Risk Legacy: Yup There's Still Dice
You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who could reflect upon their childhood or adolescence board gaming experience without talking about Risk. Risk has been a staple game in cupboards, chests, and closets for the better part of 60 years. For kids age 10+, Risk teaches you to manage your troops, weigh costs and benefits, learn a thing or two about global geography, keep your fluids and blood sugar up while the hours slip by, lie and say you’re not “Hiding in Australia,” and (hopefully) manage your anger when you’re three turns deep into a previously-winnable war where all you see are snake eyes.
My own first experience in Risk set me against a fellow high-schooler at a youth retreat, where cries of “Taking on America!” fell on deaf ears and dead rolls during a two-day game while stuck in a cold camp lodge. From then on, I swore to at least win one iteration of the game.
Enter Risk Legacy. Premiering hot in 2011, it remains a relatively high rated game today. The first game to utilize a legacy mechanic, Risk Legacy sits at a good mean score on BGG at 7.49.
Through a combination of unwinding and ever-expanding complexity and simplicity, you and 2-4 friends compete in 15 rounds of gameplay to see who is top dog. Each round you and your fellow gamers will draft to determine 5 critical starting features: your starting faction (each with strengths and buffs later on), starting placement of your base on the map, turn order, starting troop numbers, and starting coin cards.
Functionally, early rounds play similar to Risk with an incredibly simple-sounding objective: Get 4 points. You earn points by conquering home bases, trading in 4 coin/territory cards (cards that give extra troops if used at the beginning of your turn), and in later rounds, completing objectives. Each player by default starts with one point, so in theory you only need 3 points if you keep your base.
But like a spool of yarn pushed down the side of the Eiffel Tower by a cat pursuing a Physics degree, everything unravels with each new round. At the round’s conclusion, players dramatically alter the board by building major and minor cities, leaving scars upon various territories, naming continents for future region bonuses, and creating (or destroying) overpowered territory cards.
And winning players aren’t the only ones to make changes; if you survive a round, you can make minor changes too. Furthermore, each victory nets the player an extra missile for all subsequent rounds, which can turn any rolled die to a 6, often flipping 0-2 losses to a 2-0 wins during combat.
Each faction starts with a relatively powerful ability available only to that faction. For example, one faction can choose to move troops at any moment during its turn rather than wait until combat ends. With each round comes opportunities to build upon a faction with even more overpowered features (none of which I’ll reveal here; get the game yourself and enjoy a good surprise for once). Factions also gain bonuses when they start on the same continent as previous rounds—a homeland. Though life isn’t perfect for the factions, problems can occur, and players can slap them with a permanent gameplay stickers, sometimes good, sometimes bad.
For context, I played this game alongside Kim and C.D. of Two Doctors and two of our other friends. Starting a game with a solid group of friends is important, but life has a habit of getting in the way. I moved away to start graduate school, our friend moved for an internship, and with jobs, exhaustion, stress, and romantic relationships (spicy take there, Brian), it took a while to finish. We completed the vast majority of rounds in 2015, played a few rounds in 2016, and none in 2017 or 2018. We only finished the final round to kick off 2019. I’m happy to say I completed at least one resolution for the new year at the time I’m writing this review.
There are a ton of things I enjoyed about Risk Legacy. With each added wrinkle, a new game is born. With each new round, new strategies rise and crumble in the quest for 4 victory points. This keeps the game that you’ll end up spending well over 30 hours playing with the same group of people fresh; an absolute necessity if you wish to dip your respective toes into legacy games.
You also learn to be a better player regardless of how you do each round. You notice that certain players gravitate toward a specific faction, region, or drafting method with each round of play due to a preferred gaming style. Use that to your own advantage to steal their beloved Enclave of the Bear (a starter faction) or push them out of Australia by selecting an earlier placement. Any minor thing can throw off a fellow competitor, giving you an advantage.
I absolutely loved how each round changed our world with real in-game consequences. While filled with heartbreaking moments such as C.D. ripping up a territory card Jeremy and I painstakingly filled with coin stickers, or the always-humorous naming of cities and continents, the map and game became ours. It’s essentially impossible for a different Risk Legacy group to create a matching map or the exact same hackneyed puns when customizing our world (except in the case of putting a city in Ural named “idiots”; that was hilarious!).
That said, this game is not without flaws. While missiles and powers help, bad die rolling still spells the end of your hopes. While this may not be a flaw per se (you did sign up to play Risk, didn’t you you unlucky player?), I wish that more had been put in to counter the effect of poor die rolling, a disease you can’t easily cure with better strategy, better planning, blowing on the dice (gross), or a cup of hot Chicken Noodle Soup.
I also found the game frustrating in that trust was at an absolute minimum throughout the entire experience. Trust in Risk, while rare, can break the game open for players stuck at the bottom of the standings (myself included). However, as with many war games, trust was at a premium that our respective social credit cards couldn’t and wouldn’t afford. In the eyes of this reviewer, I would have enjoyed more goals/mechanisms facilitating trust between players.
In addition, I can’t not mention the relatively unbalanced nature of each faction. For example, one faction was hardly used after another appeared in the aftermath of triggering an Earth-shattering event (no puns or spoilers intended). Furthermore, the bonus given to the faction starting in the [SPOILER]) seemed unbalanced for a number of the mid-game rounds crucial for players looking to reach victory. By the end, only 5 factions were usable while the rest arguably weren’t.
I also question replayability now that we’ve finished playing the game’s initial fifteen rounds. Risk Legacy is replayable to the extent that the same friends who made the map will feel the need to unbox it and relive the trials and tribulations of their original 15-round endeavor one more time. I foresee new players not understanding the inside jokes made during the first go around (though you could always introduce your map to gamers who created their own Risk Legacy map).
That said, I would definitely play Risk Legacy again; only a select few games top my “I’m good”or “I’ll step out while you all play” list, and this isn’t one of them. As with any game (and especially with this one), be cognizant of who you choose to play it with.
Suffice to say, I did enjoy Risk Legacy for what it was: a good game with great friends. It has its strengths and weaknesses and the former does outweigh the latter. While this game was my first foray into Legacy-based games, it most certainly won’t be my last.
My Score
Creativity: 7/10
Game Mechanics: 8/10
Enjoyment: 6.5/10
Replay ability: 7/10
Final Score: 7.125/10