Risk: Legacy

This game blew me away from the minute I read an advertisement for it. “A decision you make in Game 1 could come back to haunt you in Game 10.” That whole concept is very, very cool.. and to seemed very indie, and very forward-thinking for a company like Hasbro.

In Risk Legacy you modify the game as you play. You choose a faction and add stickers with special abilities. After winning the game, you can name continents and get bonuses if you hold that entire continent in a later game. You can found and name cities, give countries scar stickers (which modify that country in a bad or good way), and everyone’s favorite/least favorite.. tear up cards. The game is permanently modified when you throw out the Mongolia card. It will never show up again, so someone that took over Mongolia has less of a chance to earn bonuses and victory points. The strategy in this game goes well beyond the end of your session, and feels much like an RPG. But the joy of it, is that anyone can jump in and out because the story is all right in front of you on the board. If you miss a session, you can see the winner, and the losers, and the results of that session.

There are a few other reasons why this game is so great. The first being that they improved on the Risk model. Not just by customization, but also by making the sessions last just an hour each. Instead of world domination, you start out in one country and work your way outwards. If you hit 4 victory points (obtained through various methods) you win the game.

This was by far my game of the year, and I hope it’s a business model that starts off a whole new type of campaign games, where previous actions effect future games. Just the idea gets my head spinning.. in a very good way.

For me the original Risk is an enjoyable light war game, when my group began playing on a semi-regular basis again this and its Lord Of The Rings variant saw plenty of time at the table. Sitting back in my armchair some years later having now devoured my fill of what modern board game design has brought to the gaming banquet its easy to dismiss the simple pleasures of Risk. You see Risk’s biggest strengths and subsequent weakness is its a fun and easily grasped game, making it the go to gateway for armchair generals in training who will move onto bigger and deeper things as their hunger for a more strategic experience takes hold. My biggest issue’s with Risk in all its iterations be it Star Wars or the countless other licenses that have been applied, sometimes sensibly other times less so is that games will often rattle on for hours past where anyone really cared who won or lost anymore. And then there’s the randomness and luck driven nature of the combat. Whatever the grand tactic that you will embrace that evening and no matter how many troops you have mustered to your cause over long periods of stockpiling and trying not to get noticed, all of this posturing can quickly unravel before your eyes in a series of terrible dice rolls that leave your blitzkrieg across Europe stuttering just outside Paris. Its painful and the agony is further extended when one of your opponents then sweeps through your undefended lands to sink a flag in the swiftly cooling remains of your empire, don’t you wish you had some way of getting back at them, I mean you’ll remember that, why shouldn’t the game?

Well now it does. So the first thing to get out the way straight off is that Risk Legacy while not reinventing the wheel has gone some way to making it all a much smoother ride, it also includes one incredible feature the Legacy mechanism.

Legacy is something that should be applauded and its a shocker that it has taken three loong years for it to be even contemplated as happening again, the brain child of Rob Daviau its a mechanism that see’s not just the rules, but the board and the components being altered or removed completely from the game. All of your actions and decisions can have ramifications for the rest of the life of your copy of the game. For me the invention of this system is probably the single biggest development to happen to board games since dice.

As soon as you open the box a decision in itself (there’s a big label there to make sure you are aware of the enormity of whats coming) and begin playing you have further decisions to make after which your version of Risk legacy will be the only copy like it. To prove this point the first action you should take will be a ceremonial signing of the plate attached to the rear of the board, that’s another thing if you are intending to play this game through with a group, make sure everyone is in for the ride, because trust me no-body is going to want to miss whats coming.

Upon opening the box you are faced with sealed compartments and envelopes, its like being in some gamer’s Aladdin’s cave of possibility’s. At this point you need to exert self control and leave these mysterious artifacts alone or you’ll ruin what makes playing this so unique.

