From the piece:
Luke McKinney wrote:Risk is worse for family game night than incest. It simulates all the boredom and relentless repetition of trench warfare, but at least people really dying on the Eastern Front wished they were home with their beloved family. You are home, and now you hate the bastards.
The worst part of Risk is victory by excruciation. A well-designed game has tactics and skill building to a climax, a thrilling race to victory, and when someone has clearly won, it's because the game is over. In Risk, someone can win hours before it ends, and they will not let you just admit it and leave. They spent hours carefully planning this victory, and by God you are going to sit there and patiently lose for just as many hours so that they can enjoy it properly. They've turned having fun into a zero-sum game.
This is the same psychopath who can be in control of two-thirds of the entire world and still whinge about how unfair it is that people are ganging up on them. The one who insists that there are more tactics than "Take Australia and try not to succumb to dice-rolling repetitive strain injury."
Most of this is pretty spot on. =)
Again from the article:
What You Should Play Instead: Settlers of Catan
Sounds good to me!