I love Risk. Not everyone does. But for Risk lovers and haters alike, here are two of my favorite strategies to guarantee success.

Strategy One:

1. Talk up a really big game. I LOVE RISK. IT’S THE BEST GAME OF ALL TIME. AND I AM THE GREATEST. Employ liberal amounts of bravado and swagger. Get everyone full of frustration and angst before you’ve even decided who’s got which countries.
2. Unlike most any other Risk strategy guide out there: Put your armies down anywhere you want. Doesn’t matter where.
3. Continue to berate relentlessly. Attack everyone on your first turn at least once.
4. Everyone takes turns attacking you and wipes you out. The fun in Risk pretty much all occurs in the first four rounds, anyway. Now your enemies are stuck dealing with this goddamn game for like the next seventeen hours.
5. Go watch something cool on TV. You win!

Strategy Two:

1. Similar to Step 2 last time, pick whichever countries you want. It doesn’t really matter. You’re pretty much guaranteed to end up with at least one Asian country. But generally, for this strategy, it’s most fun if you proactively pick up an Asian country that has a silly name like Irkutsk.
2. Once you’ve settled on your countries, dump your entire starting military into Irkutsk. Given 4-6 nations, this should net you a starting Irkutskian military of between 14 and 20 soldiers.
3. Never attack anyone the entire game. You’ll invariably fold every fringe country in your command. You still get a minimum of three new soldiers every turn; put them all in Irkutsk. Never swap out for horses or cannons—make your single country overflow with humanity.
4. Since you’re in Asia, your stronghold generally has absolutely no strategic importance. Since you never attack, you never gain any risk cards—so there’s no real benefit for any other player to try and eliminate you.
5. Also, since you never attack, you never really have to pay attention. Go watch something cool on TV.
6. Eventually everyone knocks each other out until you’re the only other nation left to defeat. Congratulations! You came in 2nd place!