I have not!
Yeah, me too. I’m glad others enjoy them, and I’ll once in awhile play one if it’s the only game that’s going on, but they’re not at all my thing.
Second the recommendation for Forbidden Island. I bought it last week, and my 7yo and I have been playing the snot out of it. It’s a great coop game, and I think we’re barely scratching the strategies.
One game that’s not been recommended so far has one of the most ingenious mechanics I’ve seen in awhile: No Thanks!. Here’s the setup:
From a deck of 33 cards labeled 3-35, nine cards are removed, without anyone seeing them.
Everyone gets eleven tokens. Hide those puppies in your fist.
The goal is to have the lowest score. Each card is worth the number printed on it; each token is worth -1 points.
PLay begins with the top card being flipped face up. The first player may either take the card, or put a token on top of the card (“No thanks!”). Play continues until someone takes the card, as well as all the tokens on top of it.
At the end, you score all your cards, minus all your tokens, WITH ONE EXCEPTION: if you have a run of two or more consecutive cards (19, 20, 21), you score only the lowest card in that run. So a hand of 3, 8, 9, 10, 23, 24, 26 would be worth 3+8+23+26 points.
It’s very simple to play, but the decisions are very rich. Take a card someone else needs to complete a run? “No thanks” a card you need, just because you know everyone else is gonna no thanks it too, and it’ll come back to your turn again with a whole bunch of tokens on it? Take a high card early on, because it’s so token-rich, and that’ll give you some freedom later in the game?
It’s a lot of fun.
Random comments:
Cards Against Humanity: Pretty fun for a few times, though it does get old after awhile (as pretty much every Apples to Apples clone does). We have fun using the cards as Telestration prompts. So many penises.
Coup: I tend to like these games (secret identities/bluffing) though this one was a bit quick for me. We did only play it a few times, and I think it takes a few plays just to get a handle on the strategies and reading other players. The person we played with had played before and pretty much wiped the floor with us since he had a good strategy to start out with (either have or claim the ‘money’ characters to build a lead, then get the defensive characters to hold onto the lead).
Resistance: I’ve only played its sister game, Avalon, which is basically the same but with a few extra character abilities (Merlin, who is a good guy and knows who’s who, the Assassin is bad guy who can win by guessing Merlin, and more). Love this game, though like Coup it takes people a few plays to understand some of the core strategies (like purposely rejecting some group votes here and there to gain info).
Pandemic: Different from most since it’s a co-op game. The problem with that is that the players who know what they’re doing usually end up telling the newbies what to do. Would be more fun with an experienced crew I think.
Dominion: I’ve enjoyed it but it’s not my favorite, mainly because it feels a bit like playing multiplayer solitaire… there’s just not that much player interaction. The first expansion, Intrigue, sought to fix this by adding ‘attack’ cards but those just feel like the player is being a jerk.
Settlers of Catan: It’s a good game to play with newbies since it’s pretty easy to understand (and you can figure out the main strategies by halfway through the game, rather than needing to play it a couple times first). The main issue is that 50% of the strategy is just placing your starting buildings, and then the rest of the game is seeing if the dice roll in your favor or not. I find this to be a good game to pull out when I just want to play something relaxing and gave my brain a break from strategizing.
I’ve heard good things about Splendor but haven’t gotten to try it out yet. Haven’t played or heard of the others.
I’ve had some fun with it, but my main problem is that it’s just too dang short. So short that there’s not really any deduction element, just a few guesses (i.e., someone will play a Soldier on the first turn and eliminate someone with a lucky guess) and then the game is over before you can even do anything about it.
Sushi Go is basically the mini version of 7 Wonders, for better or worse. I personally prefer the more advanced gameplay of 7 Wonders, but Sushi Go is easier for those who don’t play board games as often and want something similar.
Citadels is great, lots of fun with that game.
Only gotten to play Sheriff of Nottingham a couple times, and it was a bit of a thud… main problem was that the players didn’t really try to bluff at all, or negotiate (instead just opening all the bags, or using bag opening as kingmaking). I can see the potential but I think it takes the right group of people.
I can understand if you don’t like those sorts of games, but “they’re pure and random luck” is a bad reason and you’re wrong. 
At least for a game like Resistance or Avalon - there’s no player elimination, for one thing (so you can’t get lucky and eliminate the right/wrong player immediately with a random guess). As I noted above though, there is a bit of a learning curve… people playing the game the first time often want to just approve whatever group gets nominated for the first turn, instead of purposely voting it down to gain info (they forget that the bad guys all know who each other are). While surprises happen, I can usually identify the majority of the bad guys by the end of every game… you might just be bad at identifying liars. Which is a perfectly valid reason for not liking the game, but don’t claim it’s the same for everyone and it’s just pure luck.
If nothing else, there’s the opportunity to play as the Scooby Doo characters. I believe I found most of it by searching around at BoardGameGeek, but alas, my searching skills are failing at the moment for lack of coffee.
I agree it’s a gateway game. If you’re looking for more advanced gameplay in a drafting game, you could try Fairy Tale, Greed, or, as you suggested, 7 Wonders.
I’ve tried Telestrations Against Humanity once, and we made up a rule on the fly that you pick three cards and draw the best one because some of them are pretty hard to draw. I would play it again if I play Telestrations again, but only because I have played Telestrations enough – around 5 times? – that the cards are starting to recycle and CAH would provide more cards.
Why this caveat? Because at least in my circle, we are bad enough drawers that the drawings inevitably don’t resemble the words in a cycle or two, no matter how risqué the original word.
Nope, still sticking by my sentiment. When everyone lies about everything all the time, then no one is telling the truth.
So nyah. There.
