| |
BGonline.org Forums
The old U.K. rules are quite clear that the attacker rolls the dice first, then the defender rolls.
Posted By: stw672 In Response To: Risk tactics (ot) (Stick)
Date: Sunday, 27 December 2015, at 2:18 p.m.
This is also the same in the UK rules from the 1990s set. Defender may see the attacker's roll before deciding how many dice to defend with.
I played on an older UK set from the 70s where the rules about trading in armies were completely different to the set I had. It turns out there are lots of versions of the rules out there.
This site is quite good for information:
http://www.kent.ac.uk/smsas/personal/odl/riskfaq.htm#2.1
2.1 Are there different versions of the rules?
Yes, several. There have been a large number of different versions published in the U.K. alone. In the U.S. the rules have been copyrighted six times: 1959, 1963, 1975, 1980, 1990, and 1993. The 1963 edition refers to the 1959 version as "the original French rules". The U.S. rules have subtle -- and some not-so-subtle -- differences from edition to edition, and many of the rules that have been "standard" in the U.K. editions for some time have only recently made it over to the States.
2.6.1 How many dice may the defender roll?
The number of dice the defender can roll is explicitly different in different sets of rules. In most editions the defender rolls 1 die if he has 1 unit in the territory, and can choose to roll 1 or 2 if he has 2 or more units. Some sets of rules (New Zealand and U.K. circa 1990) state that the defender can only roll 1 die unless he has at least 3 units, which weakens the defender. It also removes the interesting decision an attacker has when he doesn't actually want to take a territory but is happy just to reduce it to 1 army (when you get to the redeployment rules you'll see why that might be) since he no longer needs to worry about reducing the defender from 2 to 0 in one throw. I have on occasion rolled just one die as the attacker because the defender only had 2 units left.
Some versions of Risk from other countries (such as the Brazilian War! or the Italian Risiko!) allow the defender to roll as many as three dice.
2.6.2 Who rolls first?
The old U.K. rules are quite clear that the attacker rolls the dice first, then the defender rolls. Though it isn't explicit, this suggests that the defender can choose how many to roll based on the attacker's dice, since this would seem to be the only point of rolling later.
This sometimes causes the defender to use only 1 die when he was entitled to use 2. If faced by 2 sixes you only roll 1, whereas faced with the second highest being a one you roll 2. (In both cases this assumes you are not trying to let the attacker through with minimal losses to get to a mutual enemy.)
The U.S. and new U.K. rules specify that both attacker and defender decide beforehand and roll simultaneously. This leads to a faster game and it is rare that the defender rolls 1 when entitled to 2.
| |
BGonline.org Forums is maintained by Stick with WebBBS 5.12.