Risk
by Hasbro
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Our Price: $95.95 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $24.99 (click here) Category: Toy See more product details |
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Toys and Games Reviews of Risk
Customer Review: Risk is not only a game ...
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been playing Risk board game for a long time now and it is perhaps my all time favourite game. I was so fascinated by the game, and learned so much, that I ended up writing a book about it (Total Diplomacy: The Art of Winning RISK). It's that good.
Risk has been a very successful strategy game. The success of this game largely depends on its flexibility. Since you have to deal with other players over a well-defined goal, you are pushed to negotiate with them continuously. You need to understand their position, where they are, where they are heading to, whether they are friends or foes, if they listen to you or want you to listen to them, and so on and so forth. These issues all directly relate to real-life situations as well. In fact, this is why a new player feels right at home when playing for the first time. As soon as you know the basic rules of the game, you can start using your entire life knowledge to compete with other players over the resources provided in the game, and compete to win. In short, Risk is a great game to use to fine-tune your tactical, strategical and diplomatical skills.
In this day and age, we always experience a lack of time. Everyone wants to use their time as effectively as possible. As many know, the best way to achieve this is by multitasking: doing many tasks at once. However, this is easier said than done. Playing Risk is entertaining, and simultaneously it teaches a number of lessons. For example, you will learn how to deal with people effectively, how to control your resources, how to fight for what you want and manage risk.
My book, attempts to address two domains: it shows you how to win at Risk and it illustrates the finer concepts and skills required to deal with people. The idea is to use Risk as a training tool for skills otherwise challenging to master in real life.
By being familiar with the concept behind the game, you can focus on the actual skills in a more systematic way. Once you have mastered the dynamics of a particular situation, such as dealing with conflict escalation or understanding prisoners' dilemma, you can move away from the abstract environment of the game and apply your findings to the real world.
Risk, like any other game, has a set of well-defined rules and a specified goal. All you have to do is to conquer the world and win the game. If you cannot achieve this consistently, you obviously are not as good as other players, and you can keep practicing until you become better. This is in fact a simple, albeit harsh, measure of performance, but one that can easily be understood. In short, if you lose, keep working on your skills until you win. Practice makes perfect. You cannot blame someone else. If you lose consistently, you cannot blame it on luck either.
Risk can be used as a tool to learn more about yourself and about dealing with others. Buy the game, play it and join the risk community which its members are already engaged with different variations of Risk board game or the online versions of Risk. These days, it's easier than ever before to find playmates who either know the game already or are willing to play with you. You can find a lot of resources on Risk on the web site of Total Diplomacy.
Now, lets see if I can go and play some more Risk. I feel like conquering the world...
Customer Review: Risky business...
Summary: 5 Stars
My father was in the military/foreign service. One of his wishes for his son (your humble writer) was that he follow in his footsteps. Since those footsteps included wading waist-high in snake-infested waters in southeast Asia, parched and wind-blown desolate plains on several continents hot and cold, I opted for a different life. Having lived a quasi-military life for much of my early life, I have the greatest respect for those who choose that life, but my calling was in a different direction.However, my father did try to interest me throughout my childhood and early adolescence (having figured out that the worse aspects were not appealing to me -- that I wasn't seeing them as 'challenges' I wanted to undertake) with more intellectual, and more fun (crafty devil that he was) military-like things. 'Risk' was part of this attempt.
And, I must confess, I loved the game, and still do. It is a very simple strategy game, the reflects many of the realities of war (while neglecting others -- more on this later). Grand strategies for placing and moving armies; taking and securing defensible borders; trying not to get your troops trapped in unusable positions (either too far behind the lines, or too far out on their own); realising when a particular strategy isn't working and rethinking the plan -- these are elements that make the game interesting.
Of course, much like real warfare, there are elements of chance and risk involved. Sometimes the winning side wins because of a simple luck of the dice -- the die is cast! The winner is determined.
Unrealistic aspects include the ideas limitations on troops movements, and no accounting for difference in technology or diversity of forces (land, sea, air). This is an army game. Thatcher would never have been able to reclaim the Falklands in a good game of Risk without first having to take over sizeable chunks of North America and South America (via one route) or Western Europe, West Africa, and South America (via another). Also, most of the Risk games I've won I've done so because I camped out in Australia and South America, which have wonderfully few borders which need defending (and, as we know, few world conquerors have come from either place!).
Now, of course, I can't play Risk with any of you, because you now know a key element of my strategy. Unless, of course, my strategy is to make you think that is my strategy.
Perhaps military counter-intelligence wouldn't have been such a bad career after all...
The game hasn't changed much since my childhood. It is still far more fun the more players one has (up to six); with only two people, it becomes a rather stilted game (not a game really meant for the Cold War between two superpowers). Usually when I play we modify the rules about troop reinforcements (a good general would rarely extend forces in several directions knowing he could, successful or no, only be able to reinforce or withdraw one).
Yes, I have a love of history, of military strategy and planning, and of games, and this game feeds into those passions! So, my father had a positive influence after all (in other ways, too, mind you).
Customer Review: Beneath the Plastic's Tide
Summary: 5 Stars
When I was but a young warmonger and looking for some way to flex my angst-filled muscles, I would often invite friends over and introduce them to the iron fist I could promptly flex while playing Risk. This would perhaps involve baiting them with the talk of my legions, telling them how I would promptly roll my armies over their shattered nations while streaming my grandiose propaganda everywhere, and sometimes it would involve other exchanges beforehand. This ultimately worked, however, and people would fall for the "one up," always thinking they could perhaps persuade the dice to love them and that they could perhaps redeem their last efforts. And that's when their humiliation would begin.
