When I was a teen-ager, I played tons of Risk. Many weekends a group of my buddies would descend upon my house and we'd battle away the weekend. I loved the game. It truly was my springboard to better, more sophisticated games. Once I discovered these more 'advanced' games, however, I really had no desire to revisit Risk.
So, when Avalon Hill announced they would be releasing Risk 2210 AD, an advanced version of the classic, I really had no interest and, truth-be-told, was a bit disappointed. I wished they would put their efforts into something more fresh. Still, I just knew I would have to at least try the game.
I'm glad that I did.
First, let me comment on the outstanding production quality. I've said it before... no matter what you may think of the actual games themselves, Hasbro/AH has done an incredible job with the production of this new line of games.
Risk 2210 AD is no exception. The game is filled with gobs of detailed miniatures. The commander pieces even have a silver "dry brush" effect which is quite nice. Now, if they'd just take a bit of this cauldron of money and promote these games, they just might have a big hit on their hands.
The game uses the same basic mechanics as Risk, but adds just enough additional features and design twists to make it feel fresh and interesting. Here is an outline of the changes:
Map: The actual layout of the main board is pretty much the same. However, since the game is set in the future, the names of the territories have been changed. Gone are such memorable names as Kamchatka, Yakutsk and Irkutsk. In their place we now have Pevek, Sakha and Alden (perhaps named after Boardgame Geek guru Scott Alden!).
I understand the reason for changing the names (future world) and I'm sure I'll eventually get used to them, but I'm sure gonna miss those old, familiar territorial titles. I also found a bit of subtle humor in the renaming of the Western United States as Continental Biospheres. Hey, with some doomsayers predicting that the West Coast will slide into the ocean in the future, at least they didn't do away with the territory all together!
The board for Risk 2210 AD renames some of the territories, including the Northwestern Oil Emirate (Alaska) and the Continental Biospheres (Western United States).
The other main change to the main map is the addition of sea territories. Now, it is possible to wage war at sea and to conquer sea areas. These sea areas are grouped into "colonies" (identical in practical terms to their land based "continents") and earn bonuses for the player who controls all of the territories in that colony.
Further, they do provide additional paths or connections between territories which were isolated from one another in the classic Risk. For instance, it is now possible to attack from Australia (renamed Aboriginal League) to Madagascar via two connected sea areas. This does open up the board a bit, but it is still very difficult to assault Australia or South America.
Humanity just has to be disturbed that, according to the Hill, war will spread from the Earth to the Moon in the not too distant future. A separate, round board has been added to the game to represent the moon. Like the earth, the moon is divided into 'colonies' and territories. Grabbing complete control of colonies also earns bonus troops and energy for the controlling player.
Getting to the moon is a bit difficult, however, and requires the presence of a Space Commander. More on this later. Getting back from the moon, however, is apparently a bit trickier proposition for our 23rd century scientists. The ultimate location of attacks from the moon back to the earth are determined by randomly drawing a card from the territory deck. I'm not sure what the rationale is behind this bit of randomness since, as far as I can tell, there is no control over this whatsoever.
Components: Gone are the little blocks, triangles, stars and every other type of weird plastic or wood pieces which were used to represent troops. In their place are very, very nice plastic miniatures... gobs of 'em. We may have big political issues with China, but we apparently love their miniatures!
In the future, battles will be fought by machines (robots) called, disturbingly, "Machines of Destruction", or "MODs" for short. These MODs are represented by three different types of really nice and detailed miniatures. The only difference is the number of basic troops these represent: 1, 3 or 5. There are more miniatures representing the five commanders (land, naval, diplomat, space and nuclear) and space stations.
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