Part Two:

Basic Setup

Now, if memory serves, I think the idea with the starting forces was to use only the number of infantry for each country, and sort of rounding those numbers off.
Since the starting territories are pre-set, there isn’t the “claiming territories” phase from the original game. But to simulate something similar, the placement is done in a “you go-I go” fashion.

After putting 1 army onto each of your starting territories, count out 60 red armies for the USSR, 30 green armies for the US, 25 yellow armies for the UK, and 20 blue armies for WE. Then, take turns placing those armies over 5 rounds, as follows:

• 3 Soviet
• 4 WE
• 3 Soviet
• 5 UK
• 3 Soviet
• 6 US
• 3 Soviet

Starting Territories

Some of the names are changed from earlier versions of RISK, but for the sake of uniformity, I have used the territory names as they appear in the Reinvention version.

USSR: Northern Europe, Russia, Urals, Afghanistan, Siberia, Yakutsk, Irkutsk, Kamchatka
WE: Western Europe, Scandinavia, Southern Europe, North Africa, Central Africa, Madagascar, Southeast Asia, New Guinea
UK: Great Britain, Northwest Territory, Alberta, Ontario, Eastern Canada, East Africa, South Africa, India, Western Australia, Eastern Australia
US: Eastern United States, Western United States, Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Japan

There’s an argument to be made that Northern Europe could be given to WE. The problem is that it leads to kind of a boring opener for the USSR, because the obvious thing is to just heavily stack in Russia (aka Ukraine). Giving the USSR control of Northern Europe gives them more options for how they can position their start… but also this gives NATO a bit more information as to their intentions than the situation of just, “I stack everything in Russia; you’ll find out which of the 3 lanes I’ll attack when it’s my turn.”
It also means that the USSR is “open” to attack from the UK, in Europe, right out of the gate – rather than being able to possibly avoid such contact by routing through Southern Europe, into Africa

Balancing / Rationale

Not counting capitols, here’s what everyone would start with (before any attacks)

WE: starts with 8 territories and 1 city, so that makes for 3 armies
UK: starts with 10 territories and 2 cities, so that makes for 4 armies
US: starts with 6 territories and 2 cities + 5 territories and 1 city (for the OAS contribution) = 14 / 3 = 4 armies; adding in one continent bonus means either 5 armies for North America, or 2 for South America
USSR: 8 territories and 3 cities + 2 territories and 1 city (for China’s contributions) = 14 armies

Once you add in capitols, that makes it 19 for NATO vs. 15 for USSR – however, keep in mind that the USSR can break North America to cut NATO’s number down by 3; losing any 1 territory would reduce WE or UK’s production by 1 army – 2 if it’s their capitol. Barring some extreme results from influence rolls, the opening of the game has the potential to be pretty balanced.

The OAS contribution to the US feels out of place w/r/t how it typically plays out in E&W. However, to balance off the massive number of territories the UK has, with how few the US should have…? I’m not sure there’s a better solution, within the RISK framework. Even the possibility of OAS territories counting for double at a +2 contribution doesn’t make for a huge swing, since this bonus works out to only 4 armies.

Nuclear Weapons

I mentioned before that the blank cards in the deck are used as nuclear weapons. Each side (NATO or USSR) can only use 1 nuclear weapon per round. Basically if you have one of these cards in your hand, you can target any space on the map; if you succeed at the complication roll, you remove 10 armies from the targeted territory. If this leaves no armies on that territory, it effectively is not owned by anyone and cannot be counted for the purposes of drafting troops. It can be claimed by anyone, by “attacking” an adjacent army into the territory.
As with regular E&W’s rules, you cannot make a conventional attack against a territory on the same turn that you target it with a nuclear attack.

The complication roll is a simplification of the 2d6 roll in E&W, using 1d6 instead:
1: No Attack - this basically accounts for detonation, malfunction, and campus protest complications. Return the card to the deck if you get this result.
2 or 3: Outrage - works like a normal attack, with the following drawback:

• If the attack is made by or directed at Western Europe, the Arab League and Indonesia are influenced one point away from the aggressor.
• If the attack is made by or directed at the UK, China is influenced one point away from the aggressor.
• If the attack is made by or directed at the US, the OAS is influenced one point away from the aggressor.
• If the attack is directed at a neutral territory, ALL other neutrals are influenced one point away from the aggressor.

