Seven games like Risk
Why should you replace a classic? These seven games offer compelling arguments.
Back in high school, I played a lot of Risk. Hours and hours and hours of my life were spent with friends around a Risk board on various surfaces. A bed, a table, the ground — anywhere we could fit that thing, we played a game. We made custom maps — my favorite was a map of the U.S. that totally flopped mechanically, but it made for some truly memorable experiences. (The key: control the Canada territories. A bit too exploitable, that one.) Risk is, at least in part, a factor in my love of board games even now, although I haven’t played the game in over a decade.
It’s one of the all-time classics, and it’s definitely got its good qualities, but is it really a game worth playing today? I won’t actually explore that question in depth, but I think there are at least a couple factors to consider. First, the role of random output from dice rolls — you never know quite what’s going to happen, making this game that seems deeply strategic into something a bit more about the odds. Second, the length of the game is simply too great for the low strategic value presented — two hours is, I think, a conservative estimate for a game of Risk with four or five players. (I mean, just think about Newman and Kramer in that great Risk scene. How long must that game have lasted, and how long would it have lasted?)
I’ll focus on those two aspects here. Some of these games have die rolls for some random qualities, while others have cards for that effect. Some eschew randomness a bit, while others give you opportunities to plan for that randomness. All of these games do trend over an hour in play, and some do approach Risk-like length of play. But when they do so, they offer more compelling strategic heft to justify that time.
Small World
If you’re looking for a game that encapsulates the feeling of Risk without the six-hour gameplay, Small World could be just the game to replace Risk in your game rotation. It’s a game all about the rise and fall of civilizations, which come in the form of randomized combinations of fantasy races and unique powers. You move through territories, conquering them in combat with other players. Like Risk, there’s a randomized element — you roll a die during combat. But unlike Risk, the outcome of battle is only slightly changed by die rolls, acting instead as a small boost to your troops, and it’s only on the final conquest of your turn.
As the game progresses, you’ll find you have fewer troops left available to you, giving this game its best quality: If you decide, you may choose to go into decline, taking a new race and power combination and losing control of your existing units.
This 2009 design by Philippe Keyaerts remains one of the greats, and there are a plethora of expansions, including a standalone expansion, Small World Underground. There’s a wealth of content here to explore if the game strikes your fancy, but there’s also so much in the box, too.
Inis
Another great game all about conquering territory, Inis, offers a very different experience from Risk while providing some familiar structure. Your goal is to be elected king of the island, which you do in one of three ways: being present in six territories, be chieftain over six clans, or be present in territories with six sanctuaries.
Each round, you draft action cards, and you might also gain season cards and advantage cards through the game. Those cards all comprise the actions you can take on your turn, and they’ll typically lead you into clashes with your opponents as you try to gain territory in one way or another.
The trickiest part of this 2016 design by Christian Martinez is that while you might hold a victory condition at the end of your turn, it’s only at the start of your turn that you can achieve victory. It’s a simple twist, but it makes for some tense games.
Brian Boru
I’ve made it fairly clear here at Don’t Eat the Meeples that I play a lot of trick-taking games, and I really enjoy it. Brian Boru is sort of like Risk meets trick-taking, only that’s an awfully inadequate explanation of the game. Basically, Brian Boru is an area influence game in which you play cards in tricks, taking actions based on whether you have won or lost the trick. You needn’t follow, so the trick-taking here really is quite loose compared to a game in which trick-taking is the primary mechanic, but it doesn’t much matter — this is a bit of fun.
Pandemic Legacy
This might feel like a slightly odd choice here, but here me out. What makes Risk a fun game? It’s all about group play. For me, the fun of Risk is not in the raw conquest or the strategic layer of the game — it’s about the group with which I’m playing. I’ve had so many incredible, compelling experiences playing Pandemic Legacy; it’s difficult to overstate how memorable and influential it’s been in my gaming journey. That’s the thing it replaces about Risk.
Especially if you have friends who have played Risk Legacy, Pandemic Legacy could be a perfect game to move toward. Sure, it’s cooperative, but if everyone turns their competitive energy toward the game, the fun of competition can still exist and thrive.
Terraforming Mars
There is not much about Terraforming Mars that really replaces Risk from a mechanical perspective, but that’s not the reason it’s made the list. It’s more that it’s a reasonably strategic game with meaty decisions that can be a good branching-off point from the fairly random qualities of Risk. You’ll work to build your corporation in an effort to terraform (you guessed it) Mars by buying cards, completing projects, and a lot more.
Is this a perfect game? I don’t know that it is. But you know what? It’s easy to get, has a super cool theme, and it’s weighty enough to attract a Risk player.
Root
Here we go. I bet you knew this would be here. Where Small World feels like the mechanics of Risk distilled into something approachable and fun, Root takes the feeling of playing Risk and converts it into a game of conquest in the woods amongst groups of animals, but it ditches the entire mechanical perspective. Instead, you have a fully asymmetric game with unique ways of scoring points wherein the goal is still domination. It’s even got roots (ahem, sorry) in asymmetric wargaming, giving this a really cool story to tell to Risk players.
Spirit Island
The final game on this list is an interesting corollary to Risk, in that it presents sort of an inverse position. Rather than a game in which you’re competitively attempting to spread influence across a map, Spirit Island is a game in which you’re cooperatively defending an island from said influence. We could, of course, get into the themes here — colonialism and the thematic notions behind Risk do go undeniably hand-in-hand, after all — but I really think there’s something mechanically interesting here.
Spirit Island has been one of my favorite cooperative games I’ve played a lot of over the last year, and I think it fits really well as a replacement for Risk. Of course, like Pandemic Legacy, you’ll need a group that can stomach cooperating instead of competing, but the asymmetric play and depth of gameplay might be enough to convince a group that it’s worth exploring.
Thanks, once again, for reading another issue of Don’t Eat the Meeples. I’ll be trying to get this thing out on Wednesday mornings, which is what this is right now, unless you’re reading it from the future. Spooky. (I mean, I guess whenever you’re reading this is in the future from writing. Hmm.)
Also, I’m getting really close to the 75th sent issue of Don’t Eat the Meeples (I think this might be 73 or 74 — I’ll have to double check!), and while I don’t know what exactly that means, I’m just really pleased that you’ve all come along with me this far. Here’s to 75 more. (And, more relevant, here’s to 25 more — I’d love to do a 100th issue blowout of some sort.)