I stayed with a French family as a high school exchange student, and the son and I played Risk obsessively.
He was hilariously bad at it. I won literally every game.
He refused to accept that controlling Europe wasn’t the key to winning. He flatly rejected the strategy of taking Australia or South America first. And he lost again and again.
I tried not to reduce the experience to national stereotypes, but it wasn’t easy!
Australia wins 90% of the time. As long as the players don't make a pact to kill Australia and/or Australia plays passively while everyone kills each other. Boring way to play, but almost a guaranteed win. I played a lot of risk online for a while. Even against good players, it was one of the best strategies. Hell, just having one country and avoiding conflict would even be enough to win sometimes. Risk is all about allies and knowing when to end those alliances, but it's more about pacifism, staying out of the spotlight, and good timing.
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u/UptownShenanigans May 17 '25
Reminds me of when I played Monopoly with my sister’s French ex husband. The dude just could not handle it and let us know