The more you play the game the more it changes and you will only open the envelopes or compartments when the game dictates, it may be within a game or two or maybe five or six. The thing is every time you open a box or envelope it changes things maybe some simple rules tweak or possibly an option to penalize a foe, whatever it is you will want more. Your mind will start to spin with what else could be concealed away awaiting to delight, and trust me there are some stand up and push the chair aside, mouth slackening moments of gaming joy in this box. Opening the sacred artifacts becomes a moment that your’e group will treasure for years, it can turn a bunch of old and jaded gamer’s into a gaggle of dizzy seven year old’s on Christmas morning, if you could bottle this stuff it would be illegal in most countries.

Now i don’t want to ruin the surprise here, and word of warning if you’ve not played yet, don’t go seeking spoilers or you’ll rob yourself of probably one of this gaming generations most amazing experiences, but just to tantalize. The main rules will be significantly altered throughout the whole campaign it will allow you to upgrade the games factions, you can also track those factions wins and loses on the card. You will write on the board, tear up cards, city’s will be built and destroyed you can even name continents giving you a perk. By the time you have run through the fifteen game campaign your board will be a unique one of a kind artifact, something to gaze upon and tell of mighty clashes and sad stories of battles fought and lost. An experience that you shared with good friends that no-one else will ever repeat, something to treasure.

If you’ve not ordered this already then there is probably very little more I can do to convince you. For me I feel sadness that you are robbing yourself of a one of a kind unrepeatable experience. And if its because its a Risk game then more fool you.

So to sum up, yes its still Risk but with some great new twists, its easy to teach and you can be up and playing in a short period of time. If you are new to the hobby or looking to convert some non-gamer’s then this may very well be the single greatest decision you can make. And you are getting in at the ground floor because Rob Daviau is as we speak, right now, designing two new legacy games. Seafall is a game completely of his own design that will encompass the Legacy system and Pandemic Legacy which will work similar to Risk did by layering the mechanism on an existing game system. These are exciting times people and whilst Risk Legacy maybe didn’t make the splash that by all rights it should have these next two are going to change things forever.

Times they are a changing people and very soon so will our games.

Somehow I had four guys ripe for adversarial board games at my work, and I didn’t even know it. My work buddies, guys that I’ve had drinks with, I had no idea were board game geeks lurking underneath. Maybe they didn’t even know it. All four were jumping at the chance to play this new version of Risk. The smack talking began two weeks before we had even played the game.

I had read the rules several times before our first play, so I was pretty versed in what needed to get the game rolling.

I will say, this game played with the right group of players is one of the best times I’ve had playing board games EVER. By now you know the flavor of the game. What I didn’t expect from this group was the perfect mixture of passionate play, held grudges, abandoned treaties, consistent trash talking, grand and fatal tactical errors and “unrelenting Blitzkriegs with the power of 10,000 suns” (words actually spoken during play). This game provides the perfect theater for all involved.

What I didn’t expect to happen was the after action replay the next day at work. Emails flying back and forth, smack talking in the hallways, the promise of revenge, and the reliving of the battlefield exploits. Everyone was champing at the bit as to when the next battle would take place. I must say, we are all a little addicted to concept of playing the game again, and opening the packs to see what lies before us.

IF you have the right group of friends, complete buy-in the complete nerdiness of this concept, this is a GREAT social game / light war / gateway game.

I know that someday, I’ll look back at this time now and think of how lucky I am to have all the packs in front of me, unopened. The battles yet to be fought.

Originally posted at menwithdice.com – used with permission.

I’m an admitted snob about certain things. I’m the guy who only buys whole bean coffee, grinds it myself, and brews it in my french press. I’m the one at the party who will drink water before touching anything that’s been cold brewed in the Rockies (whatever that means). I listen to music that most people have never heard and read stuff that’s equally obscure. And, of course, I play hobby board games. My wife calls them, dismissively, “your board games” – by which she means ones that nobody has ever heard of, that have a rulebook the size of a small magazine, and that can’t be picked up in a store with a name ending in “-mart”. And I’m ok with that.

There’s a difference between being a snob and being elitist, though. I’d like to think I’m the former without being the latter, by which I mean I’m not under any illusion that what I like makes me in some way a better specimen of humanity than anyone else. Some folks like Folgers, and while I don’t get why anyone would drink that swill, I’ll probably complain about it while watching a movie with more explosions than dialogue with my hand stuck in a bag of Chex Mix.

