Hegemonic, Nations, World at War, and I dare add twilight imperium (in my case 3rd edition). I don't think you would consider it a board game in the purest sense, but Fading suns (the RPG) is grand.

Hegemonic is a game set in space where you spread out, build up your economy and then start to forge alliances and wreck stuff. It's very pleasant and rewarding to people who like to think their moves out as there is no need for any dices. I've seen it being considered as a 4x game, but too my usual group it's more of wargame-typish something.

Nations; It's kind of a through the ages for people who can't handle through the ages. You play primarily with cards and "worker" pieces, to build up your very own civilization throughout history. Rather pleasant, and a welcome alternative to it's counterpart in my collection, Civilization by FFG (counterpart in setting that is).

World at War is, next to space empires (if you want to see it as such), the only hex and counter wargame in my collection, and it's very fun for a scenario or 2 to break the routine. Nato, USA and the soviets slugging it out with a comprehensive decent ruleset.

And twilight imperium is great if you just want to waste many hours bickering with friends over trade pacts, aliances, political support and military actions. But as said, MANY hours. Certainly not a game to pull of the shelf every week ;)

Fading suns is set in a dark ages-science fiction-dune like setting, replete with noble houses, repressed peasants, church sects, guilds and aliens. And space ships. And jumpgates. And huge monstrosities in interstellar space. Combas is smooth with a bit of good will from the players, and there are plenty of opportunities for stories and adventures.

links:

Hegemonic:
http://www.miniongames.com/store/hegemonic.html

Nations:
http://www.lautapelit.fi/Nations

World at War:
http://lnlpublishing.com/blood-and-bridges-world-at-war-game

Twilight Imperium 3rd ed.
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/twilight-imperium-3rd-edition/

Fading suns:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fading_Suns

All of the Arkham games have been great. I can't name them all, but some folks above me mentioned some of them.

My favorite vs. strategy game is Civilization (I have the large world version, not the multiple cards-to-flip version).

I love just about every players vs the board games, including:
- forbidden desert/island
- D&D games (wrath of a dragon one, the ravenloft one and the drizzt one)


There's lots of board games out there. I used to live near a store that rented them out. It'd be nice to be back there. :)

Axis and Allies, awesome game.

Dominion
Someone else mentioned it, and it's tons of fun. Every game is very different and strategic, but it can go very quickly so it doesn't get boring. I've only just started playing it but absolutely adore it.

King of Tokyo
Another game that requires a bit of strategy, and the games go very quickly. It's incredibly easy to pick up on, too, and my children (aged under 9 years) absolutely love it. I took a gamble on it because I remembered how much people gushed about it; I'm very glad I did.

I have to second King of Tokyo! We just picked it up to play with the cousins this past week and now they're going to buy their own copy. Can't wait to try it with my niece and nephew, aged 10 and 8, and see if they like it as much as us grown ups.

Playing Munchkin with friends is the best way to lose them.

PS: Is a great game anyway. =D

Arkham Horror Me and my wife play a lot of Arkham Horror. Bought two expansions so far, I'd call it pen and paper RPG-lite (yes, in spite of it not being a PnP RPG at all). A board game entirely based around constructing a new and unique story with each and every playtrough and an added layer of strategy to vastly increase your chances of winning? Hell yeah. I also love cooperative games where you play against the game, Arkham Horror is quite genious when it comes to escalation of threat. My only issue is that we got so good at it we win 8/10 games :-P

Dominion Every time we want a game which won't take the entire evening to finish, we play Dominion. It's one of the best card games I've ever played, infinitely variable, fast and offering a good amount of ways to reach victory.

I'm not a huge fan of Carcassonne, and we actually do have the base game and most of its expansions - used to love it, but then I got my dirty paws on stuff like Arkham and thought "Eh... It's not that good." My biggest issue with it was its extremely random-based nature, and I always felt it's quite light on strategy. Then again, it does have a decent amount of planning involved, and finishing a massive landscape is so satisfying. Nonetheless, recently I bought Civilization, which has a very neat mechanic reminding me of Carcassonne in form of constructing a new map out of random tiles each game - part of the game is actual exploration where you place 6 random map pieces face down next to each other (nobody knows what's actually on them) and after the map is explored, it generates unique opportunities for players each game. Really good, very slow turn time tho.

