Cyclades sounds immense but is only for 5 players. In fact most of the good ones only support 5 players.

They're prime cuts. Dominion: Intrigue might be more interesting than the base set though, a lot of people can find it a little stale. I have both though.

Yeah I wa thinking Forbidden Planet, I'll pop up there later.

Will give Settlers of Catan a look too, sounds like what I'm after

I've played the iOS Dominion, what's the difference with Intrigue

Right I picked up Intrigue and Ticket to Ride Europe.
Forbidden Planet wasn't much use but luckily there's a place just down the road called Orc's Nest that was packed with nothing but board games

Its though because you can lose but not feel shit for two hours as in monopoly.

I'm going to be spending 5 hours playing Arkham Horror later today

I wasn't aware of Munchkin until I saw the recent episode of Tabletop where Will Wheaton was playing, looked cool but like you say seemed to be mainly luck based. Also I think the RPG joke references would be lost on non-geeks, there is a spy version which might be better for my group thematically.

Agricola is awesome. Infinite strategy, masses of pieces, boards and cards to fiddle with, wonderful.

First proper game of Ticket to Ride done.

5 players, none of the rest have any interest playing games (never mind board games) and it went down a storm. 
Some nice sly trickery blocking off routes or using stations. There was even a cheer when one player drew two reds while trying to claim a red tunnel. 

Dominion might be a harder sell

Really Nasty Horse Racing Game is good for family related larks.

Surveyor wrote:

Not played Arkham Horror before either, I hear it is quite complex, great theme though, might look at that or Ghost Stories near Haloween.

It is fairly complex but once we got into the flow it was fine, just that initial learning curve. Great fun.

There is that worry amongst certain card games, especially vanilla Dominion, that all you are doing is building your own deck. Luckily plenty of the expansions offer cards that force interaction, especially Intrigue.

The key with Dominion is telling everyone to buy silver, all the time. It is dull, but when you have money, you can buy more cards and the game flows much quicker. Every game will always involve your first two hands being either 5c then 2c3e or 4c1e then 3c2e (c = copper, e = estate) In the first circumstance buying an action card is fine, in the second, i'd probably buy 2 silver. Also get them into the habit of playing whilst others are shuffling, and keeping their three card sets seperate. Hand goes to discard, draw from deck, deck is empty, reshuffle discard into deck and continue the cycle. Stumps so many people, but essentially you are playing a TCG where you can see the contents of the booster packs in front of you, and you need to build your dark for the first few rounds so you can cram a victroy.

Yeah, the money strategy is called 'Big Money' in the community. It will help you beat newcomers because they get giddy over Action cards. Your optimum deck will probably always be 50% money in any strategy, so 20 cash cards, 10 action cards and 10 victory (if you're going for an 8 province win)

Cards that make intrigue fun -

Scout, Harem, Great Hall, Nobles, Ironworks, Copper Works, Minion (YES, SO GOOD) Torturer.

The rules have some pre-set decks, I'd say look at Victory Dance or Best Wishes. Just try and get folk into the mind set of quick wins, people usually try and chain together lots of deck draws, +action, +buys and stuff, but that is nothing compared to utilizing your hand for 6 Coin with only one action card.

Edit: That said, some strategies that involve pulling lots into your hand work really well, it al depends on your deck and the cards involved. If you can pull through 50% of your deck in a turn, you'll be able to buy a province, ergo win.

Smithy is OG Dominion but it is good. Favourite care is Mine though, makes a ruthless deck.

Tempy wrote:

Smithy is OG Dominion but it is good. Favourite care is Mine though, makes a ruthless deck.

I haven't ventured past the original deck, enjoyed what I have played of base Dominion but not felt compelled to move on to Intrigue yet. Gonna try a few different types of games first to see what tickles my fancy.

Just ordered Mystery Express for my brother-in-law, looks like Cluedo done right.