What I’ve Learned Playing Risk
I’ve played the board game Risk at least once a year since I was 18. I have a very concrete memory of my first game — over at a friend’s house, split into teams of two, thinking that my partner and I had it all won… only to realize too late that Alaska connected to Kamchatka.
We never saw the attack coming. “Look at these fools, loading up armies in Alaska,” my partner and I chuckled.
Like many other future games of Risk, this first one ended in heartbreak.
Though I’ve spent many years losing in Risk, it has remained one of my favorite games. This is despite all the losses I’ve piled up over the years and it generally being an incredibly flawed board game. Of the many issues the game has, a few include: it can drag on for far too long; once you really understand the best method to win (more on that later) it becomes more a game of strategic card collection; and it’s a dice rolling game, meaning you could have the biggest army in the game, attack a much smaller player’s and still lose.
The latter has happened to me many times, forcing me to gently comment something along the lines of, “WHY THE FUCK DO I EVEN PLAY THIS STUPID GAME!”
Still, I really enjoy it. Maybe I’m just a glutton for punishing, but I also love the strategy of it, the way it makes me feel like a world conqueror and the opportunities it provides me with to act out petty aggressions against lifelong friends for how they WRONGED ME once, many years ago, for I am a monster. I even like the randomness of dice rolling, which I just said was a flaw but hey, love means accepting flaws, warts and all.
Over time, the more I played, the more I came to realize that people tend to adhere to a few different Risk personality archetypes, which I think applied to everyone I ever met. Was this an insane, incredibly weird thing to do? Why yes, it was! But I did it nonetheless.
There’s the cool and reserved master planner, who has an overall strategy but kind of rolls with the punches and tends to either win the game outright or be one of the last players left behind. These people always play as yellow, I’ve found.
Then there’s the hothead, who usually has a very loose plan that does not take into account anyone else also having their own plan, and due to this oversight becomes ENRAGED when someone attacks them, which ultimately leads to huge table-side arguments. They are usually green or orange.
There’s also the death spinner, who makes some bad choices early on, gets talked into a very one-sided alliance (not in their favor) and then goes after the person who currently looks like the biggest threat on the board, or just me. It’s usually me. I DISLIKE this personality type. I’ve built most of my Risk strategy over the years just trying to stay clear of the death spinner, but alas, they always find me. They play as green or blue.
The second-to-last archetype is “What are the rules again?” who, as the name implies, isn’t really sure how to play. They never know what turn it is, consistently forget to take a card after conquering territory on their turn, and somehow, oftentimes win. In my experience, this is because they usually weren’t so excited about playing in the first place, so to get them invested no one attacks them until… it’s too late. These players often have the potential to morph into any of the above players if they do end up grasping the rules, especially the closely related hothead and death spinner. They just play as whatever color they like.
The last role is the person who just gets it. These people divorce themselves from the romance of Risk (conquering the world!) and see it for what it is. Grids connected at certain points — some of which are worth more than others — odds of winning dice rolls and the need to collect territory cards.
Mostly, I’ve played with these people in the official Risk app (I’m in deeeeeep/more on this in a few), but I have met at least one person who fits this role in person.
At the start of the game, he controlled one territory in Australia. He placed all his start-troops in this territory, then over the course of three turns, took the remaining three Australia territories, obtaining three cards, after which he just sat there for a couple hours. Adding five troops a turn. Eventually, once all his troops were on the board, he moved his army out and won the game. He played as the white army, I think because it was the only color left over.
This is an extreme example of the last archetype, but two personality traits cover everyone who fits under this umbrella: patience and opportunism. (Is opportunism a personality trait? Probably not but let's run with it.)
This is the category I’d like to think I fit under, but like I said, I hardly ever win. I’m probably more of a mix between the cool and reserved careful planner and the hothead (probably leaning heavily on the latter side of things) though. I always play as red.
These archetypes, and what they taught me about people’s personalities, shaped my perception on the world. Personality-driven, valued having a master plan, etc. Looking back now, however, I realize I was building a worldview based on an immensely flawed data set, in a matter of speaking.
When playing table-top Risk, games take hours, if not days. Turns drag on forever. There’s soooooo much rolling, eventually, people just get tired of waiting for countless dice rolls to wrap up, and the game ends in a draw or the table declaring a presumptive winner.
Today, I realize that every match which failed to go the distance was really only at around 50% completion, in general.
