Italian Risk

Well, I don’t know where I should post this.

Maybe this should go in the “game review” section. But this is not a review. It wouldn’t make sense to review this game because, if you live in Italy, then I’m talking about a game as popular as Monopoly, so it makes no sense to review it; if you don’t live in Italy, then I’m talking about a game nobody ever heard about which isn’t even commercially available. At least I don’t believe it is.

Anyways, I live in Italy.

Here, Risk is completely unknown, but we have a different version of it called Risiko or Italian Risk. Italian Risk is extremely popular in Italy. Everybody knows it and has played it at least once, and there is a strong community of Italian Risk fans who enjoy regular tournaments and online playing.

I recently heard about International Risk, which I didn’t know, so I searched the web for any information about it.

Thus I discovered that most serious gamers consider International Risk a simplistic game that doesn’t involve serious strategic thinking.

Here, most gamers see Italian Risk as a serious game that is a real brain challenge. Some prefer it to the likes of Axis and Allies. So I’d wonder how different the two Risk games are.

I looked at the international rules of Risk and they’re very similar to Italian rules. However there are little differences that make the international game simplistic. I also played a simple computer version of International Risk and I realized that few different rules make a game completely different.

So I’m wondering if anyone here knows Italian Risk (aka Risiko) or ever heard about it. I know that the game is sold and played only in Italy; it has always been the leading board game over here, but I don’t think it was ever translated into other languages.

Anyways I want to tell you something about the game.

There are several differences between Italian and International Risk, but these are the biggest:

- Combat rules. When a battle occurs, BOTH the attacker and the defender roll up to three dice. Then, each of the attacker’s three dice is compared to one of the defender’s three dice. When a tie occurs, the defender prevails. Since ties are very frequent the average outcome is that the attacker loses 2 armies while the defender loses only one. All Italian Risk players know that if you attack a country you will lose two armies for every defending army – if you’re lucky. In the international game, casualties tend to be the same for both sides.

- Cards. In the international game the number of armies you receive for turning a set of cards is increased during the game. In the Italian game, it remains fixed. And it’s not much. Usually, you will receive less armies than you lost to gain the cards.

- Random secret victory conditions. Well I believe that these are present in certain version of the international game as well. Anyways in the Italian game each player get a card at the beginning that says something like: you must conquer Asia and South America. This is your victory condition and it remains secret until you actually meet it.

- Random initial countries. Again, this also seems to exist in some versions of the international game.

These rules mean that the Italian game is completely different.
First, continente are absolutely vital because they are the only significant source for reinforcements (cards are not). Defensive combat rules mean that continents are MUCH harder to conquer. However, they’re also much easier to hold.

The game is so different from International Risk because combat rules favor defensive, conservative playing. Attacking is too army-expensive to be a good strategy. Attacking is often suicidal. Only because you don’t want your enemy to have a continent doesn’t mean that you must attack him whenever he has a continent. That is suicide strategy. Instead you must garrison one country in the continent BEFORE he takes it. This is a major difference because it means that you must think forward and PREVENT your enemy’s moves. And you must fool your enemy so that he doesn’t see where you’re going to attack.

The strategy in the game doesn’t come from complex field tactics and different types of units. Instead, it comes from complex relationships among players, a la Diplomacy. Each player has different victory conditions so each player has different aims and wants that different areas of the world remain ungarrisoned. And you must find the balance between pursuing your own victory conditions and preventing other players from winning (which does NOT mean that you mindlessly attack them… it means that you garrison the areas you BELIEVE they need for winning).

Also, you cannot win without allies so as in Diplomacy, you must make deals and then break them. There are many reasons why you can’t win without teamwork. One is about cards. Unlike international Risk, here the only way to gain some profit from cards is to attack countries that are defended by a single army. If you attack better defended countries, you will lose more armies than you gain. And players tend to garrison countries heavily and rarely leave countries with only one army – unless you have a deal about it. So it’s vital to have some ally who leaves countries undefended for you. A player who is near victory will often have all his former allies turned against him, which means that he doesn’t have anybody that makes him gain cards. Unless he’s so good at hiding his aims that nobody understand that he’s winning.

A good thing about Italian Risk is that it’s often undecided until the last turn. In my last game we were four players and when I finally won and everybody revealed their victory condition I realized that two of my three opponents were also very near victory. I won only because one of my opponents was so near victory that he moved some troops away from the area he was defending from me – in order to prepare a final strike.

Even though you don’t have to conquer the world, Italian Risk games are long. They can last many hours and even days. This is because of the conservative style of playing which slows down the game a lot.

The best Italian Risk players are those who understand what’s really going on in the game. This is difficult because you have to guess your opponent’s victory conditions and what they’re going to do next and who’s going to attack who. There’s a lot of skill involved. Some players are very good and they win most games.

What do you think about all this?