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Comment by MichaelCollins | Hacker News Reader

IMHO, Risk is one of the few board games worth playing specifically because it's so engaging. Most of my friends who are "into boardgames" tell me that Risk is a terrible game because it starts fights. But the games they want to play bore me to tears. (I can't even read the manual for Settlers of Catan without dying of boredom, but from what you say maybe I should give it another try.)

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I'm definitely one of those "into boardgames" people so take this all with a grain of salt :p -

Risk is definitely a great game and imo people who are into games and don't want to play are saying that because it's 1. long & 2. they've already played it enough to have mostly figured out the strategy

Diplomacy is very good and like risk it has very simple rules, grand stakes of world domination, and actual direct conflict.

Unlike risk, there's small numbers of units, no luck, and you need an ally, ideally multiple allies, to accomplish anything.

If you're looking to get into it I can reccomend text-based turn-a-day style play with strangers on webdiplomacy.com

I can only stomach a game of it every year or two because it's legitimately heartbreaking when someone you've spent two months working with every single day stabs you in the back causing you to not lose the game outright but be a crippled angry husk for the next month, and then lose. Tried it with friends once and it was just too much, even with anonymous strangers it hurts.

Anyways sorry for the ramble :) go risk, and go diplomacy <3

>be a crippled angry husk for the next month, and then lose.

Do people resign in diplomacy? Or do you stick around to try to punish the player who backstabbed you?

It depends on the players, but for how the game is structured you still have a good chance of "winning" (finishing alive with in a draw) even if you're way underpowered, as long as you're friendly and provide some value

It's also bad form to resign even if you have no hope and will be finished off in the next few turns, because it will inevitably favour one of your opponents not to have to worry about you at all.

"Bad form"? In diplomacy? Isn't weak players acting as kingmakers the core of what you should worry about as a player with a shot at victory?

Yes, and it's totally kosher to say "if you stab me on this turn I will order 'all units hold' until the end of the game" - equivalent to resigning.

But it's not OK to irrevocably commit to that decision, by, say, leaving the room and driving home.

I think this is true even in groups that take quite a liberal approach to gamesmanship and what might be cheating in other games: intentionally submitting illegal orders, peeking at other players' orders, etc. I don't know how to reconcile this logically other than by saying the game only works when all players are trying to win. Some would go further and say the game only works when most or all players are trying for a solo victory, since if you can be certain several players are happy with a 3 or 4-way draw that will always be the outcome.

I can't stand Risk because Risk rewards inactivity. It is almost never optimal in Risk to attack another player (although limited skirmishes are fine), because even a successful assault will badly damage your own forces leaving you vulnerable. The way to win Risk is to convince other players to attack each other and then clean up in the aftermath. This is ok for players that are new to the game because they'll actually attack each other (they don't know any better). But experienced players will almost never attack, resulting in a stalemate.

This is meta dependent, too, though. If you are not attacking and also not sending the right signals to the board, you might be quickly carved up by the other players jockeying for 12 territories.

From what I’ve seen, the main complaint from board game enthusiasts about Risk is that the dice rolling is too random (I don’t really agree with this, the whole point of the game is to control your level of risk, there it is right in the name, so if your plan hinges on good rolls it is just a bad plan. But I digress).

I think most people who are really into board games must have a general ability to separate in game behavior from normal behavior.

Actually I think there is a different phenomenon with Risk, for many years it was one of the few board games with any aspect of strategy or conflict that would be played by people who weren’t totally into board games (I mean excluding the super serious games like Chess and friends). So there are some people out there who aren’t really into boardgames generally (some of whom don’t have the requisite ability to detach their ego from a game), but are “into” Risk specifically and can get uncomfortably intense about it.

Catan is pretty good IMO. There’s a general disagreement I think between rules-purists and people who want to play fast-and-loose with the rules. The problem is that technically you always have to exchange cards to trade — so, technically it is allowable to extort people with your soldiers and the robber, but you have to at least set up a sham trade for it which adds some annoying friction; it is more fun if you say “giving cards away for free is fine” and allow an economy of extortion to flourish. And anyway if somebody doesn’t say “I’ll give you a sheep if you go get me a beer” is it really Catan? If you played it with some rules sticklers, give it another try IMO.

Risk was a preferred game both while I was in school and for some time afterwards in our ski house, etc. It definitely appealed to people who weren't broadly into board games--and certainly not hardcore war games.

I always liked it. There are some potentially annoying dynamics like how cards dominate so much in the end game and basically force you to go for it at some point.

I've played Catan on a tablet. It's OK but I seem to keep coming back most to Carcassonne for that general class of game.

Risk's much improved by goal-oriented or score-based gameplay variants, which tend to feature as the standard ruleset in newer versions and derivatives (Risk 2210, SPQRisiko, et c) for good reason. Conquer-the-world takes too long for a game that tends to eliminate half its players early on.

If you like risk you should try Kemet and Scythe. I find the combat of Kemet much better and the overall mechanics of Scythe much more rewarding. Scythe is probably too mechanically heavy for your style (it almost always requires a playthrough before you get it and has a more involved rulebook) but I mention it just because it is by far the best dudes-on-a-map game I have ever played, primarily because of how it does a fantastic job capturing the prisoners dilemma of investing in guns vs butter for your nation.

For what it's worth, personally I think Catan and Risk are both very mediocre games, especially for their popularity.

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