For me, it is risk.

Nothing beats being able to beat your little-i'm-so-good-at-games-sister in your opening turn by taking all the required country's.

I agree with Roo. Monopoly is the best board game ever. I still play it with friends once in w hile, nothing can beat Monopoly + Crates of beer.

Risk is close, I remember playing it once with friends and the game lasted over 6 hours, really intense.

Risk is also quite awesome.  But you have to avoid the dreaded 3-player game.  It always devolves into non-agression pacts, treachery, and the "Why are you 2 ganging up on me?" argument.

Also, you haven't lived until you've played in a Monopoly tournament at GenCon.

That shit doesn't happen if you  live in the middle of nowhere

Well, what version is the best version of Monopoly?

My favorite is Nintendo Monopoly

I had a version as a kid that was a throwback to the original Monpoly sets.  It had heavy brass tokens, and wooden houses and hotels.  Damn, I loved that set.  Hard to beat the classics.

I can't even wrap my mind around this new circular Monopoly board.  WTF?

I think I should be clear I'm not a racist...I just know whats funny.

http://14.media.tumblr.com/YjYsIKh8uolvgmtwhmPyxNv9o1_400.jpg

Arkus, reminds me a bit of Soviet Monopoly

Lolz. Soviet Monopoly, next stop, Nazi Monopoly.

"Go directly to a concetration camp, do not pass Poland do not collect any food"

 Good Lord, what's wrong with you people? Monopoly?!! Risk?!! No disrespect to the rest of the clan...but (well maybe a little disrespect ; -) but come on...

I know Roo just posts such ridiculous things to incite me to rant.

If you haven't started playing eurogames yet...you need to.

Circular Monopoly... why would you need a damn calculator ?

Becuz maths is hard

because the new boards come with crredit cards.

Do those credit cards companies come with their own subversive financial pratices too?

No wonder you need a calculator, what with all the taxes, taxes on taxes, clawbacks and fees.

Monopoly is king indeed, but I've been finding myself appreciating many boardgames recently such as: The Last Night on Earth, Talisman, Arkham Horror, etc...

only board game I'm looking forward to is Castle Ravenloft.

http://wizards.com/dnd/Product.aspx?x=dnd/products/dndacc/207790000

price tag sucks tho

I'll think I stay with classic board games.  Most of the new ones are silly or suck.

Try some of the following:

Puerto Rico, Pandemic, Dominion, Powergrid.

Two votes for Pandemic.  It's one of the few board games where everyone's working together to beat the game.  And it's almost always very close whether you win or not.  Nice balance.

I always liked Clue/Cluedo

How about Kill Doctor Lucky? That's can be hillariously fun with the right crowd

I agree with Young-blood,

for some reason I've always enjoyed Clue, specially if you have another 5 people to play with, Guessing and trying to fool other players is so much fun.

What about Werewolf/Mafia/Assassin?  A group game where you have a killer, an investigator, and everyone else is just a villager.  Someone dies each round and the village agrees to hang someone for it, trying to figure out who the culprit is before he gets everyone.

I like the game, but every time I try to tell the village I'm the investigator and give them info on who the killer is, they always hang me.  I guess I'm not trustworthy or something?

This is really more of a card game,but it kinda plays likea board game, but I really enjoy Munchkin. getting a grroup of freiends over trying to step everyone else from getting to level 10 while getting there yourself. Good times man, good times.

Kneepads of Allure anyone?

I got my Cotion of Ponfusion

I do want to play Munchkin - I saw it played a little at GenCon and it seemed fun.

Boomer, get on this, master of board games!

I love munchkin, so many great moments.  Playing a sex change potion and proudly announcing, "I just made you a woman."  Getting to the end with 5 out of 6 players are level nine clerics and someone plays devine intervention, making 5 people win and one lose.  Its bad enough losing that game, but when you are the only one to lose, that was awesome. 

The board game I've played most of recently is Settlers of Cataan.  That was a lot of fun.  Lots of sheep and wood jokes.  I liked playing clue when I was little.  I used to play a lot of monopoly with my family, but eventually I just lost patience.  I just couldn't sit still for 3 hours haggling over trades and the like. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Tower_%28game%29

who remebers this?

don't skip the youtube ad with Orson Wells

Arkus, I never played that (though it sounds fun).  But how about Omega Virus?  That game seemed like such great times, but I never got 3 other people to play it with me as a kid.  I wish I could find a copy today and bring it to D&D night for a go.

Nifty Roo, Here is one for ya, this was created by some of the peopel that worked on 1st edition D&D, and I kinda know Tom Wham through a nephew of his I know. Tom did some of the art work you'll see in some of the books. The really cheesy cartoony ones are his. You stop seeing his works after second edition came out.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/130/iron-dragon

and

http://www.tomwham.com/

I'm a fan of games that noone seems to have ever heard of. I think my favourites are:

Dust

Zombietown

Race for the Galaxy

Dust deals with wargaming in the second world war when the Germans found a space ship in Antarctica with a surviving pilot and started reverse-engineering all the technology. Now the entire world is at war and its every man or woman for themselves.

