This latest version of Risk is obviously based on the popular new movie, although in contrast to the film it is actually set on the alien planet of Cybertron. This review deals with its subject strictly as a variant, and assumes the reader is familiar with the vices and virtues of regular Risk.

COMPONENTS:

The distinctive feature of the board are "sliding zones" and "spinning zones" -- two of each. These require some assembly, and along with the flat, bright color patterns, really give the aesthetic impression of a children's game (which might not be inappropriate). I don't care for the way they hang so loose on the board, but they don't seem to be in danger of detaching or anything. Although I give them credit for trying to evoke the landscape of a "machine" planet, I still wish the board looked more like a map instead of a patchwork of brightly colored spaces or a pop-up book.

Robots are analogous to single armies and vehicles represent three robots. Morphologically (in contrast to other "theme" risks) there is nothing to distinguish Autobots from Decepticons. The robots look fine, but I find the look of the vehicles to be uninspiring. Considering the high standard set by Star Wars Risk, these are disappointing.

There are four leaders, one for each color. They include Megatron and Barricade for the Decepticons, and Optimus Prime and Bumblebee for the Autobots. These tokens show robot and vehicle forms as flat, two-dimensional images in a simple and very functional way. I think it would have been a nicer touch to have actual three dimensional figures that you could switch out for one another. It is difficult to view these tokens from different angles of view, and they just seem a little out of place aesthetically with the regular units. I even find that I miss counting territories occupied only by leader tokens, because they are so easy to miss.

Borrowing a nice feature from Star Wars Risk (and maybe others I haven't played), there are 8-sided dice included for use in combat under certain circumstances. There is also a "risk deck", but it is used quite differently from more traditional Risk games. As components, nothing really special here.

I appreciate that they keep the rules short and simple, but it is a serious offense that they don't completely tell you how to set up the game. Specifically, you are on your own to decide how the spinning zones are oriented at the beginning of the game, and it really does matter.

TRANSFORMERS THEME:

The sliding and spinning zones can be manipulated through the use of cards, in the former case to create extra territories with special army-generating abilities, and in the latter case to control points of access (that is, determine which adjacent spaces are actually adjacent). I appreciate the effort to introduce more "transforming" in the game, but in practice these are seldom used. You have to burn valuable risk cards to manipulate them and in our experience, it seldom seems worth it to do so.

Transformers Risk introduces a "morph" phase that occurs between steps for placing your new armies and executing your attacks. There are interesting decisions to be made here, particularly with regards to whether to place to leader in robot or vehicle form, because you will be unable to transform them again until the same phase of your next turn. A nice touch.

In the context of the game, the leaders are interesting, despite their rather mundane appearance on the board. Each gives an attack or a defense advantage in robot form, and also has a distinctive personal ability in vehicle form. I'm not sure how well balanced these abilities are. For example, it could be just the way we play, but Bumblebee's ability to escape destruction seems somewhat better than, Megatron's ability to attack any territory on the board by himself (typically leaving him very vulnerable to reprisal attacks). Still, overall they provide the strongest burst of theme in the game and present lots of interesting strategic choices.

There is also a new "All-spark" phase, which employs the Risk deck in an interesting new way. At the end of a round of turns, a card is drawn and 3 new robots are created in the indicated territory. Considering that units are harder to come by in this version of Risk, this can really benefit the player controlling that territory. Maybe this adds luck to an already luck-plagued game, but I think this is fun. If you can't take bad luck in stride, you know better than to play Risk anyway.

OTHER ISSUES:

In an apparent effort to keep things simple, these rules avoid the issue of neutral armies and I feel the result is a distinct first-turn advantage (at least in a 2-player game). Every territory you earn comes at the expense of your opponent at the beginning of the game and it just seems too easy to put your enemy on his heels before he even gets to take his first turn. For our two-player games, we've decided to address this issue by conducting a pre-game All-spark phase and letting the person who benefits go second. So far this seems to work pretty well.

You cannot turn in cards as "risks" for additional units in the usual way. Instead, the game substitutes the All-spark phase (removing an element of strategy) and the sliding zones, which can be converted to factories (but are difficult to exploit in practice). A result is that units are harder to come by, as I mentioned previously. I actually enjoy this aspect of the game, maybe just because it is a distinctly different flavor of Risk.

In what has become standard issue for theme Risks, the cards provide special events to the benefit of those who play them. Appropriately, I think, they don't seem to have as big an impact here as they do in Star Wars Risk (where they powerfully manifest the thematic element of "the force"). I give the risk deck an overall passing grade because its simplicity suits the spirit of the game.

Most theme Risks seem to have some way of managing the length of the game and in this case we get an actual, rigid timer on the game. Each player gets six turns and the player with the most territory on the board at the end wins. If there is a tie, victory goes to the player who controls a specific territory in the middle of the board. Fine.

SUMMARY:

I was initially attracted to this game because of the comparisons it has drawn to Nexus Ops. I do understand why people make that comparison, but I would caution people to take it with a grain of salt. They are both light strategy games with a science fiction theme, but this is the much lighter of the two, both in substance and theme. If you know both games, this is still much more Risk than Nexus Ops. Like Nexus Ops, however, you have a relatively short strategy game with a relatively simple rules set. If you happen to like Risk, as I generally do, this will probably still fill a nice little niche in your collection.