Holy crap! Okay, that's crazy expensive.

Fury of Dracula is great, but it really needs a few people. And it's currently out of print, so good luck finding it.

I totally second suggestions for King of Tokyo (but this is more fun the more people you can get in to it) and Space Hulk : Death Angel (which works with any #, and as a solo game).

And if you're okay with absolute randomness and smack talking your buddy when he gets screwed, Talisman is definitely a game you'll dig. :)

Thankfully, it got Polish edition not so long ago, so it's rather easy to get in Poland, in Polish :-)

I was the founder of a board game group a few years ago. I will offer some advice:

1) Research all purchases thoroughly. Make sure your fellow gamers are as interested in a game as you.
2) Play each game at least 10-15 times before buying a new one. It is good to start with 3 games or so if possible, for variety.
3) I highly recommend Power Grid, Carcassone, Puerto Rico, and Pandemic.
And also, do your research on Zombies! it is a bit of a cashin on the fad. You would be better off with Last Night on Earth.

I highly recommend naked Twister. That is the only game I can get anyone else interested in. Soon I will try introducing them to naked Magic: The Gathering.

Oh, also, Dominion is FANTASTIC.
See, we were all about the no-chance games such as Caylus, Imperial, Chicago Express, and Puerto Rico (almost no chance), where anything you gained, you earned.
Also, board gaming should be about playing, not owning, games. Try to join a group where you will get to try many different games before buying any. If you have to buy them yourself, read a lot of reviews, watch video reviews, and as I said previously, make sure you play each game 10-15 times before buying another.\

Like digital distributed video games, the vast majority of board game fans collect more than they play. Board games also take up a LOT of space. Very few games go out of print by the main publishers, so there is no incentive to buy a game that you won't get to right away.
Also, citadels is a decent little cheap game that works nicely as an entry point, but NEVER play it with more than 4 people. NEVER.

btw. I played Talisman Prologue demo and it really plays like monopoly... I know this game is dumbed down, because it's single player only (sic!), but I don't see much space for player interaction here...
Thank you, I will think of that. But if you see the price of that game in Poland and the price of expansions (like 25 EUR for 4 additional characters? WTF?!), you would think about Zombies!!! too :P

Fortune and Glory is an AWESOME board game, if you've got the stamina for it.. 2 hours is a REALLY short game, 4 hours is easy, 6 hours is doable. I shit you not. Aside from being long, it's gigantic and can be very off-putting for less veteran gamers who will initially find it far more complex than it actually is. The biggest downfall of this game is it's $100 pricetag.
Co-operative or competitive, 1 to 8 players
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/95103/fortune-and-glory-the-cliffhanger-game

Forbidden Island.. well it's a game just like my girlfriend.. fast, fun and easy. ;) Unlike my girlfriend, it's also pretty cheap. at around $20.
co-op, 1-4 players.
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/65244/forbidden-island

Incursion is pretty epic if you like strategic squad-driven combat. It's got some complexities, but it's pretty simple for a veteran gamer to understand too. Not overly well balanced though I have to say. Can fall pretty much anywhere in the time to play scale. Middling pricerange at about $60 new, there's an expansion for it as well, which adds some new gameplay options.
Competitive, 2 players. (SNAFU adds co-op and makes it IIRC 1-3 players)
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40603/incursion

Settlers of Catan is a widely popular economic strategy game. Pretty easy to pick up, not overly off-putting to newbie gamers. Middle of the road length of game, and fairly inexpensive at $35 or so. There's also lots of expansions for it.
Competitive, 2-4 players (expansions can add more).
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13/the-settlers-of-catan

While technically a card game, Poo is great fun. It's a good travel game. It's highly immature, you're monkey flinging poo at eachother!, super easy to play, pretty quick to play- it looks like it's a little pricey these days though? Maybe not being produced anymore.
Competitive, 2+ players.. the more the better.
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/60579/poo-the-card-game

And also a card game, I would be remiss if I did not mention Munchkin.
If you enjoy goofshit humor, making fun of genre stereotypes, and having a giant pile of insane loot.. Munchkin is the game for you. It's easy to play, anyone can pick it up. Games can be very fast or very long, depending on players and playstyle.. and it's sure to create a lot of laughs and mayhem. While the base game runs about $20, there are more expansions and versions than you can shake a stick at, easily allowing you to spend several hundred on it if you want.
Competetive, 2+ players (3-6 is best)
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1927/munchkin

Please read some reviews of Zombies, and if you decide to go with it, just get the base game, and play 10-15 games of it before buying any expansions. The game has a dubious reputation.

