Risk

Woden

Hello folks, not sure if this is the right place but i'm away for the summer and a group of us have started playing risk, its good craic a lot of wheelin and dealin so to speak, just wondering do many others play? have you's any tips? or do you prefare other games like shogun perhaps (which i have just played once)?

cheers

data

Beruthiel

have you's any tips?

I have played it on occasion
my only tip is: don't drink while playing it

l3rian

Whats risk like?

I've played shogun total war, and the medievil versions, and really liked. Is it like them, without the battles?

amp

Risk is a game. This is Games. We do tend to focus on the electronic kind, but that's cos we're nerds.

I've played Risk before in various states but I don't remember ever finishing it, probably for the reasons Beruthiel has stated.

I also find dope doesn't help:

"No man I'm not going to invade you, lets just all like get along in harmony"

DeVore

Right. I am the Risk Master. Noone masters The Risk like I do! (/me just saw Jay and Silent Bob strikes back, in case you think I've gone nuts).

I've played Risk hundreds of times and the group I play with are past masters.

Firstly, the set up is important. If you get somewhere in Australia lump everyone you can there as soon as you can. Do it in such as way as to ensure you're opponents wont bother putting men there because of your existing forces.
Australia is the best continent, it is small, easily taken, and has only one entry point making it a fortress. True it gives the least bonus but any bonus at the start is huge.

The only other alternative if you dont get somewhere in Aus, is South America. Two entry points but more bonus.

Once the game starts... wipe out everyone else in your continent (Aus or South America) and lump all your men on the borders, leaving one man in each area thats not a border. With Aus this is fairly easy, with SA... you need to finish on one border and split your men over to the other border. Be careful you can end up in a dead-end and not be able to get your troops back to the borders.

Once you have nailed Aus you need to look at where you have countries left (your opponents will be wiping you out). From here it depends on the map. North America aint bad as it has only three entry points and is worth lots but takes a long time to conquer.... you can make an expedition north from Aus to it through Kamchatka.

General tips:

Make sure you get a card EVERY turn. The cash in's are vital. I dunno if you play escalating cashin's or set ones. Either way they are vital.
Eventually one player will become weak (there isnt enough for everyone to go around). Pick your moment, cash in your cards and wipe him out. Ideally when he has 5 cards . Take his cards ... rinse and repeat with the next biggest.... you should still have men left from the first cash in too.

If you're opponents take continents, make sure you break them if you can. You must deny them their bonus while keeping yours. Ideally you should get Aus first and still be near enough to compete for SA or NA or Africa. (Europe is too hard, and the USSR is so inconceivably hard I cant recall what its even called).

I cant stress it enough, getting 5 men a turn cos you own Aus instead of 3 is vital.

Good luck, let me know how you get on with those strategies!

DeV.

DeVore

oh yeah, one more thing:

Make pacts with your neighbours. If, for example you have NA and someone has SA. Make a non-aggression pact with your neighbour and leave one man each on the border country. This gives you more men to police your other border.

NA and SA typically have this agreement from the start.

At a suitable time for you (like when you have just cashed in and your border partner has been weakened severely on his well defended, other border) dump a load of men on the boarder and wipe the fncker out. No half measures, go all the way so he cant return the compliment.

When the loser looks at you with big puppy eyes and whines: "But, but, but... you said..."

Look at him directly in the eye and say:


"I lied."


DeV.

amp

I'm never playing Risk with you.

Ever.

Woden

Originally posted by Beruthiel
have you's any tips?

I have played it on occasion
my only tip is: don't drink while playing it

well theres been some of that going on but not much

thanks dev for the tips, yeah when we are playing australia is what people go for, i only had one man in there in the current game and went for not america then stuffed it and now i have most of asia (bar one) but i am thinly spread, may be able to hold all asia for next turn, i'll let you know how i get on though, i played a good game the other night holding on to europe and then laying the smackdown but there was only four in that game, theres five in this and its getting interesting.


