I played the board game Risk a few months back, and Hasbro has completely changed the way the game is played. The cards no longer have to be matched, and you simply collect more cards to get more armies. They don’t even put the symbols on the cards so you can play the old way.
These changes to Monopoly look cosmetic, but they completely destroyed Risk. None of the strategies you remember from the past work anymore.
Mark your own Risk cards, play by real (aka old) rules.
I played a lot of Risk in the past. One weird result I observed was whoever won Europe disproportionally won the game. North American normally was not vital.
I wondered whether it was because it was in the center of the board but came to the conclusion it was better located to attack the other continents and getting 5 extra armies made it more important than Africa.
Not sure if others have drawn the same conclusion.
That's bad news...we spent hours playing that game growing up.
I must have played an earlier version than you because we didn’t even have “RISK cards.” We played it all the time in the summer and on holidays and usually weren’t done until very late...sometimes it was a two day thing. People killed off early would get out the chess board while the survivors played RISK.
When Axis and Allies came out we modified it a bit so technology could improve and would have games that could last weeks... but because of the elaborateness of the game it was hard to bring in new players. At least RISK was simple to learn so that a new player could play with us and not be at a total disadvantage.