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I went over to my buddy Mario's house the other day and he and two other friends of mine, Chris and Shawn were just sitting down to play Risk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_%28game%29).
They asked me if I wanted to join the game, so I did.
I hadn't played Risk in years so I had to quickly read up on the rules, which aren't that hard to get the hang of.

(http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/9568/b00000iwcx01aipkl3ki5k5ar4.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)

Boy, did we get our butts kicked by Chris!
He schooled all three of us and I was the first to lose.   :bluesad:
Even though I lost, it was an intense game and was pretty fun!
It was the first board game I'd played in over a year. 
(I last played Monopoly before that during a get together at a friend's house)
 

The list is kind of long, but then again there are a lot of board games out there to choose from.
I tried to narrow down the list to the top games that most of us have played at one time or another.
You may vote for your top 2 favorite games.  (vote changing is allowed)

I voted for Battleship and Trivial Pursuit.
I always seem to win at Battleship and the loads of useless trivia stored in my brain is great for Trivial Pursuit.

What's your favorite board game?

Hahah I'm in the same boat - I've been playing a lot of Mission Risk with some old friends and been getting my butt handed to me, yet it was still pretty fun.  We like Mission Risk better than global domination simply because it takes about 3 days less time lol (about an hour per game usually).  And I really like the new Mission Risk better where you get 4 missions of increasing difficulty rather than the old Mission Risk where you just had one (usually) hard mission to tackle.

We alter the rules just slightly though so that we get extra troops for completing a misison (1-4 depending on the difficulty).

Taboo is easily our favorite.  I like playing Risk and Axis and Allies as well.  For some reason, my nephews always beat my us at Life, which is insulting since one is 13 and the other is 11.

Straight from the Random Thoughts, my Taboo story (I still take flak over what Todd and Bill guessed about Katie):

We spent a few days down at the beach with friends who had rented a house for a week. There were five children (ages three and under), so things were chaotic until all of them were in bed. After the kids were down, we would have time to talk, watch a movie, or play games. One night we played Taboo.

When playing Taboo you have two teams, a one minute timer, and cards. At the top of each card is the word that you, as the clue-giver, must get your team to say. Under it is a list of words you may not use as hints, else you get buzzed (a member of the other team sits by your shoulder, like some sort of twisted conscience) and the other team gets the point for the word. You have sixty seconds, every word that your team manages to guess is a point, but every word that you are buzzed or pass is a point for the opposing team.

Well, this is a fun game to play with adults who are drinking, especially when the teams are guys vs. gals. There were a couple that Bill and I pulled off that caused a roar of, "What the Hell?" from the women. For example: Bill says, "It lives in the ocean." Andrew shouts, "Octopus!" to which Bill screams, "Yes!" That sort of thing causes some serious angst.

However, possibly the funniest parts happened when I was the clue-giver. One round, and I think it was the first word I drew, I had to get them to say "Banker." Katie spent many years as a bank teller for Bank of America and Commerce Bank, so I offered, "This is what Katie used to do." Bill and Todd immediately yell, "Hooker!" (In perfect stereo.) At which point everyone collapses in laughter. I gave up trying to get them to guess the actual word, because they could not stop laughing. Oh and, for some reason, I was blamed for the two nincompoops calling my wife a hooker. Still trying to figure out how I was culpable.

Another round I needed to get my team to guess the word "Bran." I quickly hinted "you might add this to your early morning meal as roughage." and when they started guessing "cream of wheat" and "oatmeal" I continued giving clues. Finally, in desperation (because, this was taking far too long for "Bran") I sung a hint. It went like this, "I something, I something so far away." Bill immediately gets, "Ran?" but stops there, completely stuck. My wife, ready to buzz me, just starts laughing. When the time ran out, all I could do was snarl between clenched teeth, "Why are you so STUPID?" Which only made everyone laugh harder.

In my defense, "I bran, I bran so far away..." makes perfect sense at 1:00 AM, after a liberal application of Jack Daniels.

What I wouldn't give to have a copy once again of my beloved "Tarzan to the Rescue" game:

(http://s3.amazonaws.com/boardgamegeek/images/pic119229.jpg)

I went with Candyland. It was my favorite Childhood games. I've played Risk, Life and such over my friends house but never really go into them.

