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How to play Risk
-- For the most part, you stack your troops on one territory and leave 1's everywhere else. This isn't always true, but you'll have more success doing that in general. The better way you defend is through deterrence. "Don't touch me I have this huge stack".
-- You shouldn't conquer too quickly, because attacking burns your troops fast. Proceed slowly and deliberately. Generally, you should practice a "good neighbor's policy", let another player take a continent if they do the same for you. Experienced players will show trust to each other. For example instead of massing troops on Iceland and Greenland to ward each other off, they'll both trust each other and leave 1's there. Whether you can do this depends on how your opponent is acting, but overly aggressive players are usually removed from the board fast anyway.
-- It is generally not possible to hold Asia. But you need some territories there so you can get cards. You'll hole up in your continent, like SA or NA, and use a stack in Asia to conquer a territory every turn so you can get cards. You can even cardswap with someone in a mutual fashion both conquering and retreating from the same territory.
-- A great strategy is to "cardblock" someone by removing their troops from other places on the map, so they HAVE to use their main stack. For example, if someone is holed up in SA, and you cardblock them by removing their proxy territories, they will be forced to attack the African player to get cards. That's a great way to cause a war. You always want to invest troops in your main stack, but don't neglect your proxy territories. The European player is at an advantage here because they have direct access to Asia and generally cannot be cardblocked.
-- If a player wants to go somewhere, move your troops out of the way and give them a path! Showing trust to other people will help your game out in general.
-- If the other players all want to eliminate you, they can do so at any time. Therefore it's better to make friends, even if you get backstabbed occasionally.
-- When you get cards, you should be thinking about attacking in that moment. That is a great time to eliminate people, which gets you a bonus so it's worth doing. Rosemi made a big mistake when she got cards and didn't go all-in on Reimu in SA. Huge error.
