Hasbro Risk Balance Of Power Boardgame

Risk is easily my favourite board game of all time, but its one flaw has always been that you can't really have a good game of it with only 2 players (though to be fair, this applies to the majority of the other 'big' games too); so, I was very interested to give this spin-off a go. After about 5 or 6 games of it, I have to say it lives up to its aims very well, but only providing that you make some key changes to the rules.

For the positive points, the gameplay is much more strategic than standard Risk in terms of the kinds of options you're given outside of diplomacy, but without being made so complex as to be a drag - it's still the streamlined game you know and love. The addition of a neutral player is a good buffer between the 2 'real' players; the ability to cash cards in more regularly and use defeated troops to gain special abilites keeps gameplay varied and entertaining; 'rough' territory and capturable capitals and cities add an interesting flavour to parts of the map; and the objectives are tough, but just achievable enough to inspire you to give them a go. The presentation of the whole package is also very slick, and the flat 'arrow' units can be piled up easily enough to compensate for any small, fiddly territories. Plus, it has a bonus over Risk in that games can be over much quicker than in standard Risk, making it more exciting and convenient to play (though you can still end up in epics if things play out that way). So far, so good!

There are a couple of big negatives though. First, as other reviewers have noted, the game can be pretty hard to learn to begin with, thanks to a confusing 'dossier' type instruction manual - being able to pull out just exactly the page you need in an instant is useful when you need to remind yourself of a particular rule, but it makes things very confusing when you're trying to learn how to play the game, and there isn't a satisfactory step-by-step run-through of how to play in one coherent page or two. Someone like me who has played standard Risk a lot beforehand should be able to pick it up pretty quickly, but they should have made it better for the beginner - for any such newbies out there, just stick with it and you'll get it quickly enough, I promise it's nowhere near as complex as it first seems!

The really big problem though, especially for anyone with experience in strategy games, is that the rules that come with the game are very unbalanced - they make both attacking the neutrals and trying to complete objectives much too unrewarding, basically forcing you to just attack each-other head-on all the time unless you want to hand a big advantage to the opponent, and thus removing a lot of the more interesting strategies. It almost makes me wonder how much this game was tested, or if it was tested by people who have even played Risk much before, because this is a glaring problem that we noticed after only a game or two. However, we did pretty quickly come up with a few amendments to the rules that made it far, far better, and much more strategic, exciting and varied - I'll list them here for anyone who knows they want this game or wants to improve their experience of it, otherwise for the conclusion of the review just skip the bit with #'s next to it:

# SUGGESTED CHANGES TO RULES
# (For any rules not mentioned, assume they are the same as in the official rule dossier)
#
# Setting Up:
#
# - Draw the placement of cities (not capitals) randomly from the cards
# - Place 4 neutral armies in both of the 2 satellite centres, then 6 in both the Swiss vault and Danish dockyard
# - Then place 3 neutral armies each in 12 randomly selected territories
# - The players roll to see who goes first, select 7 territories each (either randomly or hand-picked), then choose where to place their capitals before placing their armies one by one as in standard Risk
# - Don't do the rule where you roll to see which faction you play as unless you want to, better just to pick your colour beforehand and proceed from there
#
# Missions / Cards:
#
# - You still get a card even if you only conquer a neutral territory in your turn
# - You still get a card even if you have completed a mission in your turn
# - You can complete multiple missions in a single turn
#
# Trading Troops from the Chart:
#
# - The Bonus vs. Sites power now means one dice cannot be 2 or below, but you can only re-roll the dice once - you have to accept the re-roll even if it is still 2 or less (can still be bought several times to act on more than one dice)
# - The Airfield now improves the rolls of all of your dice by 1, but they cannot be built on rough terrain

To conclude, the unbalanced and poorly-presented rules of the game were disappointing, but if you tinker with them (and I highly recommend the changes I listed above), then you'll get an excellent 2-player variation of Risk, which ought to be highly satisfying to both experienced strategy gamers and novices alike. As such, I give it 3 stars for the product as they sell it, but with the appropriate rule changes, you can easily knock that up to 4 or 5 stars!

I was given this version of risk as a christmas present, when i'd actually asked for the full 3-6 player version. At first i thought it would be a bit of a disappointment, but once i started to play it I realised that it has one HUGE advantage over the full version - you only need one other person to play it with! My wife and I can now play risk just the two of us and still have great fun, I don't have to wait till we've got friends over who are up for playing it for hours on end! Don't get me wrong, i'm still going to buy the full version so that we can play with more than two of us, but this is great if you just want all the fun of risk, but without having to have lots of people round. Highly recommended.

I have always heard good things about risk, I have been told time and time again that I will love it. But I have never played it.

This is the first time I tried it and my friends were right I loved it, cant believe I waited so long to try it. I always thought that it was a hastle getting 3-6 friends around that will all like this type of game and I think that is the main reason I have never made the effort to play it.

This 2 player one is the easy option. Only needing 1 player (other than yourself) to play it means It is a lot easier to make the effort for a game.

I enjoyed it so much I will be buying the original version for a 3-6 player game.