RISK Variations

[Hitman079]

I feel that Mission Risk would be cool too, along with the other game modes such as the active neutrals in 2-player games, etc. Note: I messed up a bit on the polls; there are already passive neutrals.

[telecom1776]

How bout a vote for Castle Risk? The Secret Armies option is a great twist to the game.

[cowshrptrn]

hmm, i never really liked mission risk on the classic map, cus once you get Asia you pretty much have to win to complete your mission card, but maps with smaller continents, like world 2.0's mini-continents, Canada, CCU, those types of maps, this coudl defiantely work.

2 player maps would also be pretty good, though it would be really prone to cheating and need a lot of policing, like people who have had multi accounts shouldn't be allowed to join them, and new recruits also shouldn't (if one of them deadbeats, then you get a free 10-15 points)

i don't know if active neutrals are such a good idea, passive ones are big enough roadblocks

[Hitman079]

-BUMP- -BUMP- do the bump! *can't touch this by mchammer plays*
DO THE BUMP DO THE BUMP
-BUMP BUMP-

[sully800]

I think mission risk would be a fun option for some quick games, but I somehow think it should be kept seperate from the scoring system. It has never seemed like 'real' risk to me and I'd hate to see it dramatically affect the scoreboard.

[Dr. Jim]

Two player is almost a must-have. How else can people have duels, settle disputes, et cetra. I'm surprised they don't have it already.

Mission Risk is, like the rest of the game, entirely luck based. Sometimes you get a nice easy mission, sometimes it's really hard.

[MeDeFe]

I think 1on1 games are pending, the problem I see with those is that whoever gets to go first will have a decisive advantage over the other player, unless like 1/3rd of all countries have neutrals on them.

As for missions, they might be fun, but world domination is the coolest way of playing risk.

[vgmmaster]

That's actually the one thing that bothers me with this site. No option for 2 player games.

If we get a petition for two player games started, I'll definitely sign it.

[GrazingCattle]

I like mission risk, it adds another level of stratagy to the game. Also I like capitol Risk. I love the idea of having a set home, but I don't think that should be random. Otherwise it is not fair. *My capitol is Middle East- Dammit!*

Duels would be fun but also they are more luck based and less diplomacy/skill based. If I want to duel someone I join a 4 person game w/ them!

[moz976]

I'm moving this down to the suggestions forum.

If you check the thread at the top of this forum you will see that both of these things are on the to-do list and will eventually be added to the site.

[DiM]

to avoid making a new thread here are some risk variations i play with my friends (found them on the net years ago). i would really like some of them implemented. not all are fun and not all are perfect. for example at paranoia risk if you draw your own colur the cards are reshuffled. i added a few rules with my friends. if you draw your colour you can kill anyone and if someone kills your target he becomes your new target makes the game more difficult

4.0 Non-Standard Variants
Risk is the elemental war game and its rules are very resilient to changes and additions. Below are a few variants.

4.1 Martian Risk [Games Magazine]
Reserve one army for the Martians (Green, of course). After everyone's taken a turn, draw a card from the deck. Put three Martian armies there. Reshuffle the deck.

They will fight until either they are destroyed or take the territory. If they do win, give them a card.

After that, each time it becomes the Martian's turn, draw a card and place all the armies they have coming to them (three minimum) evenly among the territories (those they already hold and the newly drawn one). Odd armies are placed in the new territory. Then the Martians will attack as long as they are able; until they are down to one army in each territory (and zero in the newly drawn one). Martian attacks are chosen with this objective: To gather all their armies together into one mass. They attempt this by, firstly, all groups except the largest will head toward the largest. Then the largest will head toward the second largest. They will always take the shortest path. You can roll a die if there is a tie.

Finally, the Martians only exchange risk cards when they have 5 or more (possible under some rules). They exchange until they have 4 or less.

4.2 Retreat [Schmittberger]
When a territory is attacked, the defending army has the option to retreat into an adjacent territory that is held by the same player. The attacking army then loses one unit and must move at least one unit into the territory. This means that an attacker must have three armies to attack an army with a route to retreat. The defender declares whether or not he wishes to retreat once the attacker first begins to attack the territory (before any decisions about number of dice, etc.).

4.3 Nuclear Risk [Dragon Magazine]
This variant was devised by several navy chaps and published in issue 34 of Dragon Magazine, February 1980. The article was titled 'Feel Like RISKing Everything?' (thanks to Jason Tuchelt for finding this information in Dragon magazine's index in issue 112.) The full rules run to nearly three pages, but the basic ideas were as follows.

At most five players play -- red tokens are reserved to represent nukes.

Two new overseas borders (a la Brazil to North Africa) are added, to connect Madagascar to Western Australia and Eastern Australia to Peru. The continental bonus for South America and Australia are raised to 3, and for Africa to 4, to reflect the increase in borders.

