I played it many times, I had a copy at home for a while, but having grown up on real board games from Avalon Hill, I viewed Axis and Allies as being more entertaining than Risk, but basically the same thing. You couldn't really even apply real-world strategy consistently. But it was good clean fun with pizza and beer. And the best thing was you could teach someone else how to play in 15 minutes.
"A bad plan is still better than no plan at all." -- Mikhail Tal