I like a lot of games you don't have listed, though many of them are not so popular that they need to be on your list. Out of what you have listed, I would choose Sorry! and Axis and Allies. Sorry! was a favorite of mine growing up and probably spawned my interest in games. I played the original paperboard Axis and Allies when it was first published as a bookshelf game (paperboard and punch out cardboard counters).

Other games I like:

Decline and Fall: An ancients strategic game of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. I liked playing the Huns. Mobility was the key with the Huns. The weakness though was a lack of seamanship. If I could have gotten some vessels, I could have invaded Constantinople and hit the Romans hard. The Huns built strength, as any other player, by taking out opposing units. I used the Goths like cattle; I would let them build up, then go womp on them when I needed to build units. The game overall does favor the Romans, but then, so did history. The Roman player starts out as a united front, but then the empire splits, opening the opportunity for a second Roman player, or a headache of bookwork for a single Roman player.

Image: Originally published by 3M (I like collecting their old bookshelf games) the bought by Avalon Hill and shelved for years, then republished as a card only version. Though mostly a card game, it uses a board for organization, and the board places limitations on the players forcing competition which is lacking in the card only version. It is basically an historical personalities game where players build up runs of cards representing time period, occupation, fictional or not, initials, etc. The idea being to have a person in mind, real or fictional, and build a run of cards representing this person, thus scoring points when you name them. The competition is brought about by others being able to play on your run of cards, thus totally throwing off your game if it messes up your personality. The longer the run, the more points you get, but the more risk it is in as well.

Under Cover; Hare and Tortoise; and other Ravensburger games: Ravensburger is a German company which makes some pretty fun games. Chief among them, for me, are Under Cover and Hare and Tortoise. Under Cover is a race around the board style game where each player has several pieces and there is a hidden secret file they must find. Hare and Tortoise initially looks like a children's game, somewhat based on Pachisi, but adds layers of luck and strategy which can even be cut-throat if the players get that competitive.

Civilization: To list all of the Avalon Hill board games I like would be ridiculous, but the one that probably stands out the most for me is Civilization. It is a game of the cradle of civilization where players build their civilizations, advancing in their abilities historically. Alas, though, as civilizations advance and expand, competition and conflict will arise and players will vie for land and power.

Kingmaker: Kingmaker is another Avalon Hill favorite where players vie for control of England in the War of the Roses. The game can become quite cut-throat as players try to gain control of an heir to have crowned as the monarch of England. There is a dose of irony as I have seen a player with strong defences get his heir to the town to be crowned, but fate would have it and the town he was in was hit with plague on the draw of an event card, effectively wiping out his forces.

Dawn of the Dead: Yes, there was a board game based on the movie which was published by SPI. It is a paperboard bookshelf (narrow box) game with cardboard punchout counters. It uses the clearing of the mall as its primary scenario and can be played solo or as group game. It is just a fun little game that does a pretty good job of capturing some of the flavor (no pun intended :tongueout:) of the movie. It is extremely rare.

Cosmic Encounter: Just too much fun packed into one game. If I get a group together and we start this game, we are likely to be playing several games for hours. I started with the original Eon games release and went through the different publications, each adding more to the already growing set. Each player is an alien force with a special power determined by the alien they are playing (they are often just called powers rather than aliens). Some of the powers can contradict or neutralize each other, while others don't come into play until you have forgotten that they can be used that way. The object is to gain control of five planets in neighboring star systems, and by whatever means necessary. This is just too much fun. We also would play with two powers, allowing players to combine them.


There are more I could list, but, being that I have played and collected so many games, a lot of them come down to an occasional play. What I have listed is games which stand out for me and have had repeated play.

I considered adding Civilization to the list but decided against it because I thought no one here would have ever heard of it.
I should've known better.  :wink:

I played this a few times.  Pretty fun game.

I have a brain cloud today so I picked Clue and Yahtzee. It depends on the mood I'm in. I also like Risk for the long game experience and Monopoly. But then again I like Aggravation and Scrabble. Come to think about it, I really enjoyed Mouse Trap, but the problem with that is that my daughter and I would be impatient and set the whole thing up before we were supposed to.
When was Aggravation put on the market? My grandfather used to tell us he was the one who invented it, he even gave us one when we were kids, the board was made out of wood and he drilled holes in it, the marbles were the catseye type. Well this brought back a wonderful memory.    :teddyr:

RISK! I like Chesse to. But when it comes down to games in general...poker!!!!! For $$$$$! ( Not too much $,cuz I am as a rule,broke).