The world of hobby boardgaming has certain memes that can come across as both snobby and elitist – why Monopoly sucks, for example, or the more recent variant, why Settlers sucks. Or one that I’ve started to find particularly irritating: Hasborg. I get it – Hasbro puts out a bunch of **** and dominates the market. Stuff like Twilightopoly or My Little Pony Uno is a travesty and there’s nothing wrong with saying it. But Hasbro has actually put out some pretty **** good stuff over the past decade. Heroscape, for example, was a fabulous system that’s attracted a great community of fans and, yes, you could buy it in those “-mart” stores. Other notables include Epic Duels, Nexus Ops, Betrayal at House on the Hill, and Battleship Galaxies. They have some great designers putting out some great stuff, even if it doesn’t get the same kind of exposure as their more mainstream fare.

So when a game comes along that’s particularly innovative, the first assumption of most hobby gamers isn’t that it’s going to come from Hasbro. And when they do find out that it’s a Hasbro game and shares a common lineage with one of those downtrodden mainstream titles, immediately cynicism starts to take over. But let the game challenge some of the norms of hobby gaming and the gloves will come off. Destroying components? Writing on the board? Stickers? Permanent changes? Words like “gimmicky” and “disposable” and “bad product design” and “cynical cash-grab” will be among the kinder things said; people who find the premise intriguing will be called “morons” or worse. It’s like watching Comic Book Guy berate a fan who actually reads Radioactive Man #1.

Risk Legacy is the game, and those words are pulled from some of the comments on significant websites. Some people are calling it the game of the year, others are calling it the beginning of the end of hobby gaming as we know it. It’s easily the most polarizing game of the past several years, if not the last decade. And, yes, it’s a Risk game – but it’s not your daddy’s Risk. This version evolves over time. The map will change. You’ll write on the board. You’ll put down stickers, open hidden packets, reveal secret changes, tear up cards, and name continents after your favorite Italian restaurant (yes, this actually happened on my copy – thanks, Paul). You’ll make irrevocable alterations to your copy, and at the end, when all of the packets are open, all of the stickers are used up, and the ink in your marker has run dry, your copy will be completely unique. The board is even stamped with a unique id, just for effect – mine happens to be Earth #6698.

A lot of people are dismissing this as just another version of Risk, which isn’t exactly hailed as a paragon of game design. And, yes, it does start out that way, albeit with some significant changes for the better. The core combat mechanic is the same: attacker rolls three dice, defender rolls two, compare highest results to determine victor with ties going to the defender. You’re still not going to get unit differentiation or terrain modifiers or anything like that. The map is still the same, Australia and all – at least to begin with. But even right out of the box the game messes with the classic formula in some small but substantive ways. Personally, I’ve always thought that the real problem with classic Risk was never the combat, it was the victory condition. Complete world domination requires an unreal investment of time that far outlives the interesting decisions in the game. It encourages certain degenerate strategies like turtling and creates a game that lasts hours too long for what it is. This is compounded by two factors: the starting territory placement allows too many cards to be earned too quickly, and the escalating rewards for turning in cards encourages players to be the last to cash in. This creates a situation where players pick off weak territories while turtling in strongholds, waiting for the big payoff.

Legacy tweaks the formula by changing the victory condition from eliminating all other players to capturing stars. Each player controls a Headquarters piece that is worth one star. In addition, turning in four cards will earn a player one star, and players that have not yet signed the board signifying a victory also receive a star at the beginning of the game. Controlling four stars at the end of a turn will result in a victory; because each player begins with at least one star, two if they haven’t yet won a game, the focus shifts from turtling to aggressive strikes on opposing HQs. Cards are more difficult to earn in Legacy as well – although they’re still a reward for winning a battle, players do not begin the game spread across the map, but rather each player will place eight troops plus the HQ in a single territory from which they expand. This often allows several turns of maneuvering before forces come into conflict. Finally, because the rewards for turning in cards are static, and because cards can be used for either troops or stars, the valuation of holding or turning in cards changes significantly. Gaining more troops means delaying the opportunity for a guaranteed star, which creates interesting decision points throughout the game as short- and long-term goals are placed in tension. Add in variable faction powers and components that are top-notch, and the result is a fun, light, aggressive game that retains the classic version’s table talk and diplomacy while stripping away a lot of the elements that caused sessions to bog down. Our group’s first four games ran about 45 minutes each, resulting in back-to-back sessions in the course of an evening.

