I used to play Risk, but once I got hooked on A&A I never went back- A&A is a more involved but also more satifying, IMHO. The consequence to this was I pretty muched stopped playing these games all together since it gets hard to find people who like A&A.

I'll have to check out the LOTR version of Risk, though. The group my wife and I play games with might be willing to try that out, even if they wouldn't be into the regular version of Risk.