I prefer go myself.
My favorite ones ? Wargames, most especially, anything from the old GDW Europa serie or ADG’s World in Flames.
ooooohhhh…you are my new best friend, and the new reason I’m gonna flunk out of grad school.
Online Scabble is highly addictive. I play under the screen name carl37. The only other doper on the site that I know of is sandpiper. She plays as sandpipersue.
I used to play Risk often but the limited activity in the game became boring.
So my friends and I started playing Axis & Allies, until we could predict each move and new players were discouraged from making the “wrong” moves.
Then we found Supremacy- a Risk-like game that added money and tech, plus new forces, and we played on and on…
I’ve played some Talisman but the guy who owned the board would cheat and become a real unpleasant guy; he would play in a very insulting and unsportsman-like manner.
My friends and I play D&D as a board game, in a way- we rely heavily on miniatures combat, and play some games without a plot just to have “monsters” fight each other to practice.
Difficult question. I really like boardgames and I played plenty of them…
Anyway my preferred is sold here under the name “Res Publica Romana”. I believe that the english name is simply “Roma” and that it has originally been published by Avallon Hill. It’s unfortunately not very well known apart amongst the hard-core gamer, and the games are quite long (say 5-6 hours).
Each gamer plays a senatorial “party” (with several members) during the republican roman period. The players must recruit members, earn, manage and spend money, make sure to become popular, attract clients and votes, use his senators, etc…So, there’s a basis of management of limited ressources. But more important, it’s an extremely intereactive game, with a lot of negociations, along the line : “If you help me organizing my circus games, I’ll vote for your senator Y as Qaestor, providing he don’t notice I stole all that money when I was governor of Egyptia”. And there are official postions (like consul, governor, etc…) to fill, which gives specific powers (like deciding what issue will be debatted or not at the senate, for instance) and add a lot to the fun.
And the really interesting feature of the game is that either one player wins by becoming consul for life (like Caesar historically did, putting an end to the Republic), with various means to achieve that (becoming overwhelmingly popular, organizing a coup, etc…) either Rome collapse (ruin, revolt of the plebs, military defeat) and all players loose.
So, the gamers must cooperate to protect and fortify Rome against “the game” at the same time they play against each other. Which gives some heartbreaking choices to make (Rome is menaced by the powerful armies of Hannibal, the only very good general we have is X, but he’s already very popular, if we don’t send him Carthage could take Rome, if we send him and he wins the battle, perhaps he will win the game…and anyway, who want to give so much legions to a single player? and who wants to pay to raise these legions?). This feature is probably the one which put this game above any others, IMO.
I know…I wrote long explanations, but I really love this game.
And I would concord with the posters who like Cataan. It’s a totally different game, but a really good one.
Another vote for Catan here! I didn’t even know it has become so popular outside of Germany.
I am also partial to Scrabble. But what exactly is “Speed Scrabble” – just Scrabble with a chess clock?
Which leads me directly to chess, game of games.
The Farming Game (invented on the seat of a tractor) If you don’t like it, it has a moneyback guarantee!
As far as more “classic” games go, I’ll say chess is definitely my favorite. I enjoy it especially when the game takes a long time, and you sit in relative silence with a cup of tea or whatever, just looking at the board, thinking, sitting in a comfortable chair. Yeah.
I’ll also second Risk and Axis and Allies, although I haven’t played the latter in years as the only person I know who ownes the game is at school in California.
Another game (alas, owned by the same friend on the West coast) which is a blast is Eurorails, the game upon which Railroad Tycoon was based. A lot of fun, and you get to draw on the board with crayons.
Bluesman nailed it, by the way; Cheapass Games makes some of the most all-out fun games in existence. Devil Bunny Needs a Ham and Devil Bunny Hates the Earth are both great. Deadwood is hysterically funny, and an interesting game to boot. They’re really worth checking out.
Good thing we got some real gamers on the SDMB. When I saw the subject, I thought I’d have do some preaching for Catan, but you’ve beaten me to it.
To those that don’t know what we’re talking about:
If you THINK you like Risk, Monopoly, or Clue (like I once did) please do yourself a favor and play some of these and see what you’ve been missing: 
Settlers of Catan (This with the Cities and Knights Expansion is my personal fave. (German version is prettier, by the way.))
Samurai
Robo Rally
Diplomacy
Carcassone
And for card games of a similar nature:
Bohnanza
Ohne Furcht Und Adel
Guillotine
you can find all of these, and many other fine games at
and
http://www.bouldergames.com
and as MrVisible and Bluesman said, Cheapass is good for zany fun.
(Podkayne: I personally love Cities & Knights, and think it makes the wonderful “intro game” of Settlers into a “real game.” But I HATE, HATE, HATE Starfarers. I think it adds WAY too much luck into a game already (successfully) flirting with the balance between luck and skill.)
Of course, Party Games are a different category altogether. For those:
Apples to Apples
Taboo
Balderdash (although you don’t really neeed the game to play, just a good dictionary)
Scrabble is great but UpWords is better!!! I love Checkers too. Oh, I wish I had someone around to play a game with right now! 
I havn’t played it in years, but I realled liked Escape From Colditz.
You played as a POW leader trying to have a certain number of his team escape from Colditz. Each player played a diferent nationality, and one player was the guards.
I’m intrigued by some of these games, what kind of stores would carry these?
For parties, where you have upwards of 4 people, nothing beats Cranium. It’s a massive combination of Trivia Pursuit, Balderdash, Pictionary, and it has play-doh too! Oh, and charades, drawing with your eyes closed…
For other settings I’ll play whatever you’ve got. Risk, Scrabble, Monopoly and Chess are all rather tame. Supremacy is good, as is axis and Allies (but I find too many players like to wait and wait before acting).
My all-time favourite is Talisman, the 2nd edition (not that namby-pamby 3rd ).
–what kind of store would carry these games?–
Unabashed plug: Funagain Games, on the Web,
http://kumquat.com/cgi-kumquat/funagain/home
has a whole potful of games. They ship quick, and their prices are fair.
–end plug.
I kind of like Malarkey.
Anyone heard of it?
If you’re wary of the web, and want to shop in the real world, check out your local comic book/game shop. They often have some or all of these games, albeit at higher prices than either of the online ones mentioned.
If that fails, Wizards of the Coast have openned up their own stores in many malls, and carry a lot of them. (WotC is the maker of Magic: The Gathering, now owns TSR who makes Dungeons & Dragons, and is owned in turn by Hasbro, who also owns Avalon Hill, former makers of cool stuff like Monsters Ravage America, and Wizard’s Quest, and current makers of Risk 2077, Diplomacy, and Cosmic Encounter. But the stores have all this plus other companies’ games.)
Warning about cranium: it was a fun game, but for the group I played with, a lot of the questions/tasks were way too easy.
Favorite game that takes under an hour to complete:
Roborally
Favorite game that takes well over an hour to complete:
Shogu… errr… Samurai Swords
Robo Rally in under an hour? Do you play with only 2 flags and one board? It usually takes us around 2 or 3 hours or more.
Another great long game: Time agent, oh, and advanced civilization…
“In your head! Goddammit, count IN YOUR HEAD!”
I’ve noticed that at raucous gatherings, the silent cluster huddled over the Ricochet Robots board attracts more attention than the more boisterous games.
Bumping an old thread to mention the joys of Puerto Rico. It took me a couple plays to get into it, but man is that game good. Meaty and strategic, with lots of cool little wooden pieces. A must have.