Thursday, July 23, 2015

RISK (your e-mail)

This is an e-mail from Braden after the RISK post last week:
If you guys are enjoying Risk, you should try and track down a copy of Risk Legacy (looks like it's getting harder to find...), which Hasbro put out a few years ago. It plays as a quicker, leaner version of classic Risk, but in a 'campaign' format, like a RPG - you play 15 times on the same board and then the game is over.

In the box are sealed compartments with different criteria to open them, as you play the game you'll be 'unlocking' more rules and cards that flesh out the world and each faction so that future games reflect past decisions. The board gets stickers placed on it by players, as well as written on permanently. At the end of 15 games no one else will have a board like yours. (you can keep playing, it just doesn't change)

I played with three of my friends over the course of a few months and it was one of the best board game experiences I've ever had. If you research it, watch out for spoilers!

Here is a good non-spoiler review:
RISK Legacy review

That review is pretty fantastic. And I received at least half a dozen e-mails recommending this version of the game, even though it's out of print.

We were actually playing RISK Black Ops, because Julian Murdoch--in one of the nicest moments ever--got me a copy  (it was a limited edition with only 1000 printed). I'd been sitting on it for years, waiting for Eli 13.11 to be interested.

We play a strange variant, though. Unless one of Eli's friends is over, we play four-person with just the two of us and have a country draft. So you can get in odd situations where you need to attack one of your two selves in order to secure needed territory. What it does do is make a two-person game much, much more interesting.

We don't actually use some of the rules in this edition of the game, but the addition of cities is a major improvement and we do use them.

I'd forgotten how much fun I had playing RISK in high school. It's just nice time, moving armies around, rolling dice, and talking smack.


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