How to Play

Risk Legacy

3-5 players 60-60 min 7.3 Board Game Geek Rating

Risk Legacy combines traditional Risk gameplay with permanent campaign changes. Players control territories and battle with dice to eliminate opponents or collect victory points. The unique mechanic requires destroying cards and components after each game, with winners earning major modifications like founding cities or altering continent bonuses. These irreversible changes create a customized board that evolves over fifteen games.

Published 2011

Get Ready

Setup the game with these step-by-step instructions before diving into your turn.

Gather components

Collect the gameboard and territory deck (42 cards, no wild cards) from standard Risk, plus the rulebook, faction armies/HQs, mission deck, event deck, coin card deck, sideboard, red star tokens, missile tokens, and dice from Risk Legacy

Print custom components

Print and mount the faction cards (x7), World Capital (x1), Major Cities (x5), Minor Cities (x6), Ruins (x3), Ammo Shortage (x3), Bunker (x3), Biohazard (x3), Mercenary (x3), Fallout (x1), and Alien Island (x1) tokens

Place the World Capital

Shuffle the Territory Deck, draw the top card, and place the World Capital in that territory

Place Major Cities

Draw 5 territory cards and place one Major City in each territory

Place Minor Cities

Draw 6 territory cards and place one Minor City in each territory; Minor Cities may be adjacent to other cities and the World Capital

Place Ruins

Draw 3 territory cards and place one Ruin in each territory; Ruins may be adjacent to other features

Place Alien Island

Place in an ocean portion connecting two territories as agreed by players

Reshuffle the deck

Return all drawn cards to the Territory Deck and shuffle

Place scars

Draw 3 territory cards each for Bunker, Ammo Shortage, Biohazard, and Mercenary scars, placing one in each territory (only one scar per territory, but scars may coexist with Ruins or Cities)

Place Fallout

Draw territory cards until finding an empty territory (no Ruins, Cities, Capital, or scars) and place the Fallout scar there

Prepare the sideboard

Reshuffle the Territory Deck, place it on the sideboard, draw 4 cards into the numbered slots, and place shuffled Mission, Event, and Coin decks on the sideboard

Draft factions

Lay out all draft and faction cards and draft them per Risk Legacy rules (German Mercenary draft cards are not compatible)

Set up starting positions

Each player places initial pieces per Risk Legacy rules in an unmarked territory (no City, Capital, Ruin, or scar)

Distribute missiles

Give each player 3 Missile tokens for modifying die rolls or activating brown powers

On Your Turn

What you can do during your turn.

Note unused rules

Fortifications (except Die Mechaniker's green power), Homeland, Lead Faction, Bringer of Nuclear Fire, and German Mercenary draft cards are not used

Use missiles

Spend Missile tokens to modify die rolls or activate a faction's brown power per Risk Legacy rules

Turn in cards for troops

Each territory card is worth one resource; cards depicting a territory you currently own are worth two resources

Draw resource cards

Draw a resource card featuring a territory you currently own; if none is available, draw a Coin card instead

Trigger Event cards

Each time a resource card is drawn and a new card enters the #1 slot, roll 1 die; on an even result, draw the top Event card

Interpret Mysterious Island

Read the "Mysterious Island" Event as "Whomever controls Alien Island may take a territory card"

Use faction powers

Apply your faction's unique abilities as listed on your faction card (green power passive abilities, red power activated abilities, yellow weaknesses)