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Lockdown and all that. Anyway they have sure moved on since I was a nipper, and I am playing / have played some belters.

Would recommend:

Azul (abstract tile-placement)
Brass: Birmingham (fantastic early-industrial trade network game, strategic as all hell)
Twilight Struggle (Cold-War strategy. I love this)
Labyrinth: War on Terror (mechanically similar to Twilight Struggle. Haven't got into it properly yet but early signs are great)
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion (Fantasy Campaign, card-based. Really good, with simple systems nicely balanced)

Also played a few legacy games. These are games in which events permanently alter the game with new rules, things destroyed or added etc. Great stuff.

All three seasons of Pandemic are great. I would tackle them in order of release i.e. 1, 2, then 0. (And yes, they are fun, Mr. Linked Article Guy.)
Clank: Acquisitions Incorporated is so much fun and a very cool game to boot. Simple to play but plenty to get your teeth into. Card-drafting, no dice. Love this.

Are you looking for a board game? What kind of thing are you after? Any recs? Fire away.

Edit: Worth pointing out several of these games are also available on videogame platforms (e.g. Steam), or web-based platforms like Tabletopia. These allow online play, and there's a free tier of Tabletopia which is good enough to have a couple of games on the go at any one time. Anybody who would like to get into 'board' games but isn't able to get around people at the moment - this is a cool thing.

Azul is awesome, and there's also a second one called Azul: Summer Pavillion that is great.

We did Pandemic season one this winter and it was great but we SUCKED at it.

Also of note if you dont know about it but Dominion is a fantastic deck-builder type.

I don't know about Dominion, shall have a look. I think there are three Azuls in total but the first one feels more than enough right now. I've heard a lot of good things about Santorini in a similar abstract strategy style.

Definitely go for Pandemic Legacy 2, then 0 if time affords. They build on the first one really well. We crashed and burned in Season 1 but it was great fun - Seasons 2 and 3 went a bit better. If the whole legacy thing is for you then I can't recommend Clank: Acquisitions Incorporated highly enough. It's so charming and there's one hell of a game running beneath it all.

I play Netrunner with my partner sometimes. We bloody suck at it but love the absolute mess we make. Really good fun. Luckily we bought the core set before they stopped making it. A couple of expansions.

She also bought me Wingspan for Christmas last year. We haven't touched it yet cos of a huge interstate move but thats on the cards. Anyone on here had experience with it?

Got the expansion to Star Wars: Rebellion, which adds to a surprisingly deep strategy game.

Also having great fun with the second edition of Waste Knights, which is simple but deceptively tough, and great fun if you care to role play it.

Also picked up Dune: Imperium which is supposed to be excellent. Looking forward to having a game of it within the next few weeks.

My wife and I have done this too in recent years. It's been really nice returning to a teenage hobby I sadly abandoned in part because of the social stigma... It's been nice to see tabletop gaming becoming cool again!

Playing Pandemic ironically and losing just before lockdown last year was probably a bit cringe, but great fun. Otherwise, favourites have been:

Betrayal at House on the Hill
Resident Evil 2
Dead of Winter
Tokaido

Going to sneak some RPGs in here too - was chuffed to bits a couple of years ago to find my absolute all-time fave horror RPG as a 90s teen, Kult, got an excellent reboot a while back, but sadly not had time to actually play it, so have just had to listen to the Red Moon Roleplay podcasts for now and kill time reading the rulebook. Really want to play Tales from the Loop and Alien RPGs one day too, but suspect as a very busy 41 year old, now with a new born baby that aint happening until retirement, so holding off buying those!

Had two games of Dune: Imperium this morning, and really enjoyed it. Great blend of worker placement, deck building and card strategy. I imagine it's even more enjoyable if you're into the lore.

I love Azul. I got it right before lockdown.

Personal favorites have been King of Tokyo and Mysterium. King of Tokyo is like Yahtzee, but your like a Godzilla monster trying to control Tokyo. It's really fun and simple, but the strategies can go in a lot of places. Mysterium is a fun game that's very reminiscent of Clue, but way better in a million ways. It's all about interpretation and aesthetic. One player plays a ghost trying to relay information through metaphor (using art cards) to reveal who murdered them. The twist is that the ghost can't speak. All the players play together as mediums resurrecting the ghost in a seance.

This game gets no love, but it's a board game that was way ahead of the sus movement, called Dark Moon. It's a sci-fi game that is basically the board game version of the movie Event Horizon. You play as a crew on a spaceship. Shit keeps breaking. Some of the crew members are aliens trying to destroy the ship. You don't know who's who, but the mechanics of the game are really interesting. It's hard to explain, but you get a set number of dice and have to roll your dice in secret and add the numbers together in order to achieve the goal of a round of ship repair. If you feel someone is an alien, you can call a vote and try to vote the alien onto the brig. This game brings on tons of arguing and shit talking, and it's really fun being an alien and making everyone jail the real people, then blowing up the ship and winning the game.

Dead of Winter is also really fun, but it's like a million cardboard pieces. It's a zombie game where everyone has to work together in order to survive. There's lots of dice rolling and cards and little side stories to read through. Everyone has the main mission to try to survive, but the twist is that each individual player has a personal goal they must achieve to actually win. So, while the party may win, some players may lose. And the personal goals are always against the group goal. For example, one player's goal might be to horde a certain amount of food, but the game goal might be to make sure everyone gets fed. Characters die easy and traveling can get you injured or eaten by zombies, but if you don't go out and scavenge, you can't achieve any of the goals, personal or group. It's a fun game if you make an evening of it. One of my favorite things is that one personal goal card is to screw the entire group, and you can only win if the whole group loses. And the great thing about it is, there's 12 personal goal cards, so it's not always in play, but everyone is always paranoid that someone has that card.

I started getting interested in solo board games a bit before the pandemic, and obviously more interested in solo games during, since there's few board games my wife will play with me. The first that I really got into was Gloomhaven, which is a great legacy game. There's so much content to unlock, including eleven character classes, each with quite different playing styles, so it takes a while to get bored of the game. Jaws of the Lion came out about year after I started with the original Gloomhaven, and was a nice break when I got tired of the original. I HIGHLY recommend it for anyone that's interested in Gloomhaven, but is intimidated by the size. The rules/learning process is a tutorial style I haven't seen in tabletop games before.

Two others I highly recommend:

Mage Knight - Similarities to Gloomhaven's play style, but not a legacy game. The rules are a bit convoluted at first, but seriously rewarding once you get the hang of it and win your first scenario.

Spirit Island - The premise of the game is that you're a spirit trying to drive settlers from a remote island and save the indigenous people. There are several spirits you can choose from, each with unique play styles, so this is another one with a lot of replayability.

Games that my wife will actually play that we love are Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne.

-Rob

Rinsed Jaws of the Lion so will likely reset/get rid and pick up Gloomhaven proper.

Twilight Struggle and Dune: Imperium are my go-to games at the moment. Have a nice Saturday morning, taking one out to play with a coffee. The latter even has me looking forward to the film when it comes out.