# Risk — A Briefing from Nadia, 4th Temporal Expeditionary Corps

*Logging arrival. Local calendar reads the early twenty-first century — your "now," strange and loud and gloriously analog. I am Nadia. Where I come from, the wars are fought in silence by machines I am not permitted to describe to you. So in my downtime I study the old conflicts, the human ones, the ones decided by nerve and dice and a map spread across a table. I have read every campaign in your history. And then I found this — Risk — and recognized it instantly. This is no toy, recruit. This is the truest model of your age's warfare I have ever seen. Sit. Let me teach you to read the board the way my instructors taught me to read the dead.*

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## The Objective

There is exactly one way to win Risk: **own all 42 territories.** Every rival commander must be erased from the map. No points. No honorable second place. No ribbons for participation — we stopped issuing those centuries ago, and the universe is better for it. Total domination of the planet. That is the mission, and the only mission.

Patience wins it. The board opens divided among 2 to 6 commanders, and grinding them all to nothing takes time. In my era we have a saying: *the loud campaign ends; the long campaign endures.* Win the long one.

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## The Board

The world is carved into **6 continents** and **42 territories**. Territories link by land borders — and a handful of sea routes drawn into the lines of the map (Alaska clasps hands with Kamchatka; Brazil with North Africa; and so on). You may strike only a territory that touches one of your own. Geography is destiny. It was in my time. It is in yours.

Hold an **entire continent** at the start of your turn and it pays a tribute of fresh armies, every single turn:

| Continent | Bonus Armies |
|-----------|--------------|
| Asia | +7 |
| North America | +5 |
| Europe | +5 |
| Africa | +3 |
| South America | +2 |
| Australia | +2 |

Australia is the recruit's redoubt — a single doorway to guard (through Indonesia). Asia is the great prize, but it is a sprawling charnel ground with too many gates to hold. Choose your ground the way you choose where to die: deliberately, and only once.

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## A Turn, Step by Step

Each turn moves through **three phases**, in this order:

### 1. Reinforce
You are issued new armies to place on your own territories:
- **Territories ÷ 3** (rounded down), but never fewer than **3**.
- **Plus** any continent tributes you hold.
- **Plus** armies from trading in a matching set of cards (below).

Tap your territories to set the armies down where they'll earn their keep — a fist where you intend to strike, a wall where you expect the blow.

### 2. Attack
Tap one of your territories (it must hold **at least 2 armies**), then tap a bordering enemy territory.

The dice render judgment:
- The **attacker** rolls up to **3 dice** (one fewer than the armies present, capped at 3).
- The **defender** rolls up to **2 dice** (capped at 2, and at the armies present).
- Highest die against highest die, second against second. **Higher number wins; ties go to the defender.** Each loss costs that side one army.

Press the assault as long as you dare. Grind a territory to zero and it falls to **you** — you must then advance at least as many armies as the dice you rolled. When your blood cools, end the attack phase.

### 3. Fortify
Once per turn you may redeploy: move any number of armies from one territory to **another connected territory you own** (always leaving at least one behind). Straighten your line. Reinforce the gate that will be tested next. Then the turn passes.

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## Territory Cards

Capture **at least one territory** during your turn and you are awarded **one card** when the turn ends. Cards bear three insignia — **Infantry**, **Cavalry**, or **Artillery** — plus a rare **Wild** card or two.

In your Reinforce phase you may cash a set of **three of a kind** or **three different types** (a Wild stands in for anything) for bonus armies. The bounty climbs every time *any* commander cashes a set: **4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15**, then +5 each time after. If a traded card depicts a territory you already hold, **2 extra armies** drop directly onto it.

Hold **5 cards and you are forced to trade** at the start of your turn. And mark this well: destroy a rival and you seize their entire hand. A thick stack of cards is an army that simply hasn't been counted yet.

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## Nadia's Doctrine — Lessons From the Wars You Haven't Fought Yet

- **Take a continent, then hold its borders.** A tribute every turn compounds the way nothing else on this board does. My academy called it *the geometry of inevitability.*
- **Never overextend.** A thin chain of lone armies is not a front line — it is a row of graves waiting for the next commander to fill.
- **Bring all your dice.** Strike with the full 3 wherever you can. The mathematics belongs to the larger stack, and the math does not feel mercy.
- **Time your cards.** Sometimes the wise move is one more conquest — just enough to earn a card before you stop for the turn.
- **Cull the weak; respect the strong.** Finish the stragglers for their cards. Never rouse a sleeping power on the far rim of the world before you are ready to end it.

*That is the whole of it, recruit. I have seen how these conflicts resolve, in this century and in mine, and the shape is always the same: the patient and the prepared inherit the map. Now command. The world has never once taken itself — not in any timeline I've walked. Move out.*

*— Nadia, 4th Temporal Expeditionary Corps, signing off your channel.*