review

From Genesis to revelation?

Risiko Europa

Dice-War in good old Europe

In the beginning was the world, and the world hat 42 regions; Evolution arrived later. But in Middle Earth there could be risks as well. Will France soon have another Napoléon? Or will there be Civil War in America? For how long will we be able to afford „deluxe“? Wouldn’t it be better if we lived more „classic“? Will the Net transform us into Zombies until the Year 2210? Or will we even emigrate to the Stars, but fight Wars among them, too?

This is only a small overview on 15 (and that is not the complete range) variants (*) of „Risiko“, one of those board games that everybody is familiar with. Who can count the hours, which we spent with the game in our childhood, adolescence and even as adults? And now, in our later years, we may finally return home. But it is not a peaceful setting, in which we might come to rest, because there is war in Europe, too. The box cover already tells the story: A grim-looking, crowned knight with a bleak battle scenario in the background.

The box is sold without a protective foil cover, maybe due to sustainability reasons. The foil is replaced with circular stickers on all four edges, which, unfortunately, cannot be removed without traces left on and damage done to the box. The content of the box, too, leaves me with mixed feelings: The big, in itself rather beautiful, board would be even more fun with “antiquarian” details, and the quality of the cards in the game is rather “flabby”. On the other hand, however, the four armies not only come with four distinct types of units - Footmen for infantry, Archers, the Cavalry of knights on horseback and Siege Weapons - but, happily, the design of the four armies varies: There are Vikings (blue), Ottomans (purple), and two kinds of Knights (green and red). The Vikings, however, are forced to make do with a technically rather simple siege engine - battering rams only - and an even bigger disadvantage during the game and the hectic of battles is the fact, that the infantry soldiers and the crossbow carriers are too much alike.

Well, then, let’s study the rules: The rules are not bad, but written somewhat laboriously, but, at least, the rules are, albeit with the exception of a few, not really relevant details, easily understood. In any case, they reveal the first major surprise in the game: The simple reinforcement of forces, conquering, new deployment and then drawing of cards is no more. In its place, we need one of eight hand cards for each of the four possible actions - collecting taxes, spend money, attack and relocate troops. Those cards in turn offer two options each; five of those cards would allow attacks, but one often has to choose the alternative of relocating. In each round, all players choose two cards (simultaneously and secretly) and also determine their order of play - you cannot change this later. When the commands chosen don’t keep what they promised to deliver in the two action phases, you can only fall back to the second option on the active order card. To affect conquest demands, in this version, some farsighted planning in advance, because only after four rounds you have again a choice of all cards.

The second big - and even more well-made and felicitous surprise: Each type of unit has a different combat mode and other costs per unit. Infantry soldiers are the cheapest (only one coin per unit), but are, however, mostly only useful as “cannon fodder”, that is, expendable troops Archers (two coins) have a right to priority shooting and score a hit with a dice result of 5 or 6, that is a chance of one third for a hit. Cavalry troops are already “deadly effective” from a result of 3 and higher, so that the have a hit probability of two thirds, they cost, however, three coins and take their turn in each round after the archers had their turn.

A kind of “miracle weapon” is the siege weapon or the catapult: In not only has the same hit probability as the cavalry, it also allows the rolling of two dice and, even better, gets active ahead of the archers, albeit for the enormous price of 10 coins. Without the technical upgrade, that is, without catapult, the attack on an opposing territory containing a fortress is forbidden; those fortresses can also be acquired - in addition to your own starting fortress - and offer additional defense advantages.

Only when all special units have been active, the “classic” risk rules are applied as the final phase in a combat round: Rolling maximum three dice against maximum two dice, followed by comparison of the results - if there are only Footmen involved on both sides of the conflict, this is the standard way to resolve the conflict.

All in all, this results in a very harmonious and intuitive as well as rather “realistic”, but not overly complicated way to resolve battles. But there is one thing that has been forgotten - a kind of “battle ground” where the respective troops that are involved in a conflict could have been placed, as it can get rather tight and cluttered in a contested are on the board.

It is not really an amazing surprise, that you do not have to complete tasks to achieve a win (for instance, „Conquer/Free Europe“), but that you need to achieve ownership of a given number, in relation to the number of players, city areas at the end of a round. Money can be used to acquire crown cards (= victory points), so that you are not completely dependent on the luck or bad luck on the battle field. The bigger your own connected empire, the more taxes you can collect. A very nice feature in that is the opportunity to hit another player, whose economy is too powerful, where it really hurts by specifically targeting on or two of his areas, so that he has no choice but to get himself girded up again. However, all conflicts are resolved only at the end of the round, that is, when every player has resolved his two order cards chosen at the beginning, so that a lot can happen between invading an area and the beginning of a battle.