I know this, because one Sunday a few months ago, I downloaded the Risk app and began playing regularly. While games can still be somewhat lengthy (the max length I played for ended up being three hours and was hell), there are time limits on each turn, usually either 60 seconds or two minutes, allowing you to very quickly go through a lot of turns and see the various changes in the game. The best part is the game will do all the rolling simulation for you in one tap. You can win the game so quickly without the need to slowly roll in a box! You can also suddenly tap the screen to only see your huge army decimated by two troops. So, mixed bag.
After playing roughly 60 games since first downloading the app (and winning four!) I’ve come to realize that Risk can teach you a lot more than just how quickly some of your friends get pissed off. You can really learn a lot about life.
This sounds ridiculous, but let me explain. Deep Risk strategy talk time.
When playing Risk on a tabletop, the urge for everyone is to first take a continent. On the surface, this is for good reason; continents give you troop bonuses at the beginning of each turn, therefore increasing your odds of building a big enough army to win the game.
Not true. This is an illusion fueled by the length of turns in the tabletop version and the false belief that you’re in control of something.
Let’s say, for example, you have a good-sized army in South America at the start of the game. You quickly decide this is THE continent to take. While your opponents are also there, you still have a slight advantage. Over the course of a couple of turns, you add troops, attack and expand. However, due to the length of time it takes to go around the board and get back to you, and as you watch the turns of others unfold and the makeup of the board change, you get a lil’ antsy. You want to just take that South America, rest up for a few turns and come up with a new strategy. Just hole up for a bit, wait for things to calm down.
Eventually, you have the continent. But you lost half your troops in the process, leaving your borders weak and your interior filled with one-troop territories, and oh no your friend in North America just turned in their cards and… you’re dead.
This scenario happens a lot. At least once in every tabletop game of Risk I’ve played, I’d say.
The problem here is getting attached to the idea of owning something. In the Risk app, the turns fly by, allowing you to see VERY QUICKLY how bad of an idea it is to take a continent at all costs. While the odds are always in the favor of the attacker, they’re not THAT much better than the defender. It’s not like you’re guaranteed a win every roll. You can very quickly lose the game pulling punk stunts like this. You punk.
Instead, in the app, you realize that continents are a good way to build up your early troops for defensive purposes, but NOT for winning the game. The nature of Risk is that every time you turn in your cards and receive your troops, the number of troops that the next person receives for turning in their cards increases — sometimes dramatically. At the beginning of the game, the bonus may be only four troops, but then it moves to six, then eight, then 10, then 20… and so on until turning in your cards can give you 60 troops.
Furthermore, once you have five cards in your hand at the start of your turn, you must automatically turn them in. If you at any point accrue more than five cards during your turn (by eliminating another player and taking their cards) you must immediately turn in your three cards, because logic says you now have a matching three or one of each card variant (generally troop, horse and cannon).
This sudden surge in troops is huge. It’s by far the best bonus in the game and the quickest/more realistic way to win.
This means you end up playing more like a mercenary and go card-hunting. You wait for the right moment to knock an opponent out, cash in their cards and strengthen your position. Everyone who ends up winning in Risk does so because they properly timed their big move.
You can’t really argue with it, but after realizing this is, at its core, the real strategy to Risk, it’s mildly disappointing. All the arguments, strategizing, alliances formed and broken… they end up meaning little. It’s not really a game of global conquest, it’s just numbers and odds, which I always kind of knew, but seeing it played out like this drives the point home.
Still, this method of playing has taught me some very basic life lessons that for one reason or another, never resonated with me.
Mainly, that you need to be flexible. That when the right moment comes, you need to seize it. And, perhaps most importantly, that things are not going to go according to plan. To put it simply, shits random, which is probably the thesis behind all these Medium posts. Sometimes the best thing to do is just wait for things to play out, realize that there are ups and downs in everything and take it all as it comes, mannnnn.
Which, I know, all sounds incredibly trite. These are not earth-shattering revelations.
I think it’s one thing to hear suggestions like this and actually understand how they work; what they really mean. Risk has, for whatever reason, been the tool that finally got through to me. An example that played out in front of me over the course of 10-plus years. What a quick learner I am.
The weird thing is, after playing all these games of Risk on my phone, I think I’m over it. Hanging around to cash in cards isn’t really that much fun.
Risk has taught me that I no longer need Risk. Woo hoo!
But then again, a friend just bought Game of Thrones Risk and I am very excited to try that one out. It does raise a question though; how can you win Game of Thrones Risk? They don’t even know on the show yet.
Whatever, it’ll be fun.