Starting on a player's third turn, he may take up to half of each turn's reinforcements (rounded down) as nukes instead of regular armies. Bonus armies for continents or sets of Risk cards can be taken only as regular armies. Nukes are placed just as regular armies, but can NEVER be moved.

Starting with a player's fourth turn, he may use nukes for attacks. Any number of attacks per turn can be performed with nukes. The player states where the nuke is launching from, and the target; the target can be ANY territory on the board. The defender either removes one army from the target, or defends with a nuke of his own. The defending nuke must be in the target territory or one adjacent BY LAND. If the target has any nukes and is down to only one army, the target's nuke MUST be used for defense. Other players with adjacent nukes may also choose to provide a nuke for defense. The attacking nuke, and the defending nuke or army, are removed.

If a territory becomes devoid of armies because of a nuclear attack, it becomes a nuclear waste land, meaning no armies may occupy it for at least two turns. Place two coins in it, topped by a piece from the attacking player's box. At the beginning of each player's turn, he removes one coin from each wasteland marked by his pieces. When all coins are gone, the territory is left EMPTY. A nuclear waste land may be nuked, but the number of coins on it never exceeds two.

When a territory containing nukes is taken over by conventional armies, the attacker first moves armies into it according to the standard rules. Half of the nukes (round up) are removed. The remainder are immediately used by the defender to attack ANY territory on the board (including the one just taken over) in accordance with the rules given above. If this results in the creation of a nuclear waste land, a piece from the original attacking player is placed on the coins (as it occurred during his turn).

A player may nuke himself. (This might be done, for instance, to create a waste land as a barrier to a conventional attack.) Players with adjacent nukes may use them to defend the player from nuking himself!

In order to get continental bonuses, a player must have armies on ALL of the territories in that continent.

4.4 Three Mile Island Risk [Schmittberger's book, credits Kohler as author]
This really speeds up play, as well as make the game comical and unpredictable. Every time double fours, fives, or sixes are thrown a nuclear melt down has occurred (a double is counted whenever two dice of the same colour match). The top card is drawn and all the armies in the territory shown on the card are removed. A penny (or similar marker) is placed there to show that the area is a wasteland.

For the rest of the game any army moved into the territory is halved, fractions dropped. However, the territory no longer counts towards holding a continent. If a continent is completely wasteland then no one can get the armies for completely controlling it. Units don't die off as they spend time in the territory or when they leave. One army must be left as with normal territories.

Optionally, if a territory has a second melt-down, clean-up efforts have succeeded in removing the radiation. The territory is restored.

As another option, armies may not be required to stay in an irradiated territory. If played this way, an attrition rule should be added so that at the beginning of that player's turn, after he places all armies, the army is halved, rounding down (three armies become one, one army becomes none). A single unit is allowed to attack from a wasteland space.

4.5 Tactical Nuclear Risk [Schmittberger's book, credits Kohler as author]
Instead of random, frequent melt-downs, this rule provides more strategy. After placing armies, a player may choose to forego any attacks that turn and make a tactical nuclear strike. The player uses one of the cards in his hand and the country on the card is nuked in the same way as described in Three Mile Island Risk. The player may then fortify to end his turn.

4.6 Revolution Risk [Leon Atkinson]
The idea here is that each player is of a certain continental background (European, Asian, North American) and has the ability to convince the people living there to revolt sometimes.

At the beginning of the game each player puts an army next to the list of continents on the board to denote his background. Two players may choose the same continent.

At the start of any turn, a player may choose to use a card to have a revolt instead of attacking that turn. He places his armies as usual then reveals a card. The card must have the name of a territory on his continent. All the armies there are changed into his color army and are his. So, if the blue player has ten armies in Central America, the red player may take them as his own with the proper card.

4.7 Airlifts [source unknown]
Under this variant, any territory can attack any other territory even if they are not adjacent. The attacking territory immediately loses half its armies (rounding the loss up), then the attack proceeds as usual. If the attacker breaks off the attack to conduct a different attack, including attacking the same target from another location, the airlift is over and resuming the airlift-based attack requires again losing half the remaining armies.

Variants on the variant include limiting each player to a single airlift attack per go, and/or requiring that the player be holding the card for the target territory.

4.8 Simultaneous Risk [Schmittberger]
This is really a different game that uses the Risk game pieces. This is in Schmittberger's book, if you wish to check it out.

4.9 Domination Risk [Clements+Finberg]
Each player is allocated 20 armies (25 sometimes if there are only 3 players). Then each person is dealt 5 territories and armies are placed (one at a time in cycles). All other territories are neutral and have 3 armies. These defend optimally but do not attack.

Each person has a set of goals (public). After setup each person is again dealt 5 goal territories (ensuring these do not match ones they start with). To win the game a player must take (and hold for a turn) all their 5 goals.

