Maybe look at Pandemic Legacy? It’s just like Pandemic except your actions carry over to the next game over “a year.” You’re only meant to play it through once, as you destroy cards, put stickers on the board, etc. A lot of people swear by the game.
T.M.E. Stories I’ve heard great things about this one, although I’ve never played it.
I just bought it, am waiting on delivery. I’ll let you know once I manage to play. 
Definitely do so. I’ve been eyeing this for a while. I’m currently trying to purge my collection, so buying more unless I’m absolutely sure wouldn’t go too well with the wife.
I had been signed up to play it at the annual gaming convention here in town last year, but ended up too sick to go play, and I’ve been slightly angry about it ever since.
Great thread which has really opened my eyes to the possibility of board games in a way I hadn’t considered. I have played a fair bit of PC strategy games over the years, mainly Civ but I find myself spending less time on them because a) they take too damn long b) after spending much of the day watching a screen I feel like giving my eyes a rest.
Board games , especially of the kind that **glee **requested on page one: solo/co-op and playable under an hour solve both problems and in particular Pandemic and Forbidden Island sound great for a quick strategy fix in the evening.
The wife bought me Arcadia Quest for my birthday. So far, it is a blast. A 6-scenario campaign game, where all players control a small guild of three Heroes trying to free the city of Arcadia from the domination of Lord Fang- with each guild attempting to reign supreme (and remove the competition when possible). A great deal of fun, but if your group prefers cooperative games, this is definitely not that!
In addition, I also just recently picked up Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes on Steam. I include that because it is a fantastic party game- place a laptop at one end of the table, where the bomb defuser sits, and give all other players a printed copy of the bomb defusal manual (located at bombmanual.com) and have them sit at the other end of the table. The bomb defuser has to describe what he sees, and the disposal ‘experts’ guide him to defusing the bomb by looking through the manual… hopefully. For extra fun, you can separate the groups even more (different rooms and shouting, speaking through a cell phone on speaker, on skype, etc.) Just a great time, and now part of our board game night rotation.
Since this seems to have turned into a sort of omnibus thread, hopefully the OP won’t mind me recounting a games night I had this week. I mainly wanted to mention Seven Wonders, which I played for only the second time and really enjoyed. The gameplay manages to combine simplicity with strategy, like all the best games, the main part of which is selecting a card to play from your hand, then passing your hand to the next player. I also like how it lets you use resources to build items, but in a more immediate and satisfying way than most similar games. The only downside is the scoring at the end is quite complicated, but that gives it a lot of replayability, as you can pursue lots of different strategies. Definitely recommended for 4-6 players, only takes about half an hour to play.
We also played Code Names, which is a fun party game.
UPS tells me that TIME Stories should be delivered to me today. I shall report back once we play it!
Last night, some of my group played TIME Stories. It’s only a 4-player game, but I’d say it was just as fun for the non-player present, because we let her take part in the decision-making process. And we loved the game.
Most people who have reviewed it say it’s a shame because it’s a terrible ratio of money spent to actual playing time. But one way I saw it described is that the base set is kind of like a console, and you have to buy additional games to plug into it. The basic game comes with only one scenario, and you have to buy or find fan-made expansions in order to play again, once you’ve solved the first mystery.
While that’s true, TIME Stories is definitely my new favorite game. It was a lot like an old point-and-click adventure game, where you had to go many places, interact with many things, and see what got you the information and/or items you needed. If you run out of time, you have to go back to the beginning and start a new “run,” which means you can breeze through some of the things you’ve already done a little bit faster and not make the decisions that cost you time/lives before.
It took us three runs to get through it, probably about 4 hours of gameplay. We’re already trying to find a night to play the first expansion, because we totally adored it. The dice are kind of rounded and never seem to go the way we wanted them to, but we also just tend to suck at dice, so I can’t say if that’s a problem many people have had.
So if you’re looking for a game you can play over and over, this is not it. However, if you don’t mind spending a little money, I recommend this. I have spent more money on things I enjoyed far less. There are currently three official expansion scenarios, with a fourth supposedly coming out next month. I have also found a community of people designing more scenarios on Board Game Geek, and some of them have made them available as print & play.