Adding money to a game of Risk

Question

A friend and I recently had a conversation around making a set of rules for a buy-in variant on Risk, and I wanted some help from experienced players to review them as they stand now. Risk is not a game that I know well, but well enough to ask some questions about.

The example we talked about splitting the pot on all 42 countries at $5 a piece; between 6 players, that's a $35 buy in. Players get their $5 bills (or chips that represent them) and must trade money upon losing/gaining territories at the end of each turn. As for quitting a game, a player can't quit unless they forfeit all of their money and walk away from the table, allowing for automatic defense rolls from the other players. To enforce fairness (and to avoid an annoying "winner take all" result each game), if all players from 2nd place until the current last place player all agree to "flag" their places and end the game, first place must then quit and take their money, as does all players.

With this approach, placing troops may result in one player taking all of their infantry on just a few territories; another may start with a larger amount of territories with less reinforcements. Would a French setup work better for this type of play? Are there other pitfalls that I may be overlooking? Anybody out there tried to add money to a game of Risk? What were the results?

Answer 1

Be careful. Usually tinkering with houserules, if you overlook something, you can make it up on the spot. If there is real money at stake, suddenly the game becomes much more serious and the ability to quickly tweak something which might be in one player's favor or another is gone.

From your initial idea, I see several dramatic flaws. First is that Risk is designed as a winner-take-all game. You propose to have the ability to end the game short by unanimous-save-one consent. This will not work. One player, for instance, might have relatively few territories, but be well-fortified, well-positioned and have cards prepared for a powerful game-winning strike. Will this player be considered to be in the lead? If not, he will never agree to end the game. If so, he will lose out, controlling many fewer territories although the favorite to win.

You would need to make careful rules about when the game is allowed to come to an end. Can it be ended before a powerful attack? After an unlucky turn? Before whose attack--because the last attacker can just spread himself thin, without any regard to defense, and collect an unfairly large share of the pot.

With directed attacks, you may face accusations of favoritism or collusion that are much more venomous than in a non-stakes game. In this case, I think that playing Risk for money is a questionable idea, and playing with house rules to allow any stakes other than winner-take-all would be potentially disastrous.

Answer 2

I have considered & re-considered the concept of involving a gambling aspect to the classic game of Risk. I have come to the conclusion that playing this classic game should not involve money as people whom like money games will gravitate towards poker & people who like strategy & balance of power will gravitate to Risk. The best games of Risk that I have played are the games that I lost. Introducing a financial loss to theses amazing games would diminish this experience.

But if you must, I have come up with these concepts: 1) Everybody puts a certain amount in a pot & the winner takes the pot. OR 2) You must buy all of your soldiers that you start with that you will place on the map at the beginning of the game & throughout the game. A penny for every soldier or a dollar for every soldier or anything in between. When you buy your soldiers the money goes into the winner’s pot. As you kill soldiers on the map you keep theses soldiers as your own to cash them in at the end of the game. You might have to make soldier swaps with other players during the game as you have their coloured soldiers & they have yours, but the swaps are 1 for 1. When a game ends the losers get to take the money out of the pot for the soldiers that they have paid for but not put on the map yet & the money for the soldiers that they have killed & not trade with other players. If at any point in the game it is agreed by all other players to concede a game to the obvious would be winner the game is cut short & the winner takes a smaller pot. A longer game would make for a larger pot. You can actually play with real coins that have been spray painted to the colour of each player.

Answer 3

I would recommend another approach:

Each player can buy treasury bonds for every country. You play with the countries in which you have a majority of bonds. You can still attack your enemy, but when you do that, remember that someday that country you weaken may be yours because you have more treasury bonds that the other players.

But wait! Don't bother creating a game like that, it already exists. It's called Imperial (old European version) or Imperial 2030 (World version).

Change your thinking for these kind of games, if you play them, though. They are 100% strategy games with absolutely no luck whatsoever, even for the fights.