Anyone else with tips feel free to share

Wolf

OZ piss! Dont bother ur hole with it. Unless your playing very good players its not worth it. You can only launch into asia from there and asia is very gay indeed.

Much better take south america you get more armies & from there take north america with extrem prejduce! The all you have to do is hold green land, alaska and brazil and you get lots of armies!!

Also from that position you can flood then flood into eroupe or better still into S.Africa and then consolidate again, after that you can do a pincer on europe.

Or forget all that and just back door it in to asia but only fools do that unless they are tryiny to gut rush Oz

On a parting shot............

Dev think your good?

The Wolf says 'Bring it'.










Sh!t what have I just done

Borzoi

After playing risk a half billion times, go out and buy Nuclear War (Flying Buffalo games I think, mail order is the best bet)

Now combine and playNuclear Risk


No more huge armies moving like a rolling mawl, there just too tempting for nukes. Much more fun, quicker too.

Zukustious

Originally posted by DeVore
oh yeah, one more thing:

Make pacts with your neighbours. If, for example you have NA and someone has SA. Make a non-aggression pact with your neighbour and leave one man each on the border country. This gives you more men to police your other border.

Pacts are the worst thing about the game because then you have some HUGE force to play against, and they're going to have to kill each other sometime and one of them will be a deceitful bastard who will win the game and everyone will be angry. Risk is a much happier/less cheating, game when there are no pacts are involved.

DeVore

Wolf everything you said after this:

OZ piss! Dont bother ur hole with it. Unless your playing very good players its not worth it. You can only launch into asia from there and asia is very gay indeed.

...sounded like yapyapyapyapyapyap in my head

I'll introduce you to my gaming buddies, I hear stupid people taste like chicken!

Zuk: We have a rule in our gaming group. We're all friends but when you sit around a board you have no friends. Some of my best mates play with us and I'd cut their throats and play in their blood. Laughing.
Backstabbing. Pact breaking. Deceitful and sometimes just plain NASTY is expected. In fact its an insult to "play nice" as you are effectively saying "you couldnt beat me if I played hard so I'll go easy on you".
I can tell you the two word answer any of my mates would give to that suggestion.

If you are having a row because someone dicked you over in a game you need to get away from it and get some perspective

DeV.

Woden

the pacts/agreements and then in the end the usual backstabbing is what makes the game good other wise it would be just as easy to play the computer with no human element. I've also found i can win games without breaking pacts making it all the sweeter, then they should trust you more for when you really need to break it.

Rnger

Originally posted by Wolf
OZ piss! Dont bother ur hole with it. Unless your playing very good players its not worth it. You can only launch into asia from there and asia is very gay indeed.

Much better take south america you get more armies & from there take north america with extrem prejduce! The all you have to do is hold green land, alaska and brazil and you get lots of armies!!

You can have oz on your second turn, which is unlikely for any other continent. To get SA on your second turn you really have to rely on absolutely no challegers, I usaually end up over there anyways...

Originally posted by DeVore
When the loser looks at you with big puppy eyes and whines: "But, but, but... you said..."

Look at him directly in the eye and say:


"I lied."

Many a arguement has started this way. The best method I found for truces etc. is make a set amount of turns and which borders cant be crossed. Works best when playing with beginers, so they dont get all angry. When playing a serious game, they rarely come up.

The best agreement I had was when i had SA and i think it was my brother half had NA. each turn we captured central america and backed off and left one army there. I lost one army every turn and was garrunteed a card and I kept SA, pretty stupid on his part because it led to my invasion of NA

Borzoi

Found some sites that give your odd of winning battles -apparently the maths people have given this a lot of thought:

http://www.sciencenews.org/20030712/mathtrek.asp

or here for an actual battle calc

http://bartell.org/risk/riskodds.shtml



Me shakes head at the wonder of it.:D

Woden

thats fairly cool cheers

Dont be at yourself

I heart riskcore!

