We found these neat “Vintage Edition” board games that are packaged to look like leatherbound books, and contain wooden pieces and cards with old-fashioned typefaces (it turns out they are manufactured exclusively for Target, but I can’t actually find a link to the product on their website). We purchased Risk and Monopoly.
Monopoly is a long and boring game, so we bought that one pretty much for looks. But when Kenny discovered that I had never played Risk before, he decided to teach me the game.
We’ve played three times now, and I’m wondering: is it just me, or is Risk a really stupid game with only two players? It seems that the game is decided by the end of the second round, if not earlier. At that point, someone has Australia or North America or both, and it’s pretty much over. And actually, in the three games I’ve played, there seems to be a very simple rule in play: he who goes first wins.
Yes, I’ve only played three games, so I’m sure there are many exceptions to these generalities. And supposedly it’s a much more interesting game with >2 players, so I’ll wait to try that before dismissing it altogether.
Risk is a great game! I will admit that with only 2 people it can go ’slow’. One way to spice things up is to play “Mission Risk”. Instead of the goal always being global domination, each player gets a Mission at the beginning of the game and the first player to complete their Mission wins. The others players don’t know what Mission Card you received so its pretty fun. Some examples of missions would be “Capture North America and Europe”, “Capture 70% of the world”, “Eliminate Red”, etc… the missions just tell you what you have to conquer to win.
Another variation is to play Capital Risk. At the beginning of the game each player choose 1 territory to be their “Capital” and to win you have to capture the other player’s Capital. With more than 2 players each time you capture a player’s capital you also acquire their other territories and troops.
Have fun!
Hey Lauren,
My brother and I also played Risk for the first time ever over Christmas vacation. I think it’s that same “Leatherbound Book” edition that you bought, too.
Did you play the “special 2 player rules” in the back of the instruction manual? Or did you and Kenny just play with 2 players the same way you’d play with 3 or more? The 2 player rules basically set it up so that EVERY color is playing. The non-human colors are basically just drones that own territories and serve as roadblocks. They start out with fewer armies than you do, and never receive reinforcements or attack. Also, territories are not “selected” at the start of the game, but dealt out randomly (by dealing out the cards in the deck to the humans and non-humans alike). Check out that rule set if you havn’t yet and give it a shot.
Also, I highly recomment Risk II, which is a computer version of Risk that came out probably 5 or 6 years ago. It’s a lot quicker and easier to play a game of risk when you don’t have to fumble with all the little men setting up the board (and when you can save a game in progress). It’s not the greatest implementation in the world, I’ve definitely caught a few bugs in its gameplay. But it’s dirt cheap (I bought it for $5 including shipping on Amazon) so it’s worth a shot.