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Mike Ricotta
United States
Norfolk
Virginia
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I’ve always been under the assumption (based on things I half remember reading, and box art) that Risk was set during the Napoleonic era. Perhaps it’s just the version that had little cannons and horses. Anyway the art on the cards and such in the version I have points this way. Of course nothing in the game play does! Anyway for the purposes of this discussion I’m going to assume that Risk is about the Napoleonic era. I’m of course talking about plain old regular Risk and not Godstorm, LOTR, Future one, Puppy Risk, NYC Risk, National Park Risk or whatever.
1) Seasons! Let’s assume that each game turn represents a season. It sort of makes sense, as I think most of the areas could be crossed by an army in a season. Anyway I’m going with seasons. Thus every fourth turn should be winter! Who doesn’t love a good winter turn. So winter should punish the attacker, something like it takes two armies to get one die or each loss costs two units to the attacker. Also sea travel shouldn’t be allowed into frozen harbors! Winter shall be the only thing to save Russia!
2) Europe! Lets face it, Europe should be where it’s at. The epic battle for Australia, not so much eh? So lets take the map and explode Europe, more territory, make it worth more, perhaps if you conquer Europe you win! I’m sure good old Napoleon would have thought so. As it stands you get more dude for taking Europe than say South America, but Europe is also harder to defend. To stay true to the era it should be worth much much more.
3) Overwhelming Force! When I was a young lad I had a computer game version of Risk. The best part of it was that as your army got bigger you got to use a bigger die. Thus a super sized army gets a d10 and one dude gets a lowly d4. A change like this would certainly help the “Rambo” scenario where one lone dude can hold off a much larger force! Plus throwing around different sized dice is fun!
4) Naval! In Risk navies fly around with no risk. Seems a little odd. I bet the British would be pissed if this is how real sea transport worked. So now we need to make a new assumption. Keep this in mind since it’s going to show up again. For every territory you own and then groups of territories and cards and such you gain new troops. Great, as troops are the only resource in the game this makes sense. But, in reality what you are probably receiving is the money and manpower to make new armies. So these resources could be directed towards other efforts if such things were possible in the boundaries of the game. So it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to claim that these resources could be spent on naval things. So, instead of placing units in just territories they should be able to be placed on naval route lines as either a raider or an escort. So, if you wish to transports some dudes down a naval route the escorts and raiders fight and any remaining raiders get some shots at the transported troops. Seems like a good use of dudes! The navy was a big part of the era so at least a nod to it would be nice.
5) Sepoys! History of the era shows that if you take European troops to India or the islands they don’t do so well. Disease, terrain and so on all worked against them. Also I can’t imagine an Indian troop doing so well in the Russian winter. So why is it in Risk that your troops from South America work the same as the troops from the mother land? So, if we remember or resource discussion above we can come up with the following solution. It would be unfair to say that the resources from lets say India can only be spent on Indian troops. Clearly the riches of India helped the British more than that. So the solution may be that the bonus units (from cards or owning the continent) should be considered Sepoys and get a bonus in their land of origin and a penalty out of it. Also weakens the stupid Australia plan. European bonus troops should remain normal, making Europe even better as we discussed before.
6) Native Forces! Come on now, the major powers didn’t own everything when the war broke out. There where still tribal areas, smaller countries, German states and so on. Where is the love? So instead of dividing up the entire map each player should get a small set of territories to start out of and the rest of the map gets an assortment of neutral armies. They will defend themselves but not attack.
7) Leaders! A good general can win a battle. I just want a little plastic Napoleon to march around really. He can add a die or something. Lose a battle and he can get killed. IT would add some nice flavor.
Well that’s it. I’m sure that this would make Risk a complicated mess but I like it. As always this blathering have never been play tested or anything. Lazy
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