Currently I'm eyeing the new XCOM board game, merging an app randomly generating situations for you to deal with together with your coop partners and a cardboard board game, and merging them extremely well.

Thanks LOL ;) I'll probably put up my options and where I'm torn a bit later then!

I took a quick look at the rules (I'm an unabashed fanboy of Fantasy Flight so if something is just mildly interesting to me I'll give it a perusal) - the game looks HARD! I'm guessing the upgrades could make it a bit easier but just from the videos I've seen it seems like early game the players are extremely pressed for resources.

Also, to all those that mentioned Survive! (tile board game of sharks and meeples and boats) - wow did I love that game. Played it from childhood all the way up to college LOL. Ton of fun, and even people who weren't fans of boardgames seemed to have a blast with it.

You do that thing.

Yup, that's what I like about it, + it quite simply looks different from most games that I have ever played with the time limits and everything. When you start playing it (the app is actually free and describes the rules further), you may actually pick a difficulty, which is another thing I quite like. And when it comes to difficulty itself - we kept getting out arses kicked when we started playing Arkham Horror and, in time, we have learned to play the game. Sure, some Ancient Ones are significantly more difficult than others, still, it's all about experience and being able to gauge what do you need to do next - the game is surprisingly not luck-based.

I suspect it'll be similar to XCOM, in time we'll be capable of producing more reliable results. But, you know, we'll see.

Twilight Imperium (3rd ed) is one of my favorites. Yes, it is easily an all day event, but I enjoy the multi-tier strategy.

Several friends and I have enjoyed Fading Suns on and off over the years as well, though it is more like D&D than a board game.

Dominion, Settlers of Catan, Resistance, and Arkham Horror are others I've really enjoyed. Heck, a lot of the ones mentioned here have been fun.

Coop is one that hasn't been mentioned yet. Everyone gets two character cards and tries to be the last person with a card left. It plays very quickly and is very much about players trying to figure out who is lying about whether they have what they say they have.

Love Letter is another good one that plays quickly.

And then there is Dungeon Lords, aka Dungeon Keeper: the Board Game. Long to learn and play, but with the same kind of humor to it. There is also very little chance in this game; most things are determined by player choices and out guessing each other.

Edit: Coup, not Coop! I thought that looked funny. :-/

At the moment I mostly play solo

Cards of Cthulhu

Dungeon of D (print and play)

Inception (print and play)

If I get the chance I like Last Night on Earth with the family

You know, I would actually be interested in the game if it wasn't for the fact that it needed some smart phone or computer to properly play. What's the point of playing board games then? Same reason why I've always avoided those games that require audio cds or dvds (the latter being almost always crap anyway).

Not to mention one can expect that eventually the app may become too outdated to work on whatever is current tech. At that point, the whole board game will become broken due to reliance on this mechanic.

Fortune and Glory for coop.
Smallworld for VS.

(Though really any of the Flying Frog games except Shadows of Brimstone...)

I've actually played a game which required audio CD (well, a bunch of MP3s actually) with a friend, called Space Alert. It was quite fantastic - completely different from all other board games I've ever played, but also completely different from all computer games. The only thing I felt sorry about was that the MP3s were static - while the boardgame mechanics themselves ensured some randomization, a lot of the game's skill ceiling was dependent on you knowing what something will go there at that point. XCOM fixes this issue quite nicely, and adds other mechanics which I like, with nice thematization. And it includes the app into the social aspect of the gameplay as well, since it's not voiced in any fashion - so one player needs to efficiently pass information within the time limits (and react accordingly) and other players need to react accordingly. The neat thing about an app is, again, the fact that time limits can change dynamically based on how many players play the game.

Yup. It's a shame, but it won't take the fun we might have with the game away, and I see no reason to avoid unique boardgame mechanics just because it'll stop working eventually. When that happens, we've got a ton of other board games to play, and if we play it a decent amount of time, it'll be worth the price paid.