How should I modify Risk to play with 7 persons?

Question

I am planning on creating my own version of Risk in such a way that we can play it with 7 persons. For this I am planning to create my own map with a local theme.

What kinds of ratios/parameters are common in games with fewer players (e.g. countries per player, armies per turn)? Based on these, what kind of modifications do I need to make to the map (number of countries / connections between countries or continents) to make it suitable for 7 players? Or is the game playable with the current map and 7 players?

Answer 1

We used to play Risk 2210 a lot, often with more than the recommended 5 players, and used the rule that if you are wiped out, when your turn comes around, you can start a rebellion.

Rebellions

• Take two cards and choose one of the shown territories to rebel in.
• Roll 3d6. That many troops in the chosen territory are replaced with your troops.
• If there are any enemy troops remaining in the territory, you must fight them, but if you win, you can continue your turn as normal. If you lose, your rebellion failed but you can try again on your next turn.

It leads to a more chaotic game but it's a LOT more fun that one or two people sitting around doing nothing for hours.

Answer 2

I haven't tried original Risk with more than 4 players, but there is an alternative that can more or less be played with 7 players, Risk Legacy. It is an official "spinoff" where the map changes and each faction is different and evolves a bit getting special and unique habilities. While it is initially for 5 players, without spoiling the fun let's say it gets more variety.

There are lots of reviews out there (example of a nice one I read a while ago), so you can read about it and decide. I have it and really love the concept, keeps the basics of Risk but "expands".

Answer 3

If you wish to make your own map as I have, you could perhaps visit strategygamenetwork.com where you will find at least 80 different maps created by various users of this site. My map is Polar World. I have found that playing with 7 players does not make for an enjoyable game of RISK, but if you must, a good ration is 7 to 10 territories per player. If you want to play with 7 players, your map should have approximately 48 to 70 territories. Given that Parker Brothers/Hasbro has issued different coloured & styled soldiers over the years, finding more colours or styles on e-bay is not difficult.

Answer 4

There are two problems with playing classic Risk with 7 players: map size and game length.

Map size

A lot of Risk strategy revolves around players having continents and/or territory. On the classic map, there are 5 viable continents (Asia is not a position that can be held for any duration as a player either gets invaded or wins soon after taking it; the other 5 are). On top of this, the standard risk map has only 42 territories, and you need players to be able to hit 12 territories for territories to start mattering for reinforcements (0 - 11 territories are counted as equivalent to 9 territories for starting reinforcements).

Classic Risk is best with 4 to 5 players, because there is at least one viable continent per player and 8 - 10 territories per player. Even with 6 players, at least one player will be left homeless and/or will get eliminated in the early game, so unless that's the vibe you're going for, you need a bigger map.

This is easy to fix. There are plenty of maps you can find online, or even some variants of risk that have been made to support more players. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Edition came with a 9 continent map with 63 territories (it was a bad map for other reasons; in particular the lack of bottlenecks), you could find some on sites like this: https://www.warzone.com/Maps, or build your own. You could even stick two classic Risk boards next to each other (although this might need a few more connections between boards than just Kamchatka). As long as it has continents, asymmetry, and bottlenecks, it will probably be fun.

Game length

This one is much harder to fix. Risk is a game with completely serial turns, so each player you add makes the game longer. 6 players is already pushing it. If you have a group of people willing to pay all day, that's fine, except that players who get eliminated early will have cleared their schedule for nothing, which feels bad. There are basically 3 options to fix this:

1. Play asynchronously. Find an online or mobile platform that will let you play with your friends at a pace of a turn a day or so and stretch the game out over weeks. This will likely include the ability to play on a custom map as well.

2. Find a variant that is more parallel. You could take classic risk but have everyone reinforce at once. Then, during the attack phase, have everyone declare one attack at once, and then roll for them simultaneously. Finally, everyone does troop movement at once. It would be a little chaotic, but you'd at least keep things moving. Here's another suggestion: http://drmuey.com/?do=page&id=18.

3. Play a different game. Diplomacy is in the same genre but designed for 7 people at baseline and is built with simultaneous turns. It has a number of different maps that have been made for it for a number of player counts (I've seen maps go up to 50 players, enabled by the parallelism). And, it was designed to be played by mail, so there are plenty of online platforms for it to play asynchronously (https://vdiplomacy.com/, https://webdiplomacy.net/).

Answer 5

I would take the original Risk game and "supersize" the relevant parameters for a seventh person. For instance, there are 42 territories in a game for 6 people, so I would have 49 territories. There are six continents in Risk so I would have seven in your game. I would also adjust the number of starting armies for the seventh person.