Hi guys
I'm new to this site.
I discovered this when my brothers and I had lost interest in Risk and needed to find new rules to make it better. We always had a deadlock situation, where the game would go on for hours and hours because nobody would be able to take a lead, they would just get attacked if they were getting too strong. This meant, skill didnt come into it all, it was simply a matter of keeping your nose out of other people's business.
Therefore, to give players something to do we created a "special mission". "Special mission" means one player (any player) would take a risk card and place it face up on the table. The territory that is displayed would be the special mission territory. Whoever controls this territory after 3 turns would get an extra 10 troops on that territory (at this time we were cashing in our risk cards in such a way that 4 was given for three infantry, 6 for three cavalry, 8 for three cannons, and 10 troops for a set of each of them). This meant, many players would try to get this special mission bonus. It also gave the last player, and second last player more of an advantage, because these players are disadvantaged at the start of the game because they are last to have their first attack, and are therefore more prone to being attacked and having worse odds of winning.
Another variation is when we completely change the game so that all territories are hidden from other players. Players will have to use a washing basket, combined with a tea towel draping over it, or even the risk box, supported in such a way that the bottom sits inside the top, but the top is standing up (again a tea towel is used). Players have all the territories they own inside their baskets/boxes/whatever. One troop will be placed on the risk board to identify which player owns that territory, but the rest of the troops will be placed inside the boxes, on top of the card of the respective territory. With this, players must remember to count the troops on the territory card as well as the one troop on the risk board. If a territory is conquered, the territory card is given to the player that has taken control of it. We used a deck of cards for risk cards (2-6=infantry, 7-10=cavalry, J-A=cannon, joker=wild card). This way, nobody saw anybody elses troops, and suprise attacks were common, and highly enjoyable. However, it did rely on the honesty of all players.
And last, we used to have very large battles some times (maybe armies of up to 80 troops on each side), which can take a long time using the dice. So we used double kills and triple kills. That is, before the dice is rolled, the players must decide if they want to up the quota of casualties to double or even maybe triple. This quickened the game.
But, since I found this site, we have incorporated a few of the rules such as the "capitals" as well as the normal way of getting troops from risk cards (going up by 5 each time somebody cashes in a set). We have also put a maximum of 15 troops on any one territory. We found that this usually clashes with the special mission rule, so we allow the player to place his extra 10 troops on the territory where the special mission was achieved, and if that territory is full, the remaining troops are placed on the closest territory they own that has enough space. |