Tuesday, September 27, 2011

"Risk" on Hexagons

Some time ago, I was talking with a friend about the board game "Risk", and ventured into the world of alternate maps for the game as an introduction more complex rules variants. I'm still interested in putting together a more involved variant based on Sengoku-era Japan using a map of the ancient provinces of Japan. I still remember the ads for "Shogun" in my "Axis & Allies" box; I really wanted to play that game as a kid, which I see Avalon Hill/Hasbro has just re-issued as "Ikusa".

In any case, I wanted to explore whether symmetrical, abstract alternate maps based on hexagonal tilings would be interesting, which led to the project of translating the original "Risk" map onto an abstract hexagonal map. It doesn't work perfectly, though, since some territories take up two or three hexes.