Must have played dozens and dozens of games of it last summer. Don't really have any strategy myself, only to stay the hell away from Europe and Asia until late in the game.

As a matter of interest, does anyone know of a Risk online game? There's monolopy and scrabble doing the rounds, but playing Risk with fellow boardsters would be sublime. Or you know, something.

Shinji

I've not found an online Risk game of any description, no. I see Creative Assembly are promising PROPER online play for Rome: Total War though, which should make up for that to some degree!



On a similarly board game related topic, does anyone else here play Go? That you CAN play online, and I'm quite keen to find some people near my skill level (ie none) to play against

Dont be at yourself

What's Go, then?

amp

Ah it's one of those things the Japanese play all the time, just to be different from us normal Chess playing people.

memo to self: do pixiemix of Shinji terrorising Tokyo godzilla style.

Shinji

Very old Chinese board game - not really all that similar to chess at all, although there's a form of oriental chess (Shougi) which is played on Go boards...

I seem to recall this being a pretty decent tutorial: http://playgo.to/interactive/

I've only become interested in it because (of all things) I've been watching a TV show about it - but it's actually a really unusual game, very tactical and clever. It emulates battlefield strategy in a way that chess never manages - I consider chess to be almost more of a complex puzzle game than a strategic game, whereas Go is quite definitely strategic all the way.

Sadly, I'm rubbish at it. Vaguely considering working on it a bit and trying to climb into the proper rankings, though - I'd really like to be under 10 Kyu at the game!

Dont be at yourself

Currently at the 40 Kyo of the tutorial and my head aches. I think some actual games might be better for me than staring at a board scratching my head.

richindub2

used to play http://www.missionrisk.com last year with a few people, is a laugh. Its a little program that lets you play online or against the comp and its free.

Shinji

Currently at the 40 Kyo of the tutorial and my head aches.

It's a fair bit to digest Really simple basic rules that cause incredibly complex behaviours on the board... It all kinda starts to come together when you start to appreciate how the whole board is divided up into safe territories and battle areas, and how the first part of the game is really just about staking claims to areas of the board.

Professional level games of Go are scary. You can sit there watching them and then suddenly one of the guys resigns because he realises that he's in a position that can't be fought back from - and you're left sat there not actually understanding why he lost until you've had a good half hour to stare at the board

Earthhorse

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/16/0251219&mode=thread&tid=127&tid=186&tid=202

That's a link to a recent slashdot discussion on an article about your odds on winning in Risk.

Think I had a magnetic version of Go when I was a kid. It might of been Chinese checkers though, I'm not too sure.

passive

thanks for the link to missionrisk

....looks like this will keep me glued to the internet til 4 am for a few weeks.

Wolf

Originally posted by DeVore
Wolf everything you said after this:


...sounded like yapyapyapyapyapyap in my head

I'll introduce you to my gaming buddies, I hear stupid people taste like chicken!

Yeah they would more than ilkly kick my ass

But I always feel that holding Oz is over rated. Unless your let take it easy enuf then there is little or no point. Unless like I said your playing good players like your mates. The thing is you have to take/hold three territories in S.America you have to take and hold four territories which isnt that big a diff and from there you can make more launches to more territories with more armies per turn.

If you are playing better players then yes what you can do is take Oz horde for a bit and either break and run to N.America or S.Africa or the third option take Asia slowly.

Its just my thoughts.

Borzoi

Originally posted by Shinji
On a similarly board game related topic, does anyone else here play Go? That you CAN play online, and I'm quite keen to find some people near my skill level (ie none) to play against

Don't kwon anything about online play, but I do know there's an Irish Go Association, who meet in the Pembroke Inn every week.

Do a quick google and they're the first ones up AFAIR

Len_007

Once started a game at 11 at night, didn't walk in me door till 8 the nxt morning. Played 3 games that night, great stuff alltogether