Nice Board.
Given the effort you have put in it is worth mentioning that there are a lot of other people playing risk at an apparently higher level than most of your correspondents, who don't access the Internet.
Check out the Double-Six Club in Wardour Street, London, you may find it interesting.
A few strategies and tips:
Yes, everyone knows about Australia, but as one of your mailer's correctly stated, Australia is easy to defend, but a bugger to attack from. If everyone goes for Australia, it makes for rather a dull game. A major tactic that seems to have been overlooked is the attack without invasion policy. Instead of pushing your largest army up to a border with another large army, attack to reduce the size of the army to a single (or massively outnumbered) battalion, and leave your enemy with one of his own troops between his biggest army and yours. He is unlikely to commit his reinforcements to the single battalion but will plonk them in the same territory as the majority of his forces. This gives you time to re-group, and should it become necessary, a guaranteed risk card. Try it and see.
Pincer movements should be avoided at all costs except in special circumstances, always sweep through, ensuring you leave no territory available for enemy re-inforcements behind your own front line. Move slowly if you do not have the skill for a Blitzkrieg, where you have control of a territory that borders another territory with a single border. Move in, you are not exposing yourself to further attack, but are increasing the number of territories you have.
Variations of the game:
CAPITAL RISK
Each player nominates a capital city from the territories he has at the beginning of the game, he holds the risk card for this at all times. He must defend his capital at all costs, for if that gets taken, he loses and all of his territories and troops are given to the conquering player. This is especially effective when only two players are playing, with six players, you generally find that two super powers emerge, but there is nothing to stop the conquering commander employing the vanquished players to work for him as Lieutenants, using there own armies, but ultimately answerable to the commander-in-chief. Game-Play is as usual throughout, although depending on the number of players, diversification can be introduced.
CIVILIZATION RISK
One territory per continent is removed from the risk cards:
North America - Eastern United StatesThe cards are shuffled and picked by the players, which ever territory they get is their capital, this must be defended at all costs. Depending upon the capital, each player gets whatever number of troops they would get for the continent to start with, which must go in that capital city, e.g. The Australian player starts his turn with 2 battalions in Eastern AUstralia, the Asian player with 7 in Japan, The European with 5 in Great Britain etc. The Japanese player is always the General (i.e. he goes last) The player to his left starts and moves as normal. Reinforcements are calculated at 1/3 but the minimum is 1, not 3. i.e. if you have 8 territories, you get 2 batallions, if you have 5, then you only get 1. The rest of the play is as normal.
Game Enhancements:As everyone knows, the one thing that stops RISK being a game to equal CHESS, is the dice throwing. As one of your mailers eloquently put it: "A player with a great strategy can be beaten by a five-year old with lucky dice."...Too true. I saw one or two variations on the dice throw that were pretty good, the one I have found works most effectively, reducing, though not destroying the element of luck is this:
Whenever an attack is about to take place, a ratio can be applied to the number of forces involved in the battle. E.g.:
ATTACKER DEFENDER RATIO DICE RATIOAs you can see, the main difference is that you have a pontential situation where someone could defend with three blue dice. This seems to be fairer than normal. Though I accept that the element of surprise is a factor, is it really realistic that someone attacking 40 Battallions with only 3 Batallions should really have the advantage of three dice to two, and since we have removed the attackers advantage, we also remove the defender's advantage, a draw is a draw, One battallion is removed from each side.
As ever there is a maximum of three dice involved on one side, and all fractions are rounded down. It looks mathematical, but if you think about it, how often have you looked at the board and said to yourself, I outnumber him three to one; two to one etc. It soon becomes automatic.
As the battle progresses, the ratios will change, and so will the number of dice used, as in normal dice play.
NAVAL MANOUVERESThere are three Oceans on the risk board: The Indian Ocean, The Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. Along the side of the risk board are lines of latitude and longditude. If a player holds tow territories that are linked by lines of latitude or longditude, e.g. South Africa & Argentina, Western Europe & Central America, Japan & Western United States, East Africa & Indonesia, New Guinea and Kamchatka they may use these sea routes to manouver troops from one territory to another.
However, the manouvering troops must spend at least one turn at sea, where they sit on the line of latitude or longditude (i.e. the sea route is seen as a territory). Whilst there they can not be attacked by an opposing army, however if one of the harbour territories is taken the troops at sea must manouver to the remaining territory when it is there turn to manouver. If they fail to do this, they are lost at sea. Similarly, if both harbour territories are taken whilst troops are at sea, then they are also lost.
Naval Manouveres can be expanded to form NAVAL RISK, but I think I have probably gone on enough.
All of these games/rules can be combined into a single game if you so desire, or mixed and matched. Try them out, let me know what you think.
Regards,