dicing it old school - Risk 2210

Had some friends over for some board gaming, and for some reason I had a strong urge to play Risk 2210. When I got back into board gaming some eight years or so (lured by Twilight Imperium 2. ed.), Risk 2210 was the first game I bought, and I’ve played it a lot.

Just to summarize quickly, 2210 is a standard Risk game with some crucial new elements. New territories (water colonies and moon territories), commanders (extra powerful units that allow you to draw and play nasty action cards), energy used to bid for turn order (among other things), and most importantly: a limit of five turns. Other than that, you still gain troops (or MODs – Machines of Destruction) based on number of territories and continent bonuses and you still roll lots of dice.

Basically, Risk 2210 is in many ways a bad game. It’s also a great game, but when analyzing the parts, there’s just a lot of things that don’t work properly. For instance, some of the command cards are extremely powerful. Some of them can not only cancel other cards, but prevent another player from playing any (which can really hurt your strategy), and others will keep an opponent from attacking you for an entire turn. And that’s a lot when you only play five turns. But on the other hand, the exact same cards make for epic situations. Such as when one player ended turn one by securing Asia and made ready for some serious mayhem on turn two – only to be thwarted by cards from me and the other player he would benefit from attacking.

Another thing about the game is that you only tally points after the final turn. This means that the player going last will – unless he’s in a really, really tight spot – win the game by going for broke. Of course, in this particular game, that’s not how things went down. I was going next to last and had everything set up for a win. I had a few bottlenecks on the moon that could easily be defended through cards, but then the player going last – let’s call him “Fuckface” – spoiled it all by “signal jamming” me, thus preventing me from playing the cards I’ve saved for this particular situation. So he naturally crushed me and ended my hopes of winning. Now, the guy going last still had a shot at winning, but was then hit by cards from the nearest competitor. So it seemed like this third guy – who’d done some clever whining – would win, until the guy who went first on the last turn and was generally fucked played a lot of cards that netted him extra points and the win.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with a chaotic game, and there’s something very ameritrashy about having all your carefully laid plans spoiled by a single card. But the thing about this game of 2210 is that I got the feeling the first three turns didn’t really matter. And that’s a damn shame for a game that went past three hours. But on the other hand the game is easily house ruled. The cards can be nerfed the tiniest bit, and I’ve seen mentioned that the game is better if you score every turn rather than just the last one. I think I’ll play that way next time, but that’s really not the lesson I learned from this game night.

The thing is that Risk 2210 is a great game because you don’t have to focus on the game. Of course you have to consider your moves, make risk assessments and so on, but the game is so simple you can perfectly well keep a conversation going even on your own turn. And that means you get to catch up with your friends, but it also means that some of the wheelin’ and dealin’ that makes a conquest game both annoying and entertaining doesn’t slow down the game. And yet 2210 still gives you an epic game of conquest with lots of swings in balance, small stories, tactical planning, and so on. It’s simple, yet grand, and that’s some accomplishment.