RISK Legacy 3

3rd game of RISK Legacy with Tarek beginning and starting in Western Australia with the Enclave of the Bear, followed by Kobe, who placed his HQ next to the city of Wikkopolis (which I founded after the first game, thus preventing me from starting in my own city) with the Khan Industries. Next was Hannes who did the same by placing his HQ next to Leander’s City of Matoufi with the Imperial Balkania faction. Leander took the Saharan Republic and started in Great Britain, which left me Die Mechaniker. I placed my HQ in Russia, not far from Leander and Hannes, because the HQ of Die Mechaniker is always considered fortified (+1 on both defending dies). I thought that was a great way to spice things up, and it was an interesting evening indeed.
The short of it is that everybody used up his resource cards to gain or gain back territories/cities/HQ’s, which in the end left the way open for Tarek to seize control of 3 additional HQ’s and let him win the game.
Some interesting insights where clear after this game. When you win a game, you do not receive a red star (1 victory point, you need 4 to win. All HQ are also 1 victory point and you can buy red stars buy paying 4 resource cards), but at the beginning of all future games you receive a missile for every game you have won. Every missile is 1 natural 6 you can use 1 time in the game. A red star to begin with gives you a major advantage over those who have already won a game, so it is very hard in the first few games to win more than one time. Second insight is that when you throw a die to determine who may begin, the one that gets to start holds all the advantages : he may choose the faction he wants, he may place his army on the map where he wants before the others and he may begin the game.
During the game (near the end) Hannes was wiped out, he was really weak and had some resources cards that Leander could use. An extra advantage of wiping out somebody for the first time is that we could open the first sealed envelope. This envelope contained some new scars (Mercenaries, which yield an extra troop in their space to the controlling player at the end of that player’s turn) and the possibility to upgrade the faction cards. From now on when somebody gets wiped out of the game he may upgrade the faction card he is playing with with a blue comback upgrade (each faction card can only hold one blue upgrade), which gives that faction an extra advantage in future games (extra mercenaries, movable HQ, resource card if moving into city…).
After the game ended, Tarek founded the city of Tarkopolis in Southeast Asia, Kobe chose to upgrade the resource card of Great Britain with one coin, Hannes being eliminated did nothing, Leander founded the minor city of Hot Geisha in Iceland, and I founded the minor city of Bibber in Siberia. Because all minor cities were founded by this time, we were allowed to open up another envelope.
This envelope contained a lot of cards. First there are new bio-hazard scars (remove one troop from the territory at the end of that player’s turn). Very nasty to have one in your continent.
There are 7 event cards that can occur in the run of a game : 2x fortify (player with the largest population can add 2 troops each to 2 controlled cities or fortify one city), 2x resistance (all minor cities containing 1 or 2 troops lose 1 troop), 2x control the people (largest population puts 5 troops into one controlled city or maneuvers immediately), 1x riots (every player who controls a major city must roll a die, adding 1 to the roll for each troop and HQ in that territory, if your modified roll is lower than 6 remove troops equal to your natural die roll and demolish any HQ in that territory)
Last but not least the way the game begins changes completely. Instead of rolling a die and the highest roll may choose faction, place troops and begin first. Each in turn (player 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4…) may choose a faction card, the amount of starting troops (6-10), starting coins (0-2), placement order and turn order. This makes the beginning of the game more balanced, but makes it hard to make a good choice…

Next episode : 05/01/2017