board. This has to do with the bonus sets of troops you can get. You get these by collecting risk cards at the end of your turn the cards that have a territory and one of three army symbols. To get a bonus set of troops you need to turn in a set of three cards. A set is either 3 infantry, 3 cavalry, 3 cannons or one of each three.

Every time someone turns in a set, you move to the next number and a set gets you more troops. There are two wild cards that can be anything.

As you can see as you move out, those swings get huge. By around the 35 troop sets, people get enough to take everyone out. In order to control a continent you must occupy all the territories within it.

There is a chart in the lower left hand corner of the game board which defines the number of armies you receive per continent. Earning: At the end of a turn which resulted in gaining at least one new territory, you will earn at least one Risk card.

The goal of Risk cards is to collect a set of 3 cards: 3 cards of same design 3 infantry, 3 calvary, 3 artillery , one of each of the 3 designs, or any 2 plus a wild card. Full sets may be turned in at the beginning of your turn or you may wait. But, if you have 5 or 6 cards, you must trade in one set and the second one if it is full.

Trading in Cards for Armies: Matched sets may be traded in for more armies based on the total number of matches traded in. Keep matches face up under the board for quick reference. Following the sixth set, each additional match traded in is worth an extra 5 armies.

For example, the eighth set traded in gives you 25 armies. If any of the territories you occupy are depicted on one of the three cards you will receive an extra 2 armies.

Both armies must be placed in the respective territory. After positioning your armies you can choose to attack. The objective of attacking is to capture a territory by defeating all its occupying armies. Battles are fought by rolling the dice. If you do not wish to attack, pass the dice to the player on your left. You may, however, still fortify your position. You may end an attack or attacks at any time. If you have succeeded in capturing at least one territory, draw a Risk card from the draw pile.

No matter how many territories successfully captured, you can only draw one card per turn. Begin by announcing where you plan to attack and what territory you are attacking from.

Roll the dice against you opponent.