Risk Factions – Competitive Tactics and Tips

This guide is to help new players who wanted feedback to be able to become better players in the Risk Factions Mode. I created this guide looking at all the aspects of basic strategy to survive, and hope to become the winner of a game!

Guide to Tactics and Useful Tips

All credit goes to Adding for Risk F. (BlackMagic)!

Capital Placement, Objective Awareness, Turn Placements

• When playing automatic territory placement, the first thing you should do is look at your objectives.
• You must try to protect your capital as good as you can so that if there is an objective that implies taking over an enemy capital, yours isn’t the one targeted.
• You would want to have your capital adjacent to a territory of your property, in case someone does take it, you can retake it on the next turn.
• You want to know your turn placement to know who goes before your first turn, so that you can prevent putting your capital next to the territories that players that play before you have.
• You want to have the person that goes after you not before, and also, the person that goes before you but have to focus on his capital or continent rather than just go for your cap. Also be aware of who is the color that is 5th place, this player can be your biggest threat because he has 2 cards at the beginning of the game, and can suddenly gather many troops.

Realize that the game strategy changes every turn, plan your tactic!

• On every turn, Long term what is the continent that you can conquer without having conflicts with other players.
• On every turn, check if your capital needs defending.
• On every turn, check how many cards other players have and what objectives you can try to prevent them from taking and putting yourself to take.
• On every turn, check what player is about to get a continent, so that you be aware of what territories he has outside of that continent that can directly be used to attack you or your continent that you want to conquer. (take him out before he makes a front to your task).

Never spread yourself too thin!

• When you loose a war or a lot of troops, set yourself to earn stars and let the powerful players attack each other while you build up.
• If you are in danger of dying ,Don’t hold your stars too long because you will be giving another player the thought to kill you for your cards.
• Try to defend your territories but have 1 that you can attack from.
• You can’t have, 4 territories with 4 troops, when you are the 3rd 4th or 5th place, because if you are on the way of someone, they will attack it, Instead you want to have 3 territories with 3 and then 1 with 7 in this example.
• Sometimes is better to not get a card and guarantee that you survive another turn. By you not getting a card after spreading yourself too thin, doesn’t give an incentive for players to kill you, since they don’t gain the troops that they used on you back.

When you have the advantage think big and small

• When you are the one winning, think small, remember that other players know that you are the one winning, therefore they will target you, as a result any mistake that you make, they will use against you.
• Think Big! if other players don’t get any bonus from continents, nor get many troops per turn it will help you beat them after a few turns. target the player that has the most cards, and if you can make a run and succeed on killing a player, wisely try to do it. but make sure that by doing so you don’t give the kill to another player, nor you leave yourself oblivious to the other players in the game, and that players ends up taking you out and winning the game for doing what you did.

Make sure that if you take completely the possibility of someone to win, you are the one that’s going to ensure their death is defined by the end result of you winning.

Understanding The Objectives of Risk Factions

In the bottom right corner there are your three guidelines of every game.

• The Graphic Bar choice, gives you the turns, and each individuals descriptions (Amount of Troops, Amount of Territories, Which Capitols they have, the Cards, and the amount of objectives they have (Good for command room games). (Press 1 to open during game)
• The World Map choice, gives you a layout of the map, the bonuses that each continent give, and a slight overview of the territories needed for a complete continent. (Press 2 to open)
• The Color Faction Choice, tells you what you have to do in order to get an objective and what the objective does. (Press 3 to open)

I categorize the objectives from what the amount of threat that they give

Hardest to easier based on dice technicalities.

• Defense Die Is the hardest to go up against. Regularly when going against an enemy territory, if they have more than 1 troop, you have to phase up to two dice per round. If the enemy gets a 6 they automatically win, and if you get a 1 you automatically lose. With that being said when you have defense dice, you’re even more likely to win or have trades with the opponent that is trying to attack you.
• Starting maneuver Starting maneuver is the second hardest to go up against. If a player has a lot of troops but they are equally spread out to defend a certain area, (s)he can combine two areas into one attack, and it can be difficult to defend against it. Since (s)he will be gathering a lot of troops all at once and you can’t really estimate how many troops you need to have to defend yourself against it. Something you can do is to attack the territory in between two strong territories, so that he can’t maneuver 1 to the other.
• Airfields is third because of it’s effect on offense and defensive rounds. It adds 1 to your highest roll. When you are defending with an airfield, if you get a 5 as your highest dice, you will be able to trade or counter the opponent. When you are attacking, with it, you can finally beat the defensive players’ 6 if you get a 6 yourself.
• Two Troops This one is life saver and a game changer. Any player can come from near death to stability. Normally a continent will give you 2 extra troops minimum (in classic map) for having a continent. Imagine getting the same without having the continent, but same amount of territories and less threat of loosing the bonus.
• Attack Die Attack die can be overrated. Regardless of how many dice you throw per round, if the opponent gets a 6, then you lost your highest role attack. That’s why defense die is better than attack die. However, if your opponent doesn’t have defense die you are more likely to get multiple winning 6’s per round. When you are in a big battle, if in one of the rounds the enemy doesn’t get a 6, you can potentially get multiple 6’s, and kill multiple troops in that round. Two winning 6’s engage an attack that kills 4 troops of the opponent. Three winning 6’s engage an attack that wipes out the whole territory.
• Guaranteed Card Many players don’t know how to benefit from having the guaranteed card. The way to maximize the earnings from having the guaranteed card is to look forward into getting other objectives when you acquire this objective card. While you keep getting stars or when you spread yourself too thin, use the turn to fortify and get a card anyways without losing any troops on the given turn. A common mistake that players do is that they do not invade on many continuous turns. This makes them loose a lot of troops per turn against other players, and can result negating the benefit of having the objective at all.
• Additional Maneuver This is good to have, it basically helps you readdress any mistakes on your post attack stage when you have to defend different territories at once, but it also helps you to put many troops in one area to have it ready to attack on your next turn. It’s not as good as the starting maneuver, because during the game in many turns you will not need or have to use your second maneuver. However, having this and the starting maneuver, can be harder than the defense die itself on certain stages of the game.

Learn The Classic Map!

Use the knowledge of the map against your opponents.