I was drawn to this site looking for Risk, so this was the first board I played here. I took a break from the WGW board for a few months in my first year here, and then came back to it with a new understanding of how to play it. Patience is compensated sometimes, but risk is also compensated, again, sometimes. And you never know what lady luck is going to say to your plans.
A key component in games with a large number of players is how you plan your eliminations, or avoid being eliminated in order to land the crucial blow, you have to plan out your strategy very well, which includes slowly building up your deck of cards for a timely trade, and being strategic about what territories your control. For these games, continent bonuses are less important than card bonuses.
In games with a small number of players, luck of initial placement and dice plays into these a lot more than games with many players.
Risk, like you remember it, but without all the time wasted in board setup and math. Would be nice to have a territory grab at the start though, instead of the random assigning.