EPTI think one of the things that ties all gamers together is this drive to constantly make things more interesting. Whether it be setting difficult limits for ourselves for Funday Monday or making crazy restrictions in Pokemon, it's like we don't get enough out of the games we are playing (or have already played), so we recreate the game and make it, almost, entirely new. For me, one of the crowning achievements in my gaming career is altering the game of RISK. However, this story deserves some preface.
Preface
Ever since I was in elementary school, I've had a deep love for games of "global domination" such as RISK and Axis and Allies. But the key to a passion such as this is to have a group of solid, dedicated friends that share the same love for the game as you and, therefore, are willing to put in the hours necessary to play the game. I can say that I'm am very fortunate to have such a group.
And so we played . . . game after game for years. We developed and refined strategies. Forged alliances, some lasting years, that could (and did) crumble in an instant. We rolled dice and flipped boards. But, most of all, our passion for the game never dwindled.
A game of Revenge
However, it was through our passion that we pushed the game as far as we could and we were left with a need for something more challenging. So came the birth of Revenge RISK.
The object of the game is the same: win by being the last army standing. However, the rules of the game differ slightly. It works like this:
- 1. If you are killed by a player, that player gets all of your cards (standard RISK rules).
2. However, if the player that killed you, dies, those killed by the newly dead player enter back into the game and the cards held by that player are divided amongst the returning players
3. All armies on the territories stipulated in the returning players cards are taken over by the returning player.
In other words, if you haven't killed anyone, your cards go to the person that kills you. If you have and you die, your cards are split among those you killed and they gain control of the armies occupying the land in those cards and the return is one for one. Meaning, if you have a hoard of 50 men on one space and a returning player takes your army, they now have 50 new men at their disposal, and you have nothing.
It doesn't seem like much, but it changes the dynamic of the game in multiple ways. First, the person who wins, has to win decidedly by killing everyone. Second, the positioning of units becomes very important because you need to juggle having a big enough army to defend, but not so big that when a player returns to the game, you risk losing the bulk of your forces on a single territory. Third, you need to be way more strategic in who you kill and when/how you kill them. Perhaps the person you kill has a card with one of your hoards on it, or perhaps you don't want to bring a certain player back into the game, but to win you need to kill them eventually. Fourth, the game becomes way more aggressive. The bulk of your cards comes from conquering territories, rather than going all out to kill someone and take their cards. Also, aggression ensures your army is always moving because if they stay in one space to long, the risk of losing that army to a returning player increases. Players who turtle in Australia risk losing everything if they just sit there because they will 1) they could lose their main hoard at the choke 2) will have to bring someone back into the game when they move out.
There are a few more ways the game changes, but that's the bulk of it.
For all you RISK players out there, I urge you to give this a try. For those of you who aren't huge fans of RISK though, what are some ways that you make things more interesting for yourself?