The design of the board would allow for strategy and surprise, for rudimentary games showing my might and combined with lots of gloating, and it also worked to propel many a dancing celebration across the charred bones of many a vanquished plastic nation. Ah, the beauty of youth.
While it is easy to dismiss Risk now that it has been moved past and shelved for years at a time, merely taking it out at parties and looking at the expressions of many a humbled friend says that it is more than little armies, cardboard, and the luck of the dice. It says that the rules therein can be manipulated to make one a humbling giant, the arm carrying the big stick, able to leap giant buildings and growing armadas in a single bound. Through careful planning, you can actually see yourself growing, waiting for the traps to snare those enemies you have tauntingly baited into hours of preparation, and what other forms of entertainment can you say that about? A few, perhaps, but can you also say that boardgames like Sorry or Monopoly let you laugh at the misfortune you can rain down by humbling both family and peers? Hardly.
If you are a parent that finds yourself left behind by the technological divide, wondering where all the games and the gadgets are going and finding your child all too smart, then this is possibly the evening ground. Here is a place where armies collide and where you can be the giant you've always known yourself to be, laughing at the follies of youth. If you are a wife and you want to humble you husband, what better way is there than to do it on this plateau? Not only do you invoke the rites and sing the songs of demise, but you can also do it upon the backs of their broken preparation and laugh about it for months. And for kids living under the rule of parental tyranny, what is better than something you can hold like a banner to the stars and profess your greatness at? Yes, this is a game for the ages!
Customer Review: RISK...chess with pawns only?
Summary: 4 Stars
I used to be a RISK lover...until I tried other strategy games. However, this game is great for beginners who are just discovering wargames- RISK is simple, abstract, yet it will keep you busy for hours (a typical game lasts two hours or so). There is no economy/supplies to focus on, just combat. You place your men, you attack, and you defend. The amount of reinforcements per turn received is based on the amount of territories you have in a horribly misshaped map of the world divided into 42 territories. Controlling an entire continent gives more troops per turn, the only "resource" in this game. At first this game is a great time waster, since you'll always be just barely living for the next fresh troops to replenish the supply lost from brutal attacks and gallant battles. The pieces are quite well crafted, with tiny infantry, cavalrymen, and a cannon in six different colors stored in a durable plastic divider tray. The game is simple- and this may be its downfall. Battles relie completely on dice, and here you will discover what RISK veterans call "RISK dice"- there have been instances where 7 on 1 attacks have lost. Also, the game tends to get repetitive- for hours on end, you simply place troops, attack, die, and the cycle repeats until someone controls the ENTIRE BOARD. Imagine playing a chess game with only pawns and one king. A number of the games won't be lost from poor planning or inexperience, but from luck of the dice. There is no other advantages to consider other than having a higher dice roll than your opponent. The lowdown:
PROS
-beautifully crafted pieces
-simple gameplay that can be learned and understood by anyone with a shallow learning curve
CONS
-game relies COMPLETELY on dice
-players do nothing between their own turns; they only do something if another player chooses to target them
-on the other hand, the pieces are tiny. They can very easily be lost, knocked down, or moved even if you roll the dice on the game board.
-setup takes 15 minutes or more depending on the amount of players
IMPORTANT: This isn't a con or pro, per se, but worth mentioning. There are three types of pices- the infantry, cavalry, and artillery. These aren't different types of units, they're just counters. Infantry means 1, cavalry represents 5, and artillery represent 10.
Customer Review: Still the great game you remember
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm happy to report that Risk is still the timeless wonder it was when I was a kid.
From about the 6th grade (when I received this as a Christmas present) to about 10th grade (when other priorities arose), a rainy weekend or summer day often meant getting together with friends for an epic game of Risk. We would be absorbed in the game for hours. It had enough strategy involved that we could be convinced of our generalship, enough chance that we could blame defeat on the dice. We played it enough that I absorbed geopolitical lessons of questionable truth: Iceland and Kamchatka are not the keys to controlling North America. Ukraine is not nearly that big.
Our family was given a Risk game as a gift a few years ago. I was always trying to interest the kids in a game, but my daughters (13 and 10) were not very interested. Finally, my son (age 7) though he might like to play. I was torn. On the one hand, I had loved the game, on the other, he was a bit young. I didn't want to ruin it for him by introducing it too early.
In the end, we gave it a try. He needed a bit of coaching, but he grasped the basics of game play pretty quickly. We had a blast. The next time we have a free hour or two, he has been asking to try it again.
My observations:
1) Risk has not been ruined by the forces of time or political correctness. The game is almost exactly as I remember it. The small pieces are now in the shape of soldiers (1 army) horsemen (5 armies) and cannon (10 armies), but they function exactly like the old triangular pieces of plastic I used to use. The map still has a 19th century feel to it. The dice for attacking and defending are even still the same color.
2) My son was a bit young at age 7. He needed some coaching, but he caught on and enjoyed the game very quickly.
3) The game still takes a LONG time to play. Plan on taking two hours at a sitting or putting the game aside to finish another day.
4) It is more fun with more than 2 players. The only drawback is that players are eliminated one by one (like Monopoly), leaving 2 players fighting it out at the end of every game. This means that the person coming in 3rd, 4th, etc., is likely to get bored.
Still, these minor flaws aside, this game is a classic. I give Risk my highest recommendation.