In a game of three or two players, money is also used to acquire one or two mercenary armies, a feature that works very well with the game play. As each mercenary army can keep the money it was bid for and can use it during the game to upgrade its own weaponry, it can happen that this mechanism results in an inability or unwillingness of players to afford their own units, but that players instead prefer to let an adjacent mercenary army protect them or try to attack another player with the concentrated mercenary forces. The successful upgrading of a mercenary army can have the unwanted bitter result that a formerly financial ally does a turnabout and stabs you in the back. A mercenary army is not only fickle in its favors, you can never be sure when you make a bid for it, if you will have two attack order cards available for it in the following round or if you will only command their „collect tax/buy“ cards.

The various new features are, viewed on their own, not really innovative, but in total result in a very harmonious total without achieving this with a rules compendium that is much too complicated, But, on the one hand, I would have liked to see more variation for the order cards - for instance, combinations of “attack / collect” tax or “relocate / buy”. On the other hand, for my taste, the always identical and unchanging advantages for the golden starting cities are too uniform, especially as, for instance, the ownership of London and Paris or Paris and Madrid is rewarded with a regular influx of additional troops. This can give, compared to the advantages of the other starting cities, a player an advantage and a head-start at the begin of the game which can only be made up with difficulty - however, there is always the option to ignore those advantages, even more so as one easily forgets about them during the game.

The variant for the Crown cards which is included in the game, also seems not really well thought-out. In this variant, you cannot simply buy those card, but you must have complete certain secret orders to to make the card work as a sure victory point, which is also a reminiscence about the original game. The degree of difficulty of those secret orders ranges from “child’s play” to nearly unachievable, which completely thwarts the fundamentally clever idea of trying to make the game more tactical or strategic.

Variants:

I.) The map of Europe has more than the „classic“ 42 region of the world map usually featured in Risk, so that on the one hand a game for five or even six players suggests itself, provided that your own stock of games can supply additional armies (for instance, from the „Lord of the Rings“ version of Risk), but you would have to create or copy an additional set of cards for the orders for each additional player and to reduce the number of crowns needed to win to 6 or 5.

II.) On the other hand, the game can be easily made accessible for younger children (probably more to boys than to girls); the suggested age limit of „ages 14 and up“ seems far too high anyway, but with a fallback to the original rules, even primary school children should be able to have fun with this simplified version - I describe only the changes relevant for a game with four players:

Preparation: You place a fortress on each golden starting city; each player receives one of those golden starting cities, either randomly assigned or deliberately selected, including a fortress piece and a number of Footmen equal to 10 minus the tax value of his own starting city. Otherwise, the eight golden cities have no special advantages and you play without order cards.

A player turn:

a.) Income for the round: The total of your biggest connected area of city and country regions, as in „Risk Europe“

b.) Unit supply: Money can be spent any way for new units or you can save money; but you can only place a number of new units on a city that is equal to the tax value of this city; a fortress in a city doubles this value. You can only buy one crown card per turn, and can only buy them when all city areas are occupied, regardless by whom.

c.) Attacks: Any number of attacks can be made, as in the original, and are resolved basically as in „Risk Europe“; the conquest of an empty city area, however, costs you a number of units equal to the tax value of the city; normally, you will remove Footmen for this purpose; you also need a siege weapon, too, for the conquest of an empty golden city, which, however, need not be removed compulsory.

d.) Troop relocation: Only by maximum two cases, as in „Risk Europe“, and you must always leave unit in a case that you move troops out of.

 [Note: In the version from my childhood, any number of troop movements were allowed; for me, this would be more coherent; now it has been restricted to one relocation per turn; but you can play that as is suits your personal taste.]

Game End: When a player owns six crowns at the end of his turn, he wins the game immediately.

(*) „Evolution“, „Der Herr der Ringe“, „ÉditionNapoléon“, „Captain America - Civil War Edition”, „Deluxe“, „Classic“, “A.D. 2210”, “The Walking Dead”, “Plants vs. Zombies”, “Transformers”, “Star Trek”, “StarCraft”, “Star Wars”, “Star Wars - Die Klonkriege” as well as “StarWars - Die Original Trilogie”

Harald Schatzl

Players: 2-4

Age: 12+

Time: 60+

Designer: not named

Artist: not named

Price: ca. 55 Euro

Publisher: Hasbro 2016

Web: www.hasbro.de

Genre: Dice, conflict resolving

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en es fr

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Different and more interesting than the original, because you can plan better

How to play and flow of the game not similar to the original

Nice components, which could, however, have been even more beautiful and practical

Compares to:

Axis & Allies, Samurai Swords, other Risk versions

Other editions:

Hasbro (en, es, fr)

My rating: 5

Harald Schatzl:

“Risk Europe” is a tactical and strategic as well as luck-driven conquest game, which - take this as a warning and a recommendation at the same time - does not have much in common with its roots. But, the once wet dream of childhood manages, in its matured version, to wet our eyes that have grown old; on the one hand due to sentimental feelings, on the other hand due to the dubiety if we might have another 42 years left to spend with this game. And if not: Bury my heart at the corner of the game box!

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 2

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0