Has anyone played this little gem of a game?This is a favorite passtime between classes amongst my circle of friends. It has its fair share of short comings and curious design choices, but there's a solid game at its core (and its called Risk).
Essentially, the world is sectioned off into smaller areas. 1 player and up to 6 CPUs control color coded groups and each try to eliminate the other players. The game begins with the player choosing how many CPUs will play with them. The game then generates a world each area is given a random color and number of dice. The player may choose to accept the world or generate a new world. Once the player has chosen a world, a turn order is randomly established and displayed at the bottom of the screen, from left to right. Each player at the bottom also has a number representing the largest group of connected areas that they control.
During their turn a player may select any of their areas with 2 or more dice and attack an adjacent area belonging to another color, who is now the defender. The number of dice in each area is rolled, and the higher number wins that battle. If there's a tie the defender wins. If the attacker wins, all but one of their dice is moved to the new area and the previous occupants dice are removed from the world. If the defender wins, the number of dice in the attackers area is reduced to one. A player may choose to end their turn whenever not in a battle. At this point a number of dice, equal to the areas in the largest connected group of areas, are distributed randomly among the player's areas, with a maximum of 8 dice allowed in any one area. If all of a players areas are filled left over dice go into a pool and will be distributed at a future time when the player ends their turn, if possible. It then becomes the turn of whoever is next in the turn order.
The game is over when the player is either removed from the world or when everyone other then the player is removed from the world.
I like this game a lot because of how quick and clean it is, but also because of the amount of subtitles it contains. If I had to summarize it, I'd say there are plenty of instances where one can be offered a problem with an objectively best solution, and making those choices is always fun. The game can also be a bit frustrating when highly improbable rolls happen. Right now I'm in the process of generalizing a strategy for winning and its not quite as simple, nor quite as difficult as one might imagine. To summarize it, the rule of thumb right now is "Don't attack an area that you don't think you can keep." I might go into it more later but for now I wanted to see what other people thought of this game.
Following are some additional rules and tips that I've come across.
* The CPU can hold a "grudge" against the player and will prefer to attack them after they have been attacked. This was posited after the CPU would ignore fairly safe attacks until the player then attacked the CPU.
* Teams can not move dice through their own territory, meaning that an effective strategy is to hid behind a teams weaker strategies.
* The CPU hates to have its area cut in half and will often take drastic means to restore this.
* If the player does not attack and simply ends their turn the CPUs will be more likely to do the same.
* It is always preferable to have an enemy capture an area and open themselves up for attack, rather then capturing an area yourself and opening yourself up for an attack.
Most importantly:
* Areas that are not connected to a teams largest area are just as likely to receive dice as any other area. If smaller areas are facing imminent destruction, they are nothing but a liability to their team and shouldn't always be captured. The CPU doesn't seem to know this.
