you want a night of fun: get risk and beer (Risk)

Member Name: tsjolder

Product:	Risk
Date:	07/08/01 (41 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: much variation, very tactical

Disadvantages: might last too long

I shall take the risk to write an op about this fabulous game. I will describe the rules rather briefly, because they are not so important: each game is played differently and every player has his own tactics. I will try to talk more about what makes this game so special, what makes it different from all other games.

The beginning of the game is the part where a bit of luck is important. There are 42 regions divided into 7 continents. At the start of the game the regions are divided arbitrarily between the players. You also have to pick arbitrarily a mission. Not every region is strategically as important and not every mission is as difficult. The goal of the game is to fulfill your mission. You can fulfill your mission by batlling other players and by conquering regions, all this by rolling the dice. It is important to try to conquer complete continents, because then you can strengthen your army every turn.

Enough about the rules. The rules only describe the limits of the game, within the rules there is a lot of variation possible. I know a lot of little "risk groups" of 5-6 people who often play the game and every group plays the game in a different kind of way. The rules are not strict, they leave a lot of freedom to the players. That way I know some people who sometimes agree not to attack eachother in certain regions. Such agreements can not be broken, because if you break it, the other people will play against you, more than try to play for theirselves.

What is so fascinating about the game is that you can try to manipulate other players, so that they will do what you would like them to do. You can try to convince the player to do something which is in his favour, while it is actually more in your own favour. Psychology is very important in this game. Some people can not hide what their mission is. Other people sometimes say that their mission is complete while you had not a clue that this was their missio
n.

This is an excellent game to play with friends. But in the game you have no friends. Fullfilling your mission: that's the only thing that counts. Drinking alcoholic drinks only makes the game more amusing. You should take into account that it takes a long time to finish the game. This game may take you many hours. Our record is a game we started at 07pm and we were not yet finished at 03am. And the problem is that everybody still thinks he can win and nobody gives up.

What is interesting to see is that some people win very often and other people hardly never. This proves that this game is not a game of luck. You can be lucky in the beginning as I already pointed out before and you can be lucky rolling the dice, but after 4-5 hours of play everybody has been lucky some time and unlucky another time. If you are not good at it, you can not win. I know people who have played like 20 times and never won, while somebody else won 10 times of the twenty (there were 5 players).

I also noticed that there are not too many girls who like this game and even less who are good at it. I don't know, maybe boys more like it to battle and to kill.

As a conclusion I must say that I find this game very fascinating and that this is probably the only game that I can play for such a long time without being bored.

Summary: