Here's an idea

[jrb14]

An update to my last post, after a brainstorming session to develop some more rules to smooth out this variant.

At the start of the game, each player chooses one of the six Risk factions (mentioned previously) as well as one of the FANG Heroes. A player controls both their armies and their hero; each hero is considered to have been hired by their respective faction to hunt down rare and powerful artifacts to assist in the war effort.

Heroes operate as normal, moving about the board and going on adventures. This variant effectively adds another Phase to the game, between the Initiative Phase and the Move Phase: the War Phase.

The War Phase essentially consists of 1 turn in a game of Risk; each faction acquires reinforcements, attacks other factions to capture new territories, and then fortifies their position.

But, one of our variant rules is that armies may capture and occupy Cities, just like they would any other territories. Cities begin the game unoccupied; an unoccupied City may be captured simply by moving one or more armies into the City during the attack step of the War Phase.

Once captured, a City may not be abandoned. Just like with normal land territories, at least 1 army must remain in the City, unless it is captured by an opposing force.

In our rules, no more than 5 armies may occupy any major City at a given time, and no more than 3 may occupy a minor City.

Here's where the real fun stuff comes in, though.

Let's say a player wants to capture a City that happens to be controlled by the Mob (or a card is drawn that would send Mob henchmen to occupy a City that the player's armies have already seized). Basically, in such a case, Mobsters must fight Soldiers.

If the player is attacking a Mob-controlled city, their attacking armies must defeat one Mob henchman to drive out the mob and take over the city. This is done by using the Mob henchmen and Nazi Soldiers reference cards; it is assumed that each Army has the same stats as a Nazi Soldier.

The player may send as many of their available armies to attack the mob-controlled city as they wish. For every 3 wounds inflicted by the Mobsters, the player loses one of their Armies, and it is removed from the board. The Mobsters are not defeated until they have sustained the requisite 4 wounds.

Regardless of the number of attacking Armies, the player only ever rolls 4 Fight Dice in this case (unless otherwise specified); the Mob effectively fights one Army at a time, as the entrance to the City is assumed to form a bottleneck of sorts.

By the same token, if a Mob henchmen figure is to be placed in an occupied City, the Mob is considered to be attacking the City, and the Mobsters must defeat each defending Army in the City in order to gain control. If the defending Army (using the Nazi Soldier stats) defeats the Mob, simply remove the henchmen figure from play; the Mob fails to take over the City.

More on this (and related topics) later. If interested, please feel free to give constructive criticism or share your own ideas.