Hey - welcome to WarGear - I saw your note in the Ximer game - The fun/challenge of WarGear is that there are scores of boards each with slight tweaks to the basic RISK rules. Knowing how to take advantage of each variation and how they interact with each other takes time and puzzling out. I've been a member for almost 10 years and in the beginning we discussed on the Message boards strategy alot more than we do now - and that was certainly very helpful for me to get the hang of things. http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/685/4_things_I_have_learned The game we were playing has capitols and a hordes bonus - both are tough to deal with -