4, 5, or 6: Normal Attack - remove the 10 armies, no other effects.

Part Three:

Victory Conditions

Obviously a bunch of mechanics tend to fall apart (particularly pertaining to neutrals and influence and such) if a NATO power is completely wiped off of the map…

So that’s basically the win condition for the USSR – to eliminate (at least) one of the NATO powers. 2nd option is just taking the US capitol. 3rd option is for USSR to be controlling at least 3 continents. All 3 victory conditions require that the USSR still controls their own capitol.

NATO VC’s are:
a) controlling 5 continents, including all NATO capitols
b) controlling all 4 capitols

Most of the caveats pertaining to capitols were, obviously, added in with the Reinvention version of this mod. I felt it helps to make them important, the same way that they are in E&W.

Basic assumption for these win conditions (pertaining to continents) would be that NATO controls everything except Asia, and USSR would control Europe, Asia, and one other (likely Africa or Australia.) Neutral contributions would count towards control of continents, so they are not necessarily required to be conquered.

Neutral Notes

Fun fact: Reinvention only ships with 5 colours of armies, unlike the typical 6 you could expect in earlier versions.

In case it needed to be said, all neutral armies are meant to be represented using the black armies; the black capitol is not used in the E&W scenario.
The territories for neutrals (I would hope) are pretty obvious, too…

• OAS: Central America, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Brazil
• Arab League: Egypt, Middle East
• China: Mongolia, China

As in E&W, if a neutral is attacked and not completely destroyed, their remaining armies are replaced with those of the power they become aligned with (i.e. USSR, if attacked by NATO; if attacked by USSR, OAS joins US, Arab League and Indonesia join WE, China joins UK.)

Liberating Capitols

As per the normal Reinvention ruleset, you get 1 army for each capitol you control. My sense is that in the E&W mod, a capitol owned by one NATO partner but liberated by another NATO partner should still contribute its 1 army to the original owner… but I’m willing to have my mind changed on that, depending on playtesting/feedback.

Trading in Cards

I’ve always liked the rule that you can get 2 additional armies on (at least one of) the territories corresponding to the cards you trade in, if you control that territory. In the Reinvention rules, you can basically turn in as few as 1 and as many as 5 cards at a time; for this reason, I feel like a good compromise is just to say, “you gain 1 free additional army on any territories you control, corresponding to the cards you trade in.”

Part Four:

FAQ / Q&A?

For anyone who has been reading along, I’ve made a few edits here and there to the preceding posts, as things popped into my mind. So before asking any questions, maybe do one more read-through to make sure I haven’t covered it, since the original time of posting.

If there are any further additions/clarifications need, I’ll try and keep them consolidated into this post.

Q1. Basic Setup: why?

@The-Janus said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

Now, if memory serves, I think the idea with the starting forces was to use only the number of infantry for each country, and sort of rounding those numbers off.
[…]
After putting 1 army onto each of your starting territories, count out 60 red armies for the USSR, 30 green armies for the US, 25 yellow armies for the UK, and 20 blue armies for WE.

Including the single armies placed onto each starting territory, the number of armies in this mod vs. the number of infantry in ‘classic’ E&W works out to:
USSR: 68 vs. 60
WE: 28 vs. 28
UK: 35 vs. 31
US: 36 vs. 33

Now, if you account for the “round 0” IPCs for the USSR being spent all on infantry, this would raise their starting number to 70 in E&W.
Overall, I like how the numbers work out, in terms of it showing that US > UK > WE
I would also argue that the USSR going first helps to balance off the fact that the US doesn’t have any units in poorly-defended front line positions (such as in West Germany) in the RISK game.

As has been discussed in the E&W thread before, the only real discrepancy in units between the two sides (particularly after the first round of battles has happened) is in naval units and bombers; I feel like simplifying the calculation down by only using the infantry numbers saves a lot of overhead.

Q2. The USSR runs out of armies, on their first turn! What do?

