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So my buddies and I have finally sat down for a few rounds of Risk: Legacy. I'm absolutely loving the game. We've gotten four games finished through two sessions of a few hours each, with a different winner each game.
The idea behind the game is that you are playing a campaign of 15 different games. While you play, you change the board, adding stickers and writing things on the board as you go. These change different territories to give them bonuses or penalties.
One of the major changes is the addition of cities, both major and minor. A city adds population to the faction that controls it, so it's as if you control an extra country in terms of determining reinforcements at the beginning of your turn. There are major and minor cities, major adding 2 population and minor adding 1. At the end of each game, all the players are given a list of options that they can take to change the game board: the winner gets a major change, factions that weren't completely eliminated get a minor change, and factions who were eliminated get nothing.
The single biggest change to the base game of Risk is that not all the countries begin occupied. At the start of the game, each faction takes turns picking their starting location, and that is all. On your turn, you may expand freely, as long as you leave one troop in each of your territories. Taking an unoccupied territory is free. Taking a territory with a city costs you the same number of troops as the population of the city. This might not seem like all that big a change, but the balance of expansion and consolidating your borders is huge. Once a few games have finished and the board has numerous changes on it, initial placement and expansion strategies are completely different.
There are a number of different pockets and packages in the game box that are labeled "Open when XXX". We've only managed to open one of them so far, and it has changed the game pretty drastically. We're really looking forward to opening more of them.
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