The game Risk is all about what you are willing to risk while you attempt to take over the world. Risk is one of the classic board games beloved by teens, college students, and adults who are young and competitive at heart. It's a deceptively simple game of strategy and conquest that yields of hours of enjoyment.

The objective of the game is simple: take over the world! The world is divided into six continents with multiple countries. Between two to six players are needed to play a game. A card system is used to divvy up the world one country at a time. Each player starts with 40 armies and can place them, one at a time, amongst the countries that they start with. The cards are returned to the deck, after initial placement, to be used again as game play continues.

Once the map is populated with the starting sets of armies, the fun begins!

Combat between players is simple. One player attacks another from an adjacent country, using from one to three dice to represent an attack. The player with the higher scores during the attack will win that combat round (note that the defender can use fewer dice, but will prevail if they tie the attackers rolls.) Combat during the attack continues until one player either:

- defeats the other player and claims the captured country
- stops attacking to conserve armies due to their own losses
- chooses to stop attacking the other player.

If you capture at least one country during the game, you get a card from the deck, which you can use to get more armies at some future point in the game. Note that in addition to country names, these cards can have one of three symbols (a foot soldier, a calvary soldier, or a cannon) or can be a wild card that can represent any of the three symbols.

There is no question that the main tactic in this game is to capture other countries. In addition to the psychological advantage of capturing countries, you are able to get more additional armies per turn based on three factors:

- Everyone automatically gets three new armies per turn or one new army per three countries owned, whichever is greater.
- You get bonus armies per turn if you control one or more entire continents.
- If you have cards with three matching symbols or three different symbols, you can "cash" in the cards to get bonus armies. This becomes more and more valuable during the game because the starting "cash value" is 4 armies, but each successive "cash in" grows in increments of two, then five armies. At a late point in the game, you could "cash in" to get 30 or more armies!

Gameplay continues until one player conquers the world!

These are the basics of the game. The game can become more complex when players enter into alliances with each other to compete against the other players this adds a whole new level of complexity and excitement!

To conclude, if you ever feel ambitious and want a challenge, get a few friends together and play a game of Risk. It's loads of fun! Just don't take it too seriously, especially if your friends wipe you off the map. It's just a game!

Learn more about this author, Mark Dykeman.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about Board game reviews: Risk?
We want to hear your view. Write now!