I hope nobody minds if I ask you knowledgeable lot to list games that would interest me - with the following conditions (like Pandemic):
- it’s a co-operative game (and so it doesn’t matter if one player is less experienced, plus you avoid arguments)
- you can play with a family
- it only takes about 45 minutes
- it’s reasonably easy to learn, but different enough to play a lot
Also are there any games you can play Solo?!
Argicola is fun to play solo because everyone draws cards in the beginning out of hundreds of them to determine which occupation and minor improvements they can play, so the game is slightly different every time.
Its sequel, Caverna, which I think is a better game overall because it doesn’t rely as heavily on blocking people from doing things to get ahead, is not as fun to play solo out of the box because all 48 Buildings are always available so it is the same game every time. I like to challenge myself by only allowing a random 6 of the 47 advanced buildings to be allowed for building every game (I always allow the base Dwelling.)
Forbidden Island absolutely meets your requirements. One issue I ran into when playing with a bunch of kids was, ironically, that it was a bit like playing solo: because the rules explicitly encourage you to give each other advice and ideas on what to do with one another’s actions, it often sounded like this:
The kids all had a blast and wanted to play it a lot, so I kind of view it as my teaching them some strategy for games; but I do think the game would work really well with a bunch of folks who are good at strategy.
Anyway, I’m also pretty sure you could play it solo: set up two or more separate characters, have them act independently, use the rules for trading items like normal, and you’re good to go.
I have a friend who does pretty well at Coup by always telling the truth.
Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert are probably your best bets. In Forbidden Island, the tiles are removed as they sink beneath the waves and in Forbidden Desert the tiles are buried under piles of sand. Forbidden Desert also allows for five players.
Elder Sign is a simplified dice-based version of the Call of Cthlhu-inspired massive coop games like Arkham Horror. Each player goes to a location card and tries to defeat it by rolling the needed dice. It plays pretty well solo.
There are also co-op games where one player is secretly a traitor (Shadows Over Camelot) or is tapped to become a traitor during play (Betrayal at House on the Hill).
Flash Point’s a good game that fits this description. The players are a team of firefighters who are working together to get everyone out of a house before the fire gets out of control.
My gaming group, which had no experience with these types of games when we started, has gotten a lot of replay value out of Small World, especially with the six-player board and some of the new race/power expansions. The random race/power drafting makes the game different each time and even the board is different depending on how many players you have.
A new game that I recently picked up and like is the small-publisher [URL=http://www.actionphasegames.com/pages/kodama-the-tree-spirits]Kodama: The Tree Spirits/URL]. Start with an oversize tree trunk card featuring an element. Add to your tree by picking branch cards from a pool drawn from a deck common to all players. Try to pick branch cards with elements that match up with your trunk’s and/or your other branch cards. Each round, or season, lets players play for branches. However, each player also gets a hand of Kodama cards to start the game, and these cards affect the scoring done at the end of each round. Three rounds (spring, summer, fall) and the game ends. Oh, each season has a random effect as well. And there is also a physical element in how you lay down your branch cards as well.
I have a suggestion that only half-meets one of your criteria, but I think is still worth looking at - Between Two Cities. It’s a semi-coop - you are building two cities, one on either side of you, cooperating with the people sitting on your left and right. Your final score is the lower-scoring of your two cities. I have found it to be incredibly collegial, and people usually request to play again as soon as the first game is over.
It also has a nice solo mode - there is a deck of cards included that you can use to play against two imaginary players. The cards determine the strategy that they use each turn, and it is pretty hard.
Forbidden Island
and
Forbidden Desert
But that’s not an accurate appraisal. The spies are lying in Resistance, but there are only two (or three) of them. And even the spies don’t HAVE to fail a mission. Indeed, if a mission includes both spies, they have a terrible dilemma: if they both play “Success,” then the resistance is one step closer to a win; but they have no way of consulting each other to arrange which one should fail it, and if they BOTH fail it they brand that group as containing both spies, making it easy to avoid including either spy in future missions.
How do you possibly characterize this as “everyone lying, all the time?”
I can certainly understand not liking to bluff during games, or not liking games in which you have to suss out who might be lying. But that’s not the same as thinking everyone is lying. Only a couple of people are lying; it’s up to the rest to discern who they are.
Mysterium - nope
Coup - nope
Resistance - nope
Pandemic - nope
Dominion - nope
Splendor -nope
Settlers of Catan - nope
Chao - nope
Code Names - nope
Splendor - nope
Pathfinder nope
Wow, I haven’t lived yet. 
I’m used to monopoly, chess, checkers, battle ship, connect 4, jenga, etc.
I’ve played several of those. I enjoy Coup, though it doesn’t click with most people I play with. Dominion is a decent deckbuilder, but the theme is pretty thin. I prefer other deckbuilders like Legendary (Marvel for competative or semi-co-op play [win solo or lose together], Aliens for co-op). Catan doesn’t click for me. I get it’s significance to board gaming as a hobby, but it’s not my cup of tea.
I enjoy Pandemic. Forbidden Desert and Forbidden Island (already mentioned upthread) are similar and (IMO) Forbidden Desert is the best of the three.
Avalon is one of my favorite games. It’s Resistance, but with roles like Merlin (knows the good guys), the assassin (tries to find Merlin to steal the win), and Percival (knows Merlin) rather than the mission cards from Resistance. IMO, it’s a more elegant game than Resistance with missions and more interesting than Resistance without missions. (You can also play without roles, and it’s exactly the same as Resistance without missions.)
If you want a meatier hidden traitor game, pick up Dead of Winter, (5 player max, one traitor max, 1-2 hour playtime) or Battlestar Galactica (best with 5-8 players, multiple traitors guaranteed, 2-3 hour playtime). BSG is the heavier of the two and harder to introduce to new players, but I prefer it. If you’re thinking that they can’t make a good zombie or game licensed from TV, these games are the exception to the rule.