Risk Game Startegy

You have battled your way through the game. It wasn’t easy and you are glad that you have survived. You really want to win. You have now come to a really decisive point. You have an advantage and you don’t want to blow it up.

End-games in Risk are quite tricky. There is only one winner and when you get to a certain stage, a single mistake or a missed opportunity means you will lose the game and leave the trophy for someone else.

Consider the dilemma you may face in the following game where you are playing as Red. You have eliminated a player who was dominant in North America and have cashed in his cards. You have a choice to place armies on the map and carry on with your march. But you want to pause and think for a second. What are your options? How can you make sure that you will win by choosing the best move possible? You don’t want to leave it to chance. You want that trophy really badly!

While playing Risk with random initial positions, sometimes you may find yourself all over the place owning a country in just about every continent! You blame your luck and wonder how other players managed to get half of some continents already and seem to be way ahead of you.

Consider the following configuration. You are playing as Red and you are indeed scattered everywhere. Is there anything you can do to get out of this dilemma? How can you turn your weakness into strength?

Over time, experienced players develop a recipe of actions that they go through in every turn of every game. They perform a number of evaluations to get a feel for how the game is developing and if the timing is getting right for their plans. These evaluations are more like questions that you need to ask yourself. I have drawn up a number of standard questions that you must answer to yourself and in doing so, plan your next moves.

Suppose you are playing online Risk and a player starts to behave rudely in the game. For example, in the chatbox he states that: “You moron, why the hell did you do that?”, or, “%^$ newbies! They haven't got a clue how to play. %%%^&^ get rid of them!” and similar aggressive remarks. If you say “I don't like the way you chat”, or “I am not happy with your tone” or similar statements, it is likely that you start a long argument that will only make you more upset and the game less enjoyable.

It turns out that there is a simple technique you can use to completely turn the table around and put the ball in your opponent's court. An angry player is likely to make mistakes and you should avoid to become angry yourself. The solution is as follows.

I am glad to announce the release of Risk Map Editor. You can now use this tool, to make Risk maps to illustrate your games for other players. The tool lets you create a map, place armies, arrows and notes and generate an image which you can later attach to your forum posts.

Find out more about Risk Map Editor by starting from the Guide

Your views on this tool are welcome and much needed. Please share it with us and other users.

You look at the map. Your current position looks good (you are playing as Red, A). You decide to go for Africa. You have lots of hope. You think in a few turns you get yourself established in the continent and will be ready to make a challenge for others. All is going according to plan. Excellent! Later, just by accident, you bump into a fortune teller who wants to predict your future. She looks at your hand (and probably the map) and says, “My son, I am afraid I have some bad news for you. I see darkness ahead. The more distant I look, the more darkness I see. You ought to be careful with who you deal with. Look around, never lose site of the distant world and try not to get carried away by your own strength.”

The fortune teller leaves you in deep thought. What did she really mean? Not to get carried away!? Distant world? All too confusing. You consider her comments for a moment, but you need to move on. The game is waiting for you. Maybe later you will realise what she meant. Hopefully …

You start with this map and make your move. [These maps are illustrated in BOMS Graphs].

Have you ever started a game from really poor random starting positions not knowing what to do and where to go? If you use random initial positions in online games or even the normal board game, you may find yourself in every continent on the planet. What you hoped for was to have a concentration of your armies in a particular area so you could focus on it. Imagine the position illustrated below. You, playing as Red, have no presence in either Australia or South America which are good small continents to start from. For the rest, you are scattered all over the map. What should you do to survive and go on all the way to win the game? What would you do if your initial plan backfired and you found yourself competing intensely with another player over a continent. Should you carry on with the corrosive war or pull out and look for somewhere else?

Words can be quite powerful and have profound effect on the audience. The correct use of words can make your life a lot easier. Usually, it comes down to the tone of your argument and the incentives it provides.

To illustrate this point further, a series of scenarios are provided in this article. In each scenario a concept is stated in two different ways. One way is much more efficient than the other. The difference between the statements can show you the subtlety of choosing words and the consequences of using the wrong ones at the wrong time.

Have you ever wondered how can you protect yourself against a new player who may choose to break a deal with you in the current game? If you have never played with this player before, how can you discover what type of a player he is? What if you agree over something with him, and he comes back denying it later on? You could end up in trouble. Is there a technique that you can use to know if he has a tendency to stab you in the back? It turns out that there is indeed an effective method.