The NEW Risk

The new Risk (aka Risk: Revised Edition) is pretty damn bad ass. Here’s a quick overview of the new edition to the Risk universe.

What’s new about this Risk?

Fifteen Cities. These raise the value of inhabiting a territory by allowing you to recruit another army for each city you control. That’s huge, since you usually get 1/3 of a troop for each territory. During the initial setup, territories containing cities are likely to be snatched up first. Unless your name is Kris. At least that was our experience.

Capitals. Each player gets a capital of their color to be set with their first troop placement at the beginning of the game. Maintaining control of your capital garners you another troop during reinforcements. You can usurp others’ capitals as well, getting you yet another troop. Also, you can only win the game if you have control of your capital when you meet the victory conditions. So those are kinda important.

Objectives. Speaking of victory conditions, here’s where the new version really departs from the original. Also included with the game are twelve objective badges, eight of which will be used in each game. Six of the objectives are “Minor” and six are “Major.” Four of each category are randomly drawn and form the core of the game. Objectives may require you to take over a certain number of territories on one turn, or to control a certain number of cities, or capitals, or whatever. Whomever is first to earn three objective badges wins the game. There are two ways to get an objective badge: Completing the objective printed on it, or eliminating a player who had already earned a badge.

Each objective carries with it a reward. This is given to the player who achieves the objective, and does not carry over to a player eliminating the player who earned it. Some rewards include an extra attack or defense die for the rest of the game (huge), two additional troops during recruitment, die roll modifiers for selected territories (an “Airfield”), et cetera.

Some people have stated that this sounds suspiciously like Risk with Mission Cards. Um, kinda, ‘cept the objectives are out in the open, so it’s much easier to see what opportunities your opponents have to crush you. Instead of taking some country, flipping over the card, and saying, “I win.” Which blows.

This is an awesome Risk and is just a bunch of fun to play. It’s kind of a mixture of the original Risk mixed with some of Lord of the Rings Risk thrown in. I’m really a fan of the objectives in this game. The cities and capitals just make the game a bit more exciting and imaginative. Finally, believe it or not, but the board has been updated. Example? The “Ukraine” has been replaced by “Russia.” 

Score: 9+