All of this would mean little more than another interesting Risk variant, except for the signature trait of Legacy – permanent, game-altering customizations to the components. This is the part of this review where I’m more limited than I’d like to be, because I don’t want to reveal any spoilers at this point for players who aren’t as far along in their game as we are. First, there’s the obvious stuff that’s available out of the gate – scars and rewards. Scars are stickers that alter a territory permanently by doing things such as adding or subtracting from a defender’s die rolls. They’re played at the beginning of combat, providing an element of surprise, but then remain in the territory in perpetuity. Rewards happen at the end of a game and constitute bigger changes to the map. They include changes such as city stickers that increase the population of a territory, coin stickers that change the value of cards, and the option to alter continent bonuses, for example. After five games, our map plays nothing like the first play. The changes are subtle but meaningful, and really shape the strategy and valuations of territories.

Then there’s the…other stuff. I’m not spoiling anything by telling you that the game contains a number of packets of hidden material that are opened and added to the game when certain conditions are met, such as a person signing the board for a second time or placing all of the Minor City stickers on the board. What’s in the packets? …Stuff. Game changing stuff. New cards and new stickers and, I think, new plastic – but I’m not sure because I haven’t opened that bin yet. New scars will come out (that’s in the rulebook), new card types will be introduced (that’s in the rulebook too), and new faction powers will be made available (also in the rules). New rules will be introduced, old rules will be superseded and the rulebook itself will be altered. The game will get more complex – it remains to be seen by exactly how much – and new options will present themselves. And it’s all done in a way that’s meaningful, not gimmicky. The players control their own destinies. You’ll earn the right to name a continent or found a city. You’ll earn the additional faction powers. You’ll uncover more paths to victory and you’ll learn not to let any one person get too powerful. And every decision you make will go on the board in a flurry of glue and ink, set down in permanence for everyone who comes after you to see and to rue. And for my money, that is a truly significant decision.

I understand that this game messes with the established tropes of boardgaming. It does things that are off the wall, outside the box, and against the norm. I get why people want a reset button or why some are trying to find a way to avoid the shockingly obvious conclusion that the design works best when it’s played as intended. But in practice it’s the difference between playing poker for M&Ms or playing it for money – while technically it’s the same game, it doesn’t work nearly as well when it’s not played for keeps. What changes? Well, for one, there’s so much going on that trying to track it in a way that allows do-overs just seems to me like so much extra busy work for not a lot of payoff. But more to the point, one thing that I think is commonly misunderstood about Risk is that it’s a game that happens primarily above the table. It’s not the mechanics that make a game of Risk enjoyable – it’s the metagame. It’s the trash talking and dealmaking and alliance breaking and bluffing and all that comes with it that makes the game fun. Playing for keeps – making the changes permanent – really elevates the game above the table. Not only does it raise the stakes, it creates situations where the game will enshrine those outcomes for future games. If you can take it back, then it loses something – something that may be hard to put into words, but something that’s still very tangible in-game. It loses gravitas.

Will everyone like this? Not a chance. For some, the game goes too far against established norms to be really enjoyable. For others, the core mechanics aren’t significantly different enough from a game that they’ve long since dismissed. And for others, the fact that it’s a game that depends highly on vibrant play above the table will be a dealbreaker. But in my group, I have three guys who haven’t played a game of Risk in years and one, my son, who’s cutting his teeth on a game that owes a lot to something I played when I was his age, all throwing dice, laughing, jeering, trash-talking, shouting, and on the edge of their seat waiting to see what happens when the battles are resolved or the packets are opened. And we’re recording the history that will form the world of Earth #6698 in a way that we can always come back to and revisit. Why would I want to reset that? Wiping out the history of a shared narrative seems far more destructive to me than writing it down and replaying it for years to come.