Ok, so as I mentioned there are 80 armies for each colour, in the Reinvention version of RISK; the USSR starts with 68, and since they go first they will draft their full complement of troops (i.e. no loss of ‘income’ from NATO attacks) – in this case 14, once you include China. So that starts the game with a total of 82 for the USSR.

You’d also want 1 red army to be placed on China’s city, in Mongolia to denote the +1 contribution – so that would bring the number up to 83 army markers that the USSR has to spread around.

I’m sure in testing, I probably just used a couple of the black armies to make up the difference (keeping in mind that there should be 5 of those to spare.)

There’s little incentive for the USSR not to attack multiple places on their first turn, so killing off the 2-3 extra armies (and then some) should be no issue. Because this isn’t “every man for himself” (with some diplomacy involved) the way a typical RISK game would be, you really only have one opponent, and your objective is to kill each other.

The first round is typically a bloodbath, because of the fact that WE has to split focus between defending their capitol and keeping the USSR out of Africa, UK has to try and defend their capitol while also keeping India viable, and the US has to put a heavy presence in the Pacific or risk being blocked from attacking at all.

Addendum to this addendum: This all probably formalizes the idea that the influence rolls should be skipped until the 2nd round of play. Also, if the USSR needs to “borrow” 3 armies from the pool of 5 spare neutral armies, this leaves 2 extra armies in total; it might be worthwhile to just add one of those to each Chinese territory, bringing their total per territory up to 16 armies. (Coincidentally, that’s the IPC value of China, in classic E&W.)

Q3. What if a nuclear attack complication is supposed to result in Outrage, but the Arab League is already dead?

(Working from the assumption that invading the Arab League doesn’t immediately cause Indonesia to join the opposing side…)

If Indonesia is still neutral, I would say that this result should push Indonesia into joining the opposite side of the one making the nuclear attack.

So, for example, if the USSR targets WE with a nuke, the outrage is supposed to push the Arab League / Indonesia towards WE; if the Arab League is still neutral, it would push them to +1 (including counting Indonesia’s territory, for the purposes of WE’s income.) In the same situation, but where the USSR has already invaded the Arab League, the outrage should instead cause Indonesia to join WE.

The other example would be a nuclear attack against a neutral, in which case all other neutrals are supposed to swing 1 point against the aggressor. In this scenario (with the Arab League already invaded) I would say that Indonesia would join the opposite side, including the possibility of Indonesia joining the USSR. This would only be in the unlikely case of NATO making a nuclear attack against a neutral, which can only take place if that neutral (for example, maybe China) is supporting the USSR at a +2 level.

Part Five:

Errata & Optional Rules: Discussion

Upon reviewing the rules a bit, naturally the ones that stick out and cause problems are the ones that don’t pertain to RISK’s core combat mechanics.

Indonesia

Let’s say the USSR attacks the Arab League: Indonesia is supposed to stay neutral in this case, but can NATO still influence them, somehow? Does WE have to be the one to do it, or could it be UK? The ‘quick and dirty’ solution would just be to reverse the rule treating Indonesia as a separate entity, and say that the territory sides with NATO, if the Arab League is attacked by the USSR. Since they are aligned with WE, their troops should be replaced with WE (blue) troops, if/when this happens.

An obvious optional rule in this situation might be that Arab League territories join WE but Indonesia joins the UK; chalk this up to representing Singapore, Malaya, etc. or just with the continent of Australia being aligned with UK, in this game.

The alternate solution is to clarify the rule to be “an attack on Indonesia is not treated as an attack on the Arab League, but an attack on the Arab League DOES count as an attack on Indonesia.” I think this probably most closely reflects the intention of the mechanics.

Edit: Given some more time to stew over it, I feel another good simplification might be to allow WE to continue using their influence roll (converting Indonesia on a success) in the event that the USSR takes out the Arab League.

Possibly a better (albeit more complicated) solution would be to allow NATO to use their influence roll towards their affiliated neutral alliance OR towards Indonesia. If they successfully influence Indonesia, they would replace Indonesia’s troops with their own. This treats Indonesia more like a “minor neutral” such as they would be in E&W; the reason I don’t like this is that it creates a new set of rules around a single territory, instead of just conforming to the existing/general rules.