4.10 Amphibious Assaults [Gagle et al]
This rule makes attacking along a sea-lane more difficult. It gives the board a bit more character geographically, makes continents easier to hold and makes it more worthwhile putting significant garrisons on islands.

For the first 4 rounds of combat across any sea-lane the defender is allowed to roll an extra die (even if this means rolling 3 dice). This can mean (if the attacker is also rolling 3) that 3 armies are at risk per round of combat. If the defender loses on all 3 dice (rather unlikely!) but has only 2 armies he simply loses those 2.

4.11 Paranoia Risk [Author unknown, submitted by Jacobsen]
This variant notices that the difficulty of "kill red" type missions depends greatly on the number of players. Low number of players, they are harder than continent missions, high number easier. So, either you drop them to balance things, or, if you realise what fun they are, you play like this.

Only the "kill" missions are used. They are dealt out to the players. Each checks if they have their own colour. If any does they reveal it and cards are shuffled and dealt again, until a successful deal is made, i.e. all players have to kill other players. You do not need to finish off your victim yourself, so, as soon as one player is eliminated, somebody has won! This means there is no sitting around for eliminated players while the rest play on, and the game should be very tense. As well as weakening your target you need to ensure nobody else gets too weak!

4.12 Multiple Earth Risk [Author unknown, submitted by Jeanes]
This version of the game should only be played if you consider standard world domination Risk to be far too short a game! You can play double-Earth Risk, triple-Earth Risk or even-higher-ple Earth Risk.

For n-ple Earth Risk, you need (funnily enough) n Risk sets. The boards are positioned side by side, and Kamchatka on Earth 1 links to Alaska on Earth 2, etc., and Kamchatka on board n links back to Alaska on board 1. You use the playing pieces from all n sets, and start with n times as many armies as usual. (This can lead to some huge heaps of armies initially, but if you do pile them up, that means you're very weak elsewhere ... things soon even out a bit.) Each pack of cards is shuffled and dealt independently for each board, so you have (roughly) the same number on countries on each board to start with, but once the game has begun all n packs (including 2n jokers) are shuffled together. When it comes to trading in cards, it's entirely up to the individual player which Earth each card corresponds to, so (for example) if you hold Iceland on two of the boards, and trade in the Iceland card, you can put your two bonus armies on whichever of those two Icelands you prefer. To win, a player must conquer all n Earths. Bonus reinforcements for holding a continent work as usual (ie. you need hold only one North America (not all n) to get those reinforcements), and you can claim continental reinforcement bonuses for the same continent from more than one board (eg. if you hold two South Americas and an Autralasia you can claim 6 bonus armies).

4.13 Interdiction [Andrew Glover]
At the beginning you choose a capital city and mark it. To reinforce a territory you must have a continuous line of territories from you capital otherwise you may not place troops in that territory. We also allow people to move their capital one territory per turn if they wish. If your capital is defeated then it is moved to the nearest territory you control. One question this raised was can you use your troops that have been cut off from the capital to re-establish the link? This is something we change from game to game by vote. This rule means you need to be careful before continuous attacks as someone may cut off your troops. Alliances can be very useful in this regard.

4.14 Remix [Caleb Ardoin]
This is a 3 player variant, based on the standard two player plus neutral setup. However here a third player takes a slightly more active role instead of the neutral. To setup you write each on the continents on a different slip of paper. The two active players each pick one and they occupy that entire continent with a total of 20 armies. The third (neutral) player controls all the other continents with 20 armies per continent (using a different colour per continent). Once a neutral colour has been attacked, it becomes active and can make attacks itself. It cannot attack until someone has attacked him first though. The object of the game is to take over the world.

4.15 Napoleon [Tilsit, submitted by Bob Gingell]
Risk Edition Napoleon was published by the French company Tilsit Éditions in 1999. Detailed notes on how this varies from standard Risk were contributed by Bob Gingell and are available on my Risk Edition Napoleon page. Lots of these ideas could be incorporated as variants to standard Risk.
4.16 Boy Scout Nuclear Risk [BSA Troop 1, Ithaca NY, submitted by Dwight Mengel]
When an attacker roles a triple, the current conventional attack is temporarily suspended. The attacker can exercise the nuclear option against any opponent. The attacker identifies the targeted country for a nuclear strike. The targeted country (defender) may attempt a Star Wars defense, by rolling doubles. A successful Star Wars defense (doubles) cancels the nuclear strike. A successful nuclear strike removes all armies from the targeted country. A country hit with a nuclear attack is radioactive for one complete turn. A conventional attack can be launched across a radioactive country, from an adjoining country to any adjoining country, at a loss of 50% of attacking armies (rounding up). Only one nuclear strike can be attempted during an attacker's turn. Upon completion of the nuclear option the initial conventional attack phase is reinstated.

[Hitman079]

thanks DiM. good stuff.