I noticed that people are going back at this type of games, and I can see it why. It's an awesome excuse to invite some friends to your house, setup a game, get a few drinks and just play, talk and have some fun.
You can't do this with videogames.
Also, you'de be amazed at how much a good strategy boarding game can reveal of someone's personality.
There are a couple of things that make these games so good. Firstly, they're extremely well balanced - unlike Monopoly, it's rare for one player to pull ahead to the point that it's impossible for anyone else to catch up with them.
Secondly, they tend to come to an inevitable conclusion - a game of Settlers will virtually never last more than an hour and a half due to resources / space on the board depleting over time. I've had games of Monopoly last 6 hours or more, by which time everyone is fed up and wishes they'd never started playing.
So yeah, I've mentioned San Juan; Citadels is similar and conveniently is playable for 2-8. If you're a group of programmers then Roborally is fantastic (just ignore the life tokens).
You score points if you complete the route. You subtract tat route's points if you do not complete the route.
Thus, taking extra cards is a gamble - do you gain 12 points for completing a route or lose 12 points for not completing a route?
In playing with 3 or more people, the way to deal with a front-runner is for other players to deal their way into also competing.
I had super-long games of Monopoly as a kid lasting multiple nights, but it was because we were doing stupid house rules, like rewarding people for landing on Free Parking, keeping the money supply way too high.
I'm not holding up Monopoly as the greatest game ever; "technology" has improved and board games should as well. (Here's one rule change to speed up end-game: after all properties are bought, cut the $200 salary to $100.) But a lot of the abuse it gets is undeserved, so I feel compelled to defend it.
Also, Jungle Speed, Cockroach Salad, Halli Galli are pretty fun speed games. Tokyo Train is a classic for four people as well.
Also, LAN parties :).
Depends on your boardgames. Some can be rather vicious, and since people usually take longer to think about their actions, backstabbing and then turning the dagger, is even more fun and meaningful. (But I guess, I like the American dinosaur of a game, Diplomacy, way too much.)
If you're a fan, then I'm actually running a series of games at the moment on the DPPD judge (http://www.floc.net/dpjudge/) - if you look at http://www.diplom.org/openings/openings.html#USDP for openings on the judge they're the vole_xxx games.
I agree, and I was pretty involved with the pbem hobby for a few years now. At the moment, I just moved to Singapore and am still settling in. I've mostly played the 1900 variant recently, and even introduced the Cambridge University Diplomacy Society to that variant and made it their mainstay.
1900 is a definite improvement over standard.
I prefer pbem over ftf, but ftf is a good pastime in its own right.
Pandemic is excellent (Forbidden Island is more light if your kids are younger), Ghost Stories and Arkham Horror for the more mature crowd.
7 Wonders and Stone Age are also fantastic "gateway games".