Whe I was a kid I LOVED PayDay.  Pity my Dad didn';t but he still played with me....Over and over and over 
My favorite games as an adult are Scrable and Trivial Pursuit.
-Ed

Voted for RISK, which I usuallly won in my younger days, and SCRABBLE.

This one would be my current favorite, Conquest of the Empire:
(http://www.armchairempire.com/images/miscellaneous/conquest-empire/conquest-of-the-empire-box.jpg)

My favorite during my teen years, Dark Tower:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/01/Dark_tower_assembled2.jpg/400px-Dark_tower_assembled2.jpg)

And my favorite as a kid, Bigfoot:
(http://www.bigfootforums.com/uploads/post-751-1158641524_thumb.jpg)

Here you go ....

Tarzan to the Rescue (http://cgi.ebay.com/TARZAN-TO-THE-RESCUE-BOARD-GAME-UNOPEN-MILTON-BRADLEY_W0QQitemZ190078389726QQihZ009QQcategoryZ1178QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)

Wow!  unopened even!

Hey, Shadowfyre, I wonder if one could still get Dark Tower. That would be cool , I would get it. My dad said it is an awesome game, he used to play when he was a kid.

Anyways, I tried to play Risk with my dad, and we read over the rules, but there was one little part we couldnt exactly agree on or figure out. Something about what a "group" or "platoon" or whatever, of men counted as. So be start debating over it, and a couple interesting things that came up were  "What are you supposed to do?! Melt the men together?!" and "When Hitler moved around his men pieces on his board when he was at war, he didn't say "Here's one GROUP of men" he said....." Heh, we never ended up playing, because we couldnt figure out that one part. I still havent played to this day, but i intend to!

Two board games that have been favorites of mine, but I have not played for quite a while:


Vampyre: In 1980, TSR put out a series of pocketable minigames (okay, if you had big pockets). Though most of these were eminently forgettable, one of them, Vampyre, was a fun game for 2-6 players. The game was based, loosely, on the novel and in the basic game each of the characters are on a race across the Transylvania countryside to be the first to destroy three of Dracula's coffins, while having encounters with werewolves, zombies, brides, and Dracula himself.


Car Wars: I had this originally in the pocketbox version, and still have a pocketbox version. It certainly grew well beyond the pocketbox and I have collected most every supplement published for the game and every edition. For those not familiar with it, the game is about highway and arena battles in the future involing armored and weaponed vehicles. Design your vehicle, gear up, and take on any challenger.

Ogre was darned good fun.

So was Talisman!

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/61/TalismanCover.jpg/180px-TalismanCover.jpg)

Shadow,

What the???  This board game actually existed?  lol...how does one play this game?

Stratego, Monopoly and I recall an Ewok Adventure game for some reason as some of my favs???

Each player had a couple of tokens they moved around the board. If you landed on a Bigfoot space, you were allowed to move the Bigfoot figure. You rolled the dice and moved it accordingly. If any player's tokens were in Bigfoot's path, the figure would dispense a small chip on it as it passed (one achieved this by pressing down on the figure as you manually passed it over a player's token). If the chip was blank, the token was safe, but if the chip had a footprint on it, that token had to be removed from the board. The last player with a token on the board was the winner.

Shadow,

I definitely have to look on Ebay for that board game.  Explaining to the wife why I spent money on it is another thing.   :teddyr:

So the goal of the game was to avoid Bigfoot when he was hungry (dispensing a footprint token), thereby surviving the game...

Sounds like Harry and The Hendersons gone completely wrong. 