Zombietown is a 10-day survival game where you and your neighbours are trapped in your neighbourhood (which happens to have a cemetary in the centre of it). You have to survive, gather supplies, weapons and barricade materials and maybe even save other survivors until the tenth day and help arrive.

Race for the Galaxy is a fun world building game, and I sorta feel like it's similar to Life. You go around the cosmos trying to get the best planets, the best resources and settle the best colonies all of which are represented by cards and when you reach the end the person with the most points wins.

I would have to say Monopoly or Risk for best of all time.  I have to give Fireball Island a nostalgia award though.

Dark Tower was really awesome.

It had a Bazaar you could shop in to build your army and hordes to fight against.

Good times.  I wonder where that tower got off to . . . .

I would buy that game if I had time to play it.

Tommy, good luck finding a tower that works :P

I liked it, but it wasn't $200+ fun . . . .

http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=p3907.m570.l1311&_nkw=dark+tower+game&_sacat=See-All-Categories

Oh, man! I have that version in my game closet right now!

Did it come in a square metal tin? Like, "The 1935 Commemorative Edition" or something? (lol, yes, i went to check.)

ugh, tried to quote Roo, but it didnt work.

the above post was in regaurds to the version of monopoly that Roo had as a kid.

I've recently try to rediscover board games, and found www.boardgamegeek.com which is a great site. I really enjoyed Munchkin and always wanted to play it, but my friends are more interested in computer games, and truth be told, so am I, but I do like to take a timeout every now and again. I'd played Settler's of Catan whilst in the Role-Playing Society at University (good times) and rather enjoyed it, but it was too serious and not "fun" enough for me - also the reason I stopped playing MtG.

I've recently discovered James Rolfe's character skits, Board James as well and that Tornado Rex game looks well fun :D  And I remember playing HeroQuest as a kid too - great game  :)

Monopoly was my favorite growing up.  Now I like to think I have more refined tastes.  So I have to say the best board game is Monopoly: Star Wars Original Trilogy Edition.

Poleconomy.

Poleconomy is like Monopoly but has more options and things to do. New people are not sure about the game until they play it and than they find it more replayable than Monopoly.

Since this is an American site it will never be mentioned since it has only been released in 7 different Editions.

1. New Zealand          
2. Australia
3. Australia (Second Edition)
4. South Africa                
5. Canada                   
6. United Kingdom
7. United kingdom (Second Edition)

*Bold equals the version I play.

There are two gameplay types,

Game 1: "As a Tycoon, you buy and sell some  of Canada's largest companies and advertising media, invests in insurance, buys bonds and makes takeover bids. You face the peril of inflation and commercial disaster. Your profits are taxed."

Game 2 "Introduces the dynamic world of politics." (which we never tried)

The below links are really the only info I can supply and Wikipedia has a link that leads to the tripod site which I already had.

http://poleconomy.tripod.com/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poleconomy

MWM... I love the fact that you bring to mind games that are just so Canadian I never played Poleconomy growing up, but we did own a copy. Another similar kind of Canadian board game was Financial 500. 

You could buy companies and stocks etc. But the realy money came in buy buying up raw materials, fashioning finished goods and shipping them. Best part of that game, was that you could do a hostile takeover of someone elses company.

Very Canadian with the companies though (Defasco, CP Air, National Bank of Canada, Weston foods, etc.)

Sad thing about Poleconomy is you can't buy it anymore, the two copies I own are from second-hand stores but the thing is with open games pieces are bond to be missing (first copy - one player piece and the [Index Marker<--is needed]). The thing with both copies I bought was they were never played, one everything was sorted, the second money/cards were bundled like it was new.

As for older games companies like CP Air and I believe Victor too no longer exist, so ever time someone buy the advertising for them it is mentioned why since they are no longer around.

I should poke at my father, see if he still has his copy I can steal.

I'll take 20

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/02/the-non-video-game-versions-of-tetris-d...

I'll play against you at either one of those, Arkus!

 Glad to find someone else who likes Pandemic. Descent is another good cooperative game, and since the whole thing plays a bit like a D&D dungeon crawl with a board it makes a really good backup plan for a gaming group when players cancel or the GM is feeling burnt out. 

In the Monopoly vs Risk debate that seems to be forming, I have to cast my vote for Risk. Risk: where family game nights and death threats meet :)

Just want to ask, since Scrabble is dear to me, playing with teachers in my elementary school by the time I'm being pushed away by my school mates. :D

Always beats them, well 6 out of 10. And Scrabble helps me to enhance my vocabulary, which is a great plus. I hope I'm not being ridiculous here.

Scrabble is an awesome game.

It's all about vocabulary as well as strategy.

Do you use the long word to set yourself up for more options later or do you use the short word to screw your opponent out of a scoring opportunity?

Descent is great! I heard the expansion pack was amazing, have you tried it out yet, Lichida?

I haven't had a chance to try the expansion pack, but what I've seen of it looks pretty impressive. Seems like it adds a lot of new gameplay elements.