One way to win is to be the last surviving player.
It means taking all 42 territories on the map, an alternative victory conditions: secret missions.
Missions are offered as an alternative way to win the game. When playing with missions, each player is dealt
a "mission card" at the start of the game. Each player keeps his mission a secret from the others.
Missions are dealt after colours are set.
There are a number of different missions, as follows:
i) Kill a certain colour. There are 6 of these, one for each colour.
If fewer than 6 colours are going to be used in the game then the cards corresponding to the unused
colours are removed from the deck before missions are given out.
If you draw your own colour, then your mission changes to mission (iii).
ii) Conquer some combination of continents. There are 6 of these:
Conquer Asia and South America
Conquer Asia and Africa
Conquer North America and Africa
Conquer North America and Australia
Conquer Europe and South America
Conquer Europe and Australia
iii) Occupy 24 territories (no restriction to 2 or more armies in each).
What if someone else completes my mission for me?
In the case of the mission of destroying a colour, anyone may complete your mission.
"For example, if your mission is to destroy all the yellow troops and another player actually removes the final
yellow armies from the board, that player has helped you complete your Secret Mission."
You have to hold your victory condition for a full turn (that is, one go for each player),
which makes all missions except type (i) harder.
The missions make for a much faster game with more uncertainty --
the strongest looking player may be nowhere near winning. Of course, if you take over the
whole board you have completed most missions and you certainly win.
REINFORCEMENT (placing armies)
Players start with only the one army per territory.
Then you get: 1 army per 3 territories you control, rounded down, minimum of 3, plus extra for complete continents
or for sets of Risk cards cashed in.
The reinforcement armies can be placed anywhere as long as you are the owner of the territory.
CARDS
The default value for a set of 3 cards i 4 and constant. But you can easily change this to whatever you like in settings.
You can only cash in cards under the placement phase.
If you have 5 or more cards, you MUST turn in a set. This is done automatically, the window open when you have 5 cards.
ATTACKING
The attacker and defender each roll some number of dice, and the highest die of the attacker is compared to the highest
of the defender; the loser (defender wins ties) loses one army. If both sides rolled at least two dice,
the second highest dice are compared and the loser again loses one army.
The rules also agree that the attacker can roll up to three dice, and must have at least as many armies in the attacking
territory as the number of dice rolled. If he wins, he must move into the conquered territory with at least 1 army
(He can of course move more armies if he so wishes, but must always leave at least one army behind.)
then switch to rolling fewer dice once the defender is down to 1-2 armies. There is no requirement that each attack be done "to the death" before switching to another attack or changing the number of dice being rolled.
The number of dice the defender can roll is 1 die if he has 1 unit in the territory, and 2 if he has 2 or more units.
FORTIFICATION
Once a player has finished with all his attacks (if any) for the turn, he can "redeploy" (known as "fortification" in some
sets of rules). This means moving any number of armies from one of a pair of neighbouring territories to the other
(as usual you cannot leave a territory unoccupied).
This is all the movement of armies that is ever allowed in the game except upon winning a battle.
A territory may never be left empty and all the standard rules impose no upper limit.
Most of the text here comes from:
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The RISK FAQ
Owen Lyne
Mathematics Department, University of Nottingham, UK
odl@maths.nott.ac.uk
Leon Atkinson
atkinson@jps.net
Peter George
(was jmg@mang.canterbury.ac.nz - but this address no longer seems to work and I don't have a new one for him)
