When comparing Risk vs Caverna: The Cave Farmers, the Slant community recommends Risk for most people. In the question“What are the best board games?” Risk is ranked 51st while Caverna: The Cave Farmers is ranked 58th. The most important reason people chose Risk is:
Let's you develop a strategy and forces you to think a few steps ahead playing off the moves of others. Also allows you to develop alliances and enemies which allows for fun banter.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Strategy game
Let's you develop a strategy and forces you to think a few steps ahead playing off the moves of others.
Also allows you to develop alliances and enemies which allows for fun banter.
Pro Very deep strategic opportunities
With all of the available action spaces and 48 unique rooms you can build in your cave, the many options for developing your strategy and trying to score points allows for a wide variety of effective strategies and encourge long term strategic planning.
Pro Basic gameplay is simple at it's core
On a players turn they take one of their dwarves and place it on an available action space to take that action, then play moves to the next player in turn order. This makes the main gameplay very simple to explain.
Pro Fantastic components
From the thick player boards and cave tiles to the over 300 chunky, wooden resources, all of Caverna's resources are top-notch.
Cons
Con Easily snowballs
Leaders in the game generally keep winning and losers in the game generally keep losing. It's difficult to stop the snowballing.
Con Too many actions can cause players to have analysis paralysis
Caverna features a large central board that can contain up to 27 spots to place your dwarves and take an action and with so many choices available some players might end up taking a long time to decide between them.
Con Higher player counts can lead to long games
The official play time is listed as 30 min / player, but can run even longer if you play with 5 or more players.
Con A bunch of components make the game a bit fiddly
With over 300+ wooden resources, 60+ acrylic nuggers, and 400+ cardboard pieces Caverna has a lot of pieces to manage as you play the game and as a result it can be a troublesome to manage all of those over the course of a game.