Since the USSR has the option to ATTACK Indonesia, they can always gain the territory that way; this rule would simply address the fact that NATO does not have such a mechanism to gain the territory.
I should probably mention in this space that allowing NATO to use its influence roll to gain Indonesia, would allow for the possibility of the US gaining the territory. This would be an interesting wrinkle, as I’ve often said that in classic E&W the US needs to be able to gain Thailand in the event that the USSR goes nuclear; this would sort of serve to simulate that scenario, of the US needing to use its influence to try and gain a base of operations on mainland Eurasia.

Influence

Since the opening-game balance is presupposed around the OAS being at +1 to US and China being at +1 to the USSR, the obvious optional rule to include would be one not allowing diplomacy until the 2nd round of play. This would reflect the mechanical realities in E&W, of everybody starting the game with no spies in play (barring the USSR spending their “round zero” mobilization cash on spies.)

The rule limiting NATO to influencing only their affiliated neutral could also be changed… Although it might have to be limited to “once you’re already receiving +2 from them” to prevent dogpiling.
The intention of the limitation is to keep the game simple and fast; it’s also meant to avoid some of the pitfalls of E&W’s system, whereby there’s really only one correct choice, so just hammer that option as early and often as possible.

Nukes vs. Capitols

An interesting thing with the mechanic of nuclear weapons being added to a RISK game, is that it creates the possibility of a territory being cleared of armies. Since armies are used to denote territory ownership (serving the function performed by control markers, in A&A-type games) it stands to reason that a territory with no armies on it is controlled by no one. But what if the territory has a capitol on it?

This is an interesting thing, because the existence of a capitol implies ownership of the territory, corresponding to a specific faction, without there being troops in the territory (i.e. which would be the normal way to denote ownership of the territory.)

Obviously, a territory with a city but no armies is not controlled by anyone; this makes targeting cities with nukes more appealing, since it doubles the loss in “income” – similar to how targeting Industrial Complexes with nukes in E&W effectively doubles the reduction in infantry production, on that territory.

So the questions seem to be:

1. Can you place troops on your capitol, if there are currently no troops there?
2. Do you get credit for “controlling” your capitol, if there are no troops in its territory?
3. Does your capitol allow you to get credit for “controlling” the territory it resides in (including the bonus for a city)?

I think my answers to these would be: yes, maybe, and no (respectively.)

If a nuke wipes all of the armies off of a territory without a capitol, my general assumption was that this works the same as if a nuke in E&W reduced the IPC value of the territory to zero – meaning it cannot produce any infantry. The question then is, do capitols provide some immunity to this? Does not providing this immunity make nuking capitols (exclusively) too powerful in the overall meta? Again, these would have to be born out with more playtesting.

Edit: Since I’ve said earlier in the thread that NATO factions would still get credit for their own capitol even if the territory is controlled by an ally… if there are no armies on your capitol, I think you would still get credit for controlling your capitol in that scenario as well. This changes my answer to #2 from a “maybe” to a “yes”
Normally, you have to have your armies in a territory in order to get the benefits of controlling said territory, but we’ve already made this one exception for liberated capitols, so it makes little sense to treat an empty capitol differently; essentially we are saying you always get credit for your capitol, as long as it is not held by your enemy.
Similarly, for question #3 – if your ally liberates your capitol, that ally gets the credit for controlling the territory (and its city) but not the capitol. If no side controls your capitol, no side gets credit for that territory or its city, but you still get credit for your capitol. As such, the control by armies determines who gets credit for territories/cities; control of capitols is made into a binary between friendly/hostile.

Addendum: The answer to question #1 being “yes” makes for the specific stipulation that only in the case of a territory being empty of armies, does your capitol imply ownership of said territory – but this is only for the purposes of troop placement, not troop “drafting”. If nuking a capitol and eliminating all armies there meant that you could not get credit for the territory/city, or the capitol, and that you could not place armies there…? Then this tactic would be way too powerful. I think allowing the owner of the capitol to spawn new troops in the territory (if it is empty) makes it a less desirable target than to just wipe out all of the armies in a territory with a city, but no capitol. This might be slightly over-tuned, and maybe simply allowing them credit for the capitol might be enough, but for now I like the idea that this can be one special thing that capitols can do.