Over the long Thanksgiving break, one thing I did was sit down with my family to play a nice long game of Risk. I am fortunate enough to come from a long line or Risk-lovers- everyone from my grandpa to my 7-year old cousin loves this game. However, for most people, convincing three or four other people to sit down with you for upwards of three or four hours to play a board game is not an easy task, to say the least. So, here, I will convince you of this strategy game’s excellence, and give you a reason to get your family to play.

For those of you unfamiliar with the gameplay of Risk, I’ll give you a quick overview. The game board is a world map, and the game starts off with each player taking turns claiming a territory until the whole world has been claimed. From then on, each player takes turns going clockwise, with each turn having three steps. In the first step, a player is given new troops to place on their territories. Second, a player can attack as many opposing territories as they would like, as long as the territory is adjacent to one of their own. When attacking, a player chooses whether to attack with one, two, or three troops, while the defending territory defends with either one or two of theirs. Each player rolls one die for each troop in battle. Each player’s highest dice rolls are matched up, and the troops with the lower numbers are defeated. The defense wins in the case of a tie. For example, if I was attacking my brother with three troops and he was defending with two, if I rolled a 6, 3, and 2, and he rolled a 4 and a 3, my 6 and his 4 would be matched, so one of his troops would be defeated, while both of our 3s would be matched, and I would lose one troop. This continues until either all of the defending troops have been defeated or the offense decides to stop. Then, in the third step, a player can move troops from one territory to another to fortify weaker territories. The game ends once one player has conquered the entire world.

In my opinion, Risk is easily the best mainstream board game. Its simplicity offers something for everyone. Many just enjoy the game for its strategy, though I personally love to exercise my creative muscles and make up stories about each battle, which is something that is much harder to do in other board games. Others love to trash talk after each victory.

Another aspect that Risk does well is a nice balance between strategy and luck. Many board games, like Monopoly or The Game of Life, your turn’s success is almost entirely dependent on your luck for the number of spaces you move. However, with Risk, 20 dice or more are often rolled on just on single player’s turn, so things tend to average out in such a way that success is more so dependent on your strategy rather than one single dice roll, while the possibilities of constant extremely high or low rolls can still keep things interesting. Risk is also very well designed in that it rewards more offensive playstyles. While it is often strategically enticing to wait for others to attack you and slowly grow stronger (like the famed “Australia” strategy), players who attack will often be given more bonus troops, which helps to balance things out.

All in all, Risk is the perfect activity to sink some family time into over a school break. Whether you can get your close family to play with you over winter break or if you have to wait until the next break after the pandemic is all over with to play with some extended family, it will not be a mistake to sit everyone down for a game.