Take a Risk

Risk is among one of the most popular strategy games in the world. It's known for being fairly accessible but immensely deep, ensuring that everyone can have a good time playing.

Risk is a turned-based strategy game where each player tries his hand at conquering the world. Here's an interesting little piece of information: Risk was originally released in France under the title Conquer the World. The game board is a map of the world, divided into forty two territories, spanning six continents. Players control opposing armies and fight for control of territories. The ultimate goal is to gain control of the world by eliminating all of the other players.

what can I say? World conquest is a vicious thing.

Battle Plans

Every game needs at least three players. This doesn't mean three human players, just three in total, so a single person could take on two computer opponents.

When it comes down to it, Risk is pretty easy to play. As I stated earlier, the game board (world map, whatever you want to call it) is divided into forty two territories. Every player (or general, as they're referred to in the game) sends out his starting troops to these territories. You can choose to either have the computer do it for you and everybody's troops will be placed instantly and automatically, or you can choose to have each player place his own troops. In that case, players take turn placing all of their units one by one and then reinforcing them.

Deciding where to place your units across the map can be a lot of fun, especially when you try to put certain strategies into action.

Now this is where the fun really starts. After all of the troops have been deployed, it's time to go to war. Your turn will go through three phases: reinforcement, attack, and fortify.

In the reinforcing phase, you get a certain number of reinforcements (the exact number depends on how good you did the previous turn) and you get to send them to whichever territory you want to.

In the attack phase, you can attack any territory that's adjacent to a territory of yours that holds more than one troop. The attacking is simple and is done with dice rolls. If the attacking party rolls higher than the defending party, the attack is successful. If the defending party rolls more or equal than the attacking party, than the attack has been successfully defended.

Like I said, Risk is pretty accessible when you get down it, which is what makes the game so fantastic. You don't have to be very old to enjoy the game, so it's a fantastic game to play with the family.

So Simple, Yet So Deep

There's plenty more to Risk than what I've detailed here, but I was simply trying to give you an overview of what the game has to offer. Tremendous fun at a reasonable price. Highly recommended, especially for the war and strategy fan.