Now I'm all nostalgic for that game. Ebay here I come...  :teddyr:

FACTS IN FIVE is a challenging game we play. the fun part is mom has all these old games from the 60's & 70's - some she bought used and the STILL have the scorecards of previous owners. we NEVER throw awayscorecards - in fact we date them and write msgs or funny pics. so it's funny to see how bad i sucked at Yahtzee when i was 5 years old.  I like Boggle and stuff like that, any type of word game but i love almost all types of games, including Risk.

we have the first & best edition of trivial pursuit and since that game takes so damn long to finish we write down each players position & score . Then maybe a year or so later we'll pick up where we left off, which is fun!

i have the anniversary edition of CLUE. It has pros and cons:

PROS
The Game pieces are pewter and they are AWESOME
Same with the weapons, and they are FUN to mess around with
Cards are more detailed
Gameboard looks nice


CONS
4 fold board - these SUCK, creating ridges in the board
Box is square and quite tall, not easy to store like the flat boards
Room layout sucks in that it's hard to see where the entrace doors are

I've come to realize with most of the games coming in 4 folds that companies simply do not know wha the hell they are doing. Someone thought it was a great storage idea to make the box smaller - but if you are a serious game collector its difficult to store multiple gameboards if they all come in giant tall boxes and tins.  Also for me the box cover itself never has any lasting appeal like some of the classics, for some reason simplicity and a little cheesiness go a long way.

All in all i love Clue, mom still has the old version and me and my brother still crack up at how CHEESY the photo is with it's hippie 70's lounge look and all the props. We love the characters - we propt it up and display during gameplay and make interesting observations about the scene.
(http://www.cooltoys.com/pics/GCLUE79.jpg)

Now I have a board game called "scene it" which is ok. But me thinks we need to have a special board game for horror/b-movie fans. With little godzilla and troll game pieces.

Btw I HATE monopoly. As a kid i thought it was neat but now i know why my parents never wanted to pay it. real life is bad enough, i don't want to play a game with taxes, losing money and utility bills.

We also have a board with indians on it and marbles and its kinda like Sorry but better. I forgotr the name but it's really fun.  There's a cool gameshop in a mall nearby that never does business but they sell a lot of obscure games, i keep meaning to go back and check them out. The last time i went though i ended up leaving with 3 things..lol  I love games

Well......I went with LIFE and RISK as being the most fun and engaging games. Of course CHESS is the game of games.

Spent most of my board game hours with MONOPOLY on Summer afternoons while watching THE GONG SHOW in the 70's. Everyday for a couple Summers.

LIFE was the most fun as we filled the car with children and ended up in the poor house.

RISK is probably my most favorite.

STRATEGO was on that I loved and easy to play, but couldn't find anyone else who liked it as much as myself. In later life my daughter and I played it often and she enjoyed it.

BATTLESHIP was a good one.

Also had TANK BATTLE and CARRIER STRIKE which I played alot of.

Enjoyed CLUE very much. One of the better board games.

PARCHESI and YATZEE were also fun nieghbor games.

PAYDAY was popular for a while.

TROUBLE was a good one. Loved popping the popper.

KERPLUNK with the marbles and sticks.

Yea OPERATION and PERFECTION. How about MOUSE TRAP and DON'T SPILL THE BEANS? Just setting up was fun.

Made about bunch of games of my own design from STRATEGO variations, race car games, and baseball games.

[edited] We have played many hours of SCRABBLE, CHECKERS, and SORRY

I challenge anyone to test my gangster status at Clue! I also picked Pictionary simply because it made for some of my favorite high school memories and me and my equally artistically inclined friend Jim would always clean up while our friends Pete and Mike would always break down into fisticuffs with each other how badly they couldn't understand what each other were drawing. I'll never be able to get Pete's voice out of my head screaming "IT'S YODA, MIKE! STAR WARS?! DON'T YOU SEE IT?! IT'S F***ING YOOOOOOOOODA!"

Any game where you pit your skills against your friends' intuition is a sure bet to cause WWIII.  It rolls right back to my "I bran, I bran so far away" story while playing Taboo.

We used to play Balderdash to see who could make the dasher laugh the hardest.  Onomatopoeia becomes a serious favorite, with humor the level of "Kentucky Fried Movie" when you have all high school students involved.

I voted for Risk, and I loved Clue also.  I had completely forgotten the name of Dark Tower until I saw the pic here, I played that one for hours as a kid.  After awhile none of my siblings would play against me anymore because I was pretty much unbeatable. 

Now that I have my own kids, we play board games whenever I have time.  Cranium makes some fun ones, and the old favorites like Candyland and Trouble are still just as fun as they were.  I'm trying to teach my 8 yr old to play Monopoly, but she cheats like mad, so you have to actually keep the bank on the other side of the room to keep her honest. 

Risk is a family and friends tearing apart monster. I still do not talk to one of the participients of my last Risk game ( which was about 3 years ago)