Risk has always been a staple game placed in the same shelves as Monopoly or Life. This version of Risk just doesn’t add a fancy gimmick or use a pop culture license to try and make the game “different”. This game really is as different as it gets.

At its core this is still Risk, but barley. You still are a general maneuvering your troops through different territories trying to claim the world and wipe out the other armies in your way. However, most of the similarities stop there. This risk adds the victory point system brought on in other variants and even uses the tweaked resource card system as well, but also brings life to the board you are playing on.

Every game will be different for every copy of the game. Each gaming group will customize or “grow” their personal game board and factions to make the game completely unique. This is done by marking the board with different modifiers that change your die roll for good or bad, Destroying cards a player thinks is too powerful, adding powers and weaknesses to the waring factions, and finally by evolving a loose “quest line” that lets you open mini expansions that are part of the base game. If the game is played per the rules and as intended, the balance will work out throughout. Especially since you have options to counter most effects.

For Risk fans this is a great break from the constant rehash of the game. If you are not a fan of Risk, still give a try, the massive differences this has from base Risk may be appealing as this wont feel like classic Risk. Great game, highly recommend a try.

This review is just on the components of Risk Legacy as I have not had a chance to play the game yet. Once I play I will post a indepth review, but that could be awhile as I want to get several plays in first.

The game comes in a briefcase style box. It opens up like a briefcase and has a nice handle. The artwork is new and very nice. Hasbro has created 5 distinct armies in this version of Risk. Each one has it’s own special abilities, unique miniatures, and own artwork. The game also comes with a slew of stickers and envelopes that you open once someone has accomplished something in the game. I have not opened these yet, but I am sure they have new cards, stickers, missions, and goals of some sort in them. There is a cloud of mystery over even the components that makes you want to play right away. The board is of a good stock, and looks like it will be easy to write on. Yes I said write on, and no it’s not dry erase.

The rulebook is also very nice. It is a full color manual. It gives you an overview of how Risk Legacy is different from other Risk games. Then it goes over the components of the game. Finally, it goes into the rules. There are several examples on each page. There are also spots to add new rules later in the game.

Overall, the components of this game are very nice. From what I can see they warrant the $60 price tag on this game. I also think that new components and gameplay may revive this classic game. The only complaint I have on the components is the cards. They are small and feel glossy. I would give the components a 4 out 5.

I think that Risk Legacy deserves more attention than it has received. Pandemic Legacy Season 1 claimed the BGG number one spot and started the fashion for attaching a legacy element to every game for the next 12 months. I would argue that so far the two most effective and satisfying games to employ the legacy format are Risk and Pandemic Season 1, and I wouldn’t swear to which is the most effective. Despite this every gaming shop I’ve been in for the last few years has copies of both Pandemic seasons, Seafall and Charterstone, while few or none of them have copies of Risk Legacy. 

I don’t know if this is due to childhood nightmares of never ending struggles over Europe, a dislike of modern gamers towards traditional family favourites or something more fundamental. I will say though that the game play in modern versions of Risk has been heavily overhauled. Unlike re-skins of Cluedo and Monopoly new versions of Risk are newer, better games worth looking at by any modern gamer. 

Risk as a game makes the most sense of almost any to have the legacy format applied, after all few events are more likely to permanently change the face of the world map than international war. Cities being founded and nuclear weapons dropped leading to fundamental changes makes absolute sense. Furthermore, in the excellent Pandemic Legacy series the scars and alterations effecting the map are largely caused by non-player directed actions, they mark more often than not the places where players failed. In Risk Legacy every change and mark is the direct result of a player action not reaction or inaction, every change is someone’s choice.

I know more people who own Pandemic Legacy Season 2 than Risk Legacy, which considering that Risk is cheaper and has been available for longer is peculiar to say the very least. If your hoping for Pandemic Season 3 or desperate to see Betrayal Legacy and don’t yet own Risk Legacy I strongly suggest you seek it out.        

I love the customization aspect of Risk Legacy. It does suffer from a “rich get richer” aspect as players that win the game get increasing advantages. After 15 games the customization stops, which could be a big downfall.