Here, a top-quality board game is the cost of two moderately priced dinners at a restaurant. Or the price of 5% of my monthly rent. Or the price of around 2%of my two-week paycheck.

Not sure how it works out for you, but that seems neither cheap nor expensive to me.

If you have people you game with regularly it isn't so bad though. You don't need to buy them all, only the ones YOU really love or YOU want to try. It's possible to do a lot of research and learning on boardgamegeek, and hopefully you can try a lot of them out from other people's copies.

Essentially you should be buying around 20-25% of the games you actually play, which makes them seem a lot more affordable.

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If you can figure out the crazy interface of Brettspielwelt you can even try many popular games without leaving your computer. The feel is quite changed online but you can get a sense of the play, roughly.

Your recommendations for games are good although I would add Stoneage, Thurn and Taxis and Ticket To Ride as well.

With regards to point 2 you can play them online multiplayer free - http://www.brettspielwelt.de/?nation=en

Download the java client for a better experience.

James :-)

Yes, good call.

These bore me to death. Puerto Rico or Caylus were fun for a while, then meh. I like dealing with events which change the situation. Also I prefer cooperative games.

Not pro gamers in general, though randomness vs. no randomness games is the reason of many arguments amongst boardgamers.

I second Dominion (the first deckbuilding game, and arguably still one of the best ones) and Seven Wonders (a card game with a unique drafting mechanic, where you pass along your hand every turn). Though Seven Wonders really only starts being great at 3+ players, with two it's just ok. Another one you might like is Smallworld/Smallworld Underground. A strategy game, a little tiny bit like risk, but then with actual fun included.

If you think the people you are going to play with might enjoy co-operative games, consider Sentinels of the Multiverse. It's a co-operative fixed deck superhero card game, where you can battle a variety of automated villains. Awesome, and no too hard.

if you can handle losing from the game a lot, Pandemic and Ghost Stories are two of the big ones in the co-op field, might also be worth checking out.

If you feel like something with a Magic vibe, you could consider Netrunner. The game is amazing, but to be honest the Living Card Game scheme (you buy small expansion packs with known new cards, instead of boosters with random cards) is only slightly less exploitative than collectible card games. I'm firmly caught in its web, at least for the first cycle of `data packs', but I can't recommend it without a warning ;)

I give it some thought guys and I really, really think that two games caught my interest real hard (except those I already mentioned)

Battlestar Galactica, recommended by fellowe GOGger - I've read couple reviews, seen some, they all say it's one of the best games avaible. I really like the cooperation + hidden traitors mechanics, I haven't heard of anything executed this well in any other game before.

Ghost stories - very cool cooperation game, similar to Arkham Horror but cheaper and not that impossible to win :P

Although, I don't know if I am going to buy them anytime soon. Responidng to one of your questions, spending 150-200 PLN on a board game is like 10% of a salary. Looking from my budget's perspective I would have to save 2 months to buy one game like that. So first, I must be really sure I will have people to play with :P

For some games, it's cheaper to buy them from Amazon.com, though, but I am afraid of intercontinental shipping of such things - too many things to break, bend and destroy on a way...

Oh yeah, that's a very good suggestion that I forgot about. You can try a lot of the so called Euro games on Brettspielwelt online for free (e.g. Carcassonne, Thurn & Taxis, Dominion), maybe even find people willing to explain the rules to you while playing, if you don't like to look them up yourself. While it's a German website, I think there are quite a few international and/or English speaking people around, and you don't need an account to play, you can just log in as a guest. With a little bit of organization, you might even be able to arrange a game session with GOG members. ;)