Death or Glory

A while back (i.e. September) I decided that I wanted to buy a Risk board. So I headed down to the merchant most likely to have one to pick one up. When I got there I was suriprised by the number of Risk variations that existed. I wasn't really interested in those though, as I wanted to be able to play normal Risk.

Then I noticed the printing on one of the boxes: "Includes all the pieces to play the classic game of Risk" I'd heard good things about Risk 2210, so I decided to spend a few dollars more and grab that instead.

Well, tonight I finally got around to playing a game, with the following final scores at the end of the five 'year' limit:

Kevin (in control of S. America, US Pacific, and N. Atlantic): 29
Andrew (in control of Africa, S. Atlantic, & Cresinion): 17
Linda (in control of Australia): 16
Dmitrii (in control of Europe): 14

I'll explain the rules/differences to normal Risk below. Clicky clicky for more.

For starters, the armies don't look the same and the board is different. The countries are shaped differently and have different names (but anyone paying close attention would notice that, despite the changes in shape, all the old borders are the same as their classic counterparts.) Then there's the water colonies off the coasts and the map of the moon, but more on those later.

So once you've got over changes, but before you get a chance to place any armies, you get thrown a curveball in the form of 'devestation counters', little circles with a radioactive symbol on them. You draw four cards from the deck of land cards and place the counters on the corresponding countries. These regions are now wastelands, no armies can be stationed there or move through them. Anyone who holds all the other regions in a continent still gets the normal bonus though. They make it easier to play a defensive game, but harder to expand. Of course, since the game has a limit of 5 turns and there's random elements (more on those later as well), defensive isn't necessarily the best way to play it.

So, once the unusable areas are marked off you start working like a normal Risk game, with each player rolling a dice and then claiming a country starting with the highest roller and moving in a clockwise direction.

Once those are down it's time to meet some of the new units -- the land commander, the diplomat, and the space station to be exact — as each player places one of them in that order.

Since they've been brought up I should now talk about the various commanders. There's five commander units: the space commander, land commander, naval commander, nuclear commander, and diplomat. Each commander unit is permitted to roll an eight-sided die on defensive. Additionally, there's certain conditions where the commanders can roll an eight-sided die on attack. The exceptions being the nuclear commander, who always rolls an eight-sided die on attack, and the diplomat, who never does. Additionally, there exists a space station. The space station permits access to and from the lunar map (so long as the space commander is in play), as well as giving each defending unit in that territory an eight-sided dice for defence.

Each commander permits access to a set of cards that allow for random elements to be brought into play: bonus armies for capturing certain territories, losing n armies in certain randomly drawn/rolled territories, killing off another player's commander, and more. However, the cards can only be bought and played if that commander is still on the board. Anyways, back on topic (more about these commanders later)

Having placed the armies on the land territories, each player is then given three energy tokens. Energy tokens are earned based on the number of territories/continents controlled, and are used to buy cards, commanders, space stations, and pay the usage costs of the various cards. At the current moment they have one other important function: bidding for turn order.

That's right, none of this clockwise circle stuff during the game. At the start of each round all the players make a bid of how many energy credits they wish to spend to gain a favourable position in the game. After every bid is revealed the players turn in their chips (regardless of winning), with the turns going based on bid placement. There's advantages to going first, and advantages to going last, but you still have to bid.

Game play goes much like normal Risk, with the additions of being able to buy commanders and cards before you attack, the ability to play cards based on when they say you can play them, and the new territories. So then, let's take a look at the new territories, shall we?

The water territories are small two or three group circles that link the major land masses, and are broken up into 5 groups. Holding all of them in any one group is worth an extra one or two units/energy.  However, you cannot enter, exit, or even move between water squares without having a marine commander stationed in a territory you control.

There exist three lunar colony groups, and one lunar landing spot in each group. Holding all the territories in any one colony group is worth either 2 or 4 extra units/energy, but this is fairly difficult since each colony is bordered by between 3 and 6 other colonies, not counting the lander spots. Like the water colonies, you need a special unit in order to move troops to, from, and between lunar colonies — in this case the space commander.

Movement/invasions into any lunar colony must take place from a space station you control to one of the 3 landing spots. Movement back to Earth must take place between the landing zones to a space station you control. Invasions from the moon to Earth can only take place with the use of a specific space commander card.

At the end of five turns everyone adds up the countries they control, tack on any bonuses for complete territorial groups and special cards they may own, and the person with the highest score is declared the winner.

I think that's pretty much everything new. It sounds complicated, and it is. It took us several hours to play one game, but everyone agreed that they'd like to give it another go sometime. For starters, you need to learn an entirely new way to play. I'll give you an example:

I owned two cards that would give me a total of 6 extra points should my diplomat survive to the end of the game. Therefore I took a standard Risk strategy and moved him far back into territory I controlled, meaning no one was likely to attack him. Actually, he was on a water colony, and since only one other player had a marine commander in play I felt fairly safe. Then Dmitrii played a 'scatterbomb water' card. What this card does is as follows: you turn over two cards representing water territories. If those territories belong to an opponent then they are forced to destroy half the units present, rounding up. Both of the territories turned over belonged to me (made sense since I owned most of the occupied ones at the time), and one belonged to the territory that had, as sole occupant, the diplomat. Half of one, rounded up, is one … fuck.

In summary: It's different, it's fun, and it's recommended if you get the chance.

There, I think I've babbled enough. Good night.

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)