How Do You Play RISK Faster? 5 Tips For Quicker Play

RISK: Global Domination is a popular board game and now an online game too! 

Its strategy and alliance aspects make the game fun and challenging. 

But it takes a long time to play. 

If you don’t have the 1-2 hours or more to set aside to play the game, you’re probably wondering if there are ways to play RISK faster. 

Playing RISK faster is possible with different game modes, settings, and helper programs. My 5 tips for playing faster are: 

• Use A Dice Roller
• Play for Capitals Or A Faster Game Mode
• Use The Correct Settings When Playing Online
• Play Progressive Bonus, Not Fixed
• Speed Up Setup With Auto Placements

Let’s go over each of these tips to help you enjoy this game even more! 

#1 Use A Dice Roller

If playing over the board (OTB), the slowest part of the game is rolling the dice. 

In the endgame of RISK, some people may have dozens or hundreds of armies to work with. 

Rolling 3 dice and chipping away 2 armies at a time take quite a while like this. 

Fortunately, if you use a dice roller app or program, you can speed this along. 

If you have a phone, I use the Dice Roller app here.

For a browser roller, I enjoy this one at Berkley. 

Both let you put in the number of armies facing each other and simulate the rolls faster. 

Pro-tip: Make sure everyone at the table knows that clicking or rolling the dice can’t be taken back. 

For some reason, people seem to think they can take back a roll when it’s done via a program. 

If you’re playing online through Hasbro’s RISK game, they feature a BLITZ option where you simulate dice rolling until one army is defeated. 

This definitely speeds it along, but be careful. It can’t be undone once it’s clicked.  

#2 Play for Capitals Or A Faster Game Mode

One of the other slow aspects of the game is the end-game winning conditions. 

Most of the time, Global Domination is standard. 

This means the game continues until one person has every single territory. 

This mode can take quite a while. 

But there are other faster game modes. 

One is capitols. Each player picks a capital. 

Once someone owns all the capitals, they win! 

Other modes include 70% of the world. This is where once 70% of territories are controlled, a person wins the game. 

This helps prevent stalemates where people build up massive armies and wait each other out. 

There are many variations out there to check out, but these ones will cut the time of the game down quite a bit. 

Related Reading: Can you abandon territories in RISK?

#3 Use The Correct Settings When Playing Online

If you’re playing online through the Hasbro game (featured on ALL platforms) and you watch the pros, you’ll notice how quickly they capture territories and make their moves. 

A huge part of this is the settings they choose. 

For one, they limit turns to 60 seconds. This stops others from taking too much time.

For another, they change their own settings too. 

Turning off the camera animations and turning off the phase-end confirmation will speed the game up too. 

If you play on a PC or another computer, you can even use the ENTER key instead of clicking to confirm attacking options. This really speeds your actions along. 

This doesn’t apply to OTB play, but you can still set a timer for each turn if you wish. 

I’d recommend 5 minutes because it just takes time to move all the pieces. 

#4 Play Progressive Bonus, Not Fixed

I’m a huge fan of Fixed card bonuses. This is where the amount of bonus you get for turning in cards is locked the entire game: 

• 4 for three Infantry cards
• 6 for three Calvary cards
• 8 for three Artillery
• 10 for one of each

Plus, you get 2 bonus armies if you control the territory mentioned on the card turned in. 

It keeps the game from becoming one-sided and really puts an emphasis on the strategy and alliance aspect of the game. 

But it takes significantly longer this way. 

Progressive bonuses don’t care about which cards you turn. Once turned in, you get a bonus, and then the next one gets progressively higher and higher. 

The bonuses increase like this: 

• 4
• 6
• 8
• 10
• 12
• 15
• 20
• 25
• X+5 each time

By the end, you’ll be up in huge army values. 

This means at some point quickly, one person will have the strength to win the game. 

In my experience, this mode ends in 20-40 minutes if playing online and 40-60 minutes if playing OTB with a dice roller. 

It also eliminates the need for continent bonuses for the most part.

Further Reading: The Best Continents In RISK: Breakdown

#5 Speed Up Setup With Auto Placements

Another long part of a RISK game is the setup. 

Traditionally and over the board, each player takes turns placing one army on a territory until all are claimed. 

Then, they place one army at a time, reinforcing owned territories until the required amount has been set. 

This starting amount is different for the number of players in each game: 

# of RISK Players	# of Starting Armies
2*	40
3	35
4	30
5	25
6	20

*RISK for two players also has an additional setup as you’ll need a neutral army too. 

This can take quite a while both online and OTB. 

There are two main ways I speed this up: 

Use Territory Cards For Quick Placement

When OTB, take all the territory cards, removing the wild cards. 

Shuffle the cards and deal them out to each player one at a time. 

Each player looks at their cards and places one army on each territory. 

When done, they turn in their cards. 

Now, they take turns reinforcing one army at a time until the required amount (see chart above) has been placed. 

This speeds up the first part of the game, though the reinforcing is still slow. 

Use Auto-place Through The RISK App/Game

If playing online, the game has an auto-placement option. Most people prefer to play this way as it adds strategy and randomness to the game in the beginning. 

But the OTB doesn’t have this. So here’s what I do: 

1. Open the RISK game on my computer or phone. 
2. Select Pass & Play and turn the manual placement off. 
3. Now, select the correct number of players that you’re playing with OTB. 
4. Start the game on your phone or computer. 
5. Look at how the game is set up and match it to your OTB game. 

This is a very fast way to set up OTB, just like you would in competitive online play through the game. 

Further Reading: How far can you fortify in RISK?