Risking the Map

Mock game in progress

I have printed a temporary map. I want to play test a couple of games and specific mechanics as well as make sure that all the territories are large enough.

One change I noticed immediately, well actually I didn't notice it but everyone else did, that the font I used for the territory names is too hard to read from across the table. I am on the fence about changing the font. What I have now is perfect stylistically, and in game, functionally, one could point to the territories attacking to and from.

In case you do not recognize the components, I will give a run down:

• Colored army pieces are from the 1993 Risk set
• Grey city pieces are form the 2008 Risk set
• White castle/tower is from LOtR Monopoly set
• Grey castle/keep is from LOtR Monopoly set
• Ship is from Pirates of the Caribbean Game of Life
• Colored "dome" capitol pieces are from the 2008 Risk set

I bough the 2008 Risk game (still available on store shelves). All the other components were bought off eBay on the cheap except for the Caribbean Life game that I picked up at a thrift store for $1.

Why are maps the most comfortable place for a cat to sleep?

So far everything is looking good. I have enough tokens made to run through a game. Having the map in hand at full scale, I already have a bunch of new ideas that will fine-tune some of my floundering mechanics.

Next step is to assemble all of my notes into something that can be referenced in game and play!

Token Risk

Part 7 in my Risk Omega project... Click here for past posts on this project.

I started designing, printing and assembling tokens needed for the additional rules I am writing. As I have said before, in game design/mod I often design the end product before the rules are even made. This is one of those cases. I have ideas for mechanics, but have not yet finalized them, but here we are looking at completed tokens.

When I say design, I mean that loosely. Basically I took images off the interwebs, cut them out, flopped them, added a white outline and placed them on a star shape and a circle with a gradient color fill.

I bought these laser-cut MDF bases from GF9 awhile back specifically to make tokens. Although I hadn't thought of this project yet.

Pairing up the fronts and backs. In most cases they are identical. one-sided tokens is one of my pet peeves in board games!!! I printed the tokens on label stock and simply peel and stick.

This is the underside to my circle punch. It makes a 1" hole. I hold the punch upside down so I can see the image and center it before cutting it out. You can see a set of completed red player tokens on the upper right.

My first page of tokens. The top "heads" are the leaders/generals. There is one 3-star, two 2-star and three 1-star leaders for each color. The 1-stars will be on the back and the 2 and 3-star leaders will be on the front.

The next images represent a Palmerston Fort style defense. They were built around the time of Napoleon III by Britain, but other countries built similar forts.

The next image represents a spy. These will be available only after achieving an objective. I originally planned on using a grey background, but later decided on making one for each color.

The ship is an example of a token with out a rule. I have 3 different rule mechanics in mind so will be play-testing the best option. Again, I originally printed the ships with a grey background.

Next is a desert. I have an idea to have weather and geographical elements to the game. At the moment, my thought is when the event is "triggered" the appropriate token is placed in the effected territory.

Lastly, are the red stars, or victory points. This will be the way to win the game.

This is my second sheet of tokens. The blue background wound up printing too dark and too similar to black, so I remade them lighter. Then I printed more forts, spys, and ships in player colors, as well as more stars.

Risky Business (part 6)

Here is a quick last minute post...

Many of you have asked for the files I created in my Risk project. I have poorly responded to you requests and I apologize. My attempts to provide links have been haphazard; Party because of misplaced files on a secondary HD, and partly because the project was off my radar.

The fonts used in the InDesign file are: Aquiline Two, Romantiques, UglyQua, and Wingdings. The first three fonts were downloaded for free at Fonts2u.com.

Hopefully the links that follow will be complete and actually work!! Both files are Zip'd (ZIPX) containing the original files.

PSD map file with all layers
InDesign file with images and fonts

I have been working a little bit on the rules recently. Last week, my wife and son and I played a standard game of Risk (2008 rules). Hopefully, I will soon be printing a copy of my map so I can start play testing it!

Risk: The Table (Part 5)

The map burned into a coffee table!

A reader of this site, Cass Jones, etched a version of my Risk map onto a coffee table!! WOW! How great it looks! I am amazed and privileged to have had a hand at such a glorious creation.

Game in progress

If you are interested in reading more about my project, below are links to the previous posts.

Risk: An Unexpected Journey (part 4)

Fine tuning a Risky Venture

Two Risk or Not Two Risk

Risk Reward

Risk: An Unexpected Journey (part 4)

I recently started working again on my custom Risk board (and rules). You can see my progress that I started over a year ago here (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3).

The most notable change is the addition of 19 territories (up from 51). But another change is that I redrew the entire map! The continental proportions are loosely based off the Risk 2008 board, but I used various global maps for the actual drawing. Other changes are adding more regions, more "ancient map" detail, and rules/component insets.

Inspiration for this project came from the desire for a lite world domination game that can be played within 2 hours or less that has good replay value (my two biggest issues with standard Risk). I love the Napoleonic pieces that came in the 1993 edition, so that is where I started with the style of map art.

I enjoyed designing the map much more then putting all the rules together. In fact, some of my rules ideas have derived directly from the map design process! With that said, I have done very little with the rules, apart from taking notes--Nothing playable. Oh well, I am still having fun with this creative process!!

