Risk, 2008 Review

Risk: the 2008 reinvention. 

       The game is excellent. If you've ever played Risk before and enjoyed it even slightly you ought to play this game. If you've never played Risk, this is the one to start playing. I've been a fan of "classic" Risk as well as Risk: Godstorm, but the first gets tiresome and futile (if you're loosing early on), the second has a time constraint on it, but becomes overwhelming with all the layers to it - the underworld, Gods, cards (that's not to say that all of these elements aren't fun, but overwhelming especially if you haven't played for awhile and need to relearn the rules).

 This reinvention brings in Objectives. Instead of conquering the world you can play optionally to capture 3 objectives. You have eight possible objectives - 4 major (hard), 4 minor (mild?). You have more possible objectives than that though so each game will have a different set of objectives, and also you can mix and match rewards to objectives. Rewards range from bonus attack or defense die to extra troops per turn, to additional maneuvers. Each is useful, some are devastatingly helpful. Also in this version are 15 cities. Each game you shuffle out 15 cards and place the cities on the countries of the cards. This also adds a uniqueness to every game. Cities make a country worth "twice" as much when counting up territories to determine the number of troops you get on your turn. Also each player has a capital. Controlling this gives you an additional troop per turn, and also you must control your capital to win the game (a way to prevent another player from winning is capturing their capital and making great effort to hold it). 

       

I've played the game three times now. Twice with three players. Once with four. The longest game was with four. After all the "easy" objectives got taken it became a brutal struggle to capture the remaining or to try and take out one of the other players (which gives you their objectives). Each game has been incredibly fun for every player, and each game that ends has left a strong desire to play again.