Tips for RISK: The Game of Global Domination

Risk is a game that I used to play as a four hour board game once a week. Now I tend to play it on my phone in about 20 minutes daily. I’m currently ranked as a master. I usually play automatic placement, classic rules, progressive card bonus (I can be flexible on the other points, but I won’t play fixed card bonus, which feels more like a game of endurance than strategy). Here are some of my tips to win:

Have a shifting strategy

The way you play at the start of the game shouldn’t be the same as in the second half. At the start of the game you want to build up your armies and hold on to your cards as long as possible. Sometimes if I’m the first player I won’t attack one turn so I can avoid being forced to cash in my cards for a measly 4 bonus troops. Usually at the start of the game you want to try to take an entire continent to get the bonus troops that come with it. As the game goes on, that strategy should shift. Holding a continent becomes a lower priority as the cards become more valuable. After the first round of cashing in your cards, look around to see who has failed to build up their armies and if you can kill them and take their cards. You also want to be quicker to cash in your own cards--if you have 5 cards your opponents are more likely to try to kill you to seize all those valuable cards.

Should you go for continents?

Holding continents generates bonus troops, but they’re not always worth it. Most people’s favorite continent to take is Australia, since it’s small enough that you can take it over in one turn and it only has one border to defend. Except the fact that it is most people’s favorite should make you think twice about trying to take it. Sometimes there’ll be three players at the start of the game all trying to conquer Australia and they all end up weakening each other.

South America and Africa are the next continents people usually try to take. They can be useful to hold, but you can end up spending more resources trying to defend them then you get from holding them.

North America will usually take a few turns to take over, if at all, but it does only have three borders to defend. If you’re going for this continent, wait until you have enough troops to put up a strong defense at the borders before trying to take it all.

Europe can be attacked from 6 different countries, it’s generally not worth trying to conquer. By the time you’ve managed to build up enough forces to hold it, the game will have moved on to the cards being more important than the continents.

Massive Asia is pretty much impossible to take at the start of the game. If you already hold Australia then you have a chance of conquering Asia. Even then other players usually resist letting anyone get the 7 bonus troops that come with Asia.

Remember at the start of the game your strategy should be to build up an army, not take a continent. One way to do that is to concentrate all of your armies in one country, usually in Asia but it can be elsewhere. Then only attack weakly held countries so you can get cards while keeping all of your troops in one country. While the other players are fighting between each other to hold continents, you’re actually building the biggest army. Once another player looks weak enough, send your army out to kill them and take their cards.

That said, most games I do still try to take a continent at the start. I’m just willing to abandon that continent if I see a better opportunity pop up.

Have a reserve force

This is the “don’t have all of your eggs in one basket” strategy. Aside from the bulk of your troops in whichever continent you’re trying to hold, it’s good to have a reserve force on the other side of the map. This can be as few as four men. My favorite country to put a reserve force in is Japan, since strategically it is of little value and opponents are unlikely to want it. This is a defensive move to make it more difficult to kill you.

As an example in the map above, the bulk of yellow’s forces are in South America but they effectively have a reserve force in the North Asian country of Yakutsk. If I wanted to kill yellow, I would have to divide up my forces, making it more difficult. Hence Yellow is more likely to survive another turn.

There’s no revenge as complete as victory

Computer players are usually pretty lousy compared to humans. They don’t commit to realistic goals and aren’t aggressive enough. Computers do have one advantage over human players--they don’t try to get revenge. When a human player has been attacked, the impulse is to strike back to get revenge. Sometimes a player will relentlessly go after an opponent that has annoyed them for the entire game. This generally isn’t a winning strategy.

In this next map, you can see that yellow has attacked me (purple), costing me my North American troop bonus. I could go after yellow to get revenge and get my continent back, but that’s not a winning strategy. Rather note that orange is the weakest player, so I’ve placed all of my troops in Greenland to go after orange, kill them, and seize their cards. After that I’ll be able to cash in my cards again and then kill yellow for the win.

Have a clear path of attack

There’s several countries I, purple, could attack orange from, but it’s best if I can keep my troops together as one attack force and not leave any troops behind. If you divide up your troops you may miscalculate where you need them and leave your opponent alive. You definitely don’t want to badly weaken a player without killing them--this makes it easy for a third player to swoop in and take the kill. Since you have to move at least three troops in when you attack, you want to plan the path you take so you’re not leaving troops you need behind. For this move I would go: Greenland-Iceland-Great Britain-Scandinavia-Northern Europe-Southern Europe-Ukraine-Ural-Afghanistan-Middle East-Egypt-East Africa-Madagascar-South Africa-Congo. This keeps my armies together as one attack force. At the end of my turn I can use fortify to move any remaining troops from Congo to a more useful location.

When it’s one-on-one, go fully offensive

When the game gets down to two players, there’s no reason to play defensively anymore. Since the odds favor an attacker, you should throw everything you have at an opponent. Sometimes it’ll be down to me and one other player and I see them still building up their defenses to hold on to a continent when the time for that has passed. You only need defense with multiple players.