[EDIT] If you would like the hi-res files, they can be download here:

InDesign File
InDesign Support Files (Including a PSD of MAP)
PDF

Finetuning a Risky Venture

(click on image to enlarge)

As mentioned in other posts, I have been working on a map for Risk. It is loosely based on the PC game Risk II with a few additional territories (above the 5 territories already added in Risk II). Mainly I was attempting to prevent the castle strategy. But after an initial design, I wanted to make the map more esthetically pleasing and "in the style" of an 19th century map.

About a month ago, I ordered a set of Lord of the Rings Monopoly pieces to replace the (now inappropriate) modern cities and capitols from the 2008 edition (Revised) Risk. I planned on using the "hotels" (fortresses) as the capitols, and the "houses" (strongholds) as the cities, but now that I have them in hand, I am not sure.

I am also working on creating my own set of rules (beyond a 2-player variant from the last post)... I guess the most appropriate name would be Risk, Revised Edition 1.5. I am including elements from Risk II, Risk Legacy, and various incarnations of standard Risk rules (both official and variants) over the last 30 years. After I complete the map and get a better handle on the new set of rules, I will throw it out to those of you that pretend to read what I write! :)

Two Risk or Not Two Risk

In my opinion, Risk has some inherent problems, but it is still a game with a bunch of little guys (ie fun to play with).

I have managed to put my hands on the Risk rulebooks from 1980, 1993, 2003, 2008, and 2011. As far as game play, they are almost identical with only minor tweaks to troop reinforcements (how many you get per turn) and starting number of troops.

In '93 they introduced missions, and each proceeding set "improved" the mechanics to some degree. The '08 set significantly retooled of the mission system, plus they added cities and capitols. They also changed the official way to determine starting territories.

One element I thought strange was that the most significant changes between all 5 sets of rules are in the 2-player rules variant ('08 doesn’t even cover it). Within that sub-section, the biggest differences are whether or not to include neutral armies, and whether or not the allies are passive or aggressive.

I recently picked up the 2008 set because it had cities and capitols (unique to the set). But I will be playing this mostly with my son, and it didn’t cover how to play a 2-player game, I looked at how the other sets handled it. My old '78 set had 2-player rules (without allies), the ’93 set added 1 neutral ally, and the ’11 set is the same as ‘93. However, the '03 rules include a very extensive set of instructions for including multiple aggressive neutrals/allies.

After reading through all these editions, I made up my own rules!! Essentially, I blended the '93 and '03 rules in the framework of an '08 game (cities, capitols and enhanced objectives/missions). I am really pleased with how it all turned out. This is a PDF of what I came up with.


As I mentioned in a previous post, I also started working on a custom map for Risk. I like it, but have decided to take a dramatic turn in direction. I will share my progress in a later post,

(click on image to enlarge image)

I like what I have done so far, but have decided to take a completely different approach. I will share what I come up with another time.

Risk Reward

Hey guys! It’s been awhile since I have posted and a ton of things have happened. (Note to Ron: This is not an apology!! :P) The most significant change in my life has been moving my mother-in-law in with us. I converted our barely used dining room to my new office (FYI, the family room functions as a dining room), and the old office is my in-laws room now. She has Alzheimer's. It was my suggestion to move her in as the previous situation was just not working. I am now a stay at home care giver *and* dad. At times it is an easy job, at times it is tough. But we are holding strong.

On to lighter news, my Dark Heresy campaign is plodding along at about 1 session a month (the best my group can manage), but I am having a blast!! We are planning to start our next session earlier than usual (by about 2 hours) and to drink less beer (so the last 2 hours is productive!!). We have also added a new player to the mix and I will showcase the work I did on the miniature in a later post.

My 1980 version of Risk with Roman Numeral pieces
(Image taken from BoardGameGeek.com without permission)

The other day, my son and I played his first game of Risk. He is 8 and has ADHD, but did really well for his first game. However, about 3/4's the way through the game, my son looked at me and said "Daddy, I am a boy who plays with soldiers, not a boy who plays with clock numbers." I about fell out of my chair laughing. We finished up the game and I spent the next two weeks researching how I could supply soldiers to my version of risk.

After spending most of my time pouring through what boardgamegeek.com had to offer, I decided to get the pieces from the 1993 version of Risk, and the entire 2008 version of Risk for the new rules and components.

Pieces from the 1993 version of Risk
(Image taken from BoardGameGeek.com without permission)

Pieces from the 2008 version of Risk
(Image taken from BoardGameGeek.com without permission)

The 2008 "revised" version adds major and minor objectives, along with cities and capitals, plus rewards for completing objectives. It has also balanced the reinforcements rules. The only real "down side" is that the armies are simply arrows!?!

After about a week of searching, I found what I was looking for on eBay for a great price. The items arrived, and my son and I have played 2 more games of Risk. However, I found the 1980 2-player rules to be too simplistic, the 1993 version was the same but introduced a neutral ally, and the 2008 version doesn't even have a 2-player option!! Fortunately I was able to download the 2003 version of the rules because it has an extensive active neutral rules set.

I am working on writing up rules essentially blending the ’93 and ’03 2-player variant within the mechanics of the '08 rules set. Once I have it finalized, I will discuss it in a later post. 

My OCD kicked in and I also started working on a new map heavily influenced by the PC game Risk II. When I get further along, I will post it.

Its good to be back in the blogosphere!!