One of the first games I ever dominated in. Settlers of Catan, published in 1995, is a game about collecting resources and building settlements. While I agree it doesn't sound like the most exciting game, it quickly grew to be one of my favourites. The object of the game is to collect 10 victory points. This is done by either building settlements, upgrading to cities, building development cards (which can either contain a “power up”, a knight, or a victory point) building the longest road, or having the largest army (which is calculated by the number of knight cards you have as depicted above). All this is achieved by collecting 5 resources: wood, brick, wheat, ore, and sheep. The more settlements you build, the more resources you collect, and the more you can build. While it seems rather complicated to explain (and I'm usually not the best at explaining things), it is rather easy to pick up. This is a game I would definitely recommend.  

This game is a little more complicated to explain, so I'll keep it as simple as I can. Elder sign is based off the Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft. It's a cooperative dice and card game where the object is to lock away the Ancient One by collecting elder sign tokens. This is done through completing tasks written on cards. These are completed by rolling dice and matching the symbols on the card. Failure to complete the tasks could result in a monster spawning, taking hits to health and sanity, becoming cursed, or even death. Upon completion of the task, you gain whatever reward is on the bottom of the card. Each player chooses a character, and each character has a special ability that can help in the game. While it does take some getting used to, the game is a lot of fun. There are other games based off the Cthulhu Mythos by the same company, but those games take much more time to play and are a lot harder to understand. I'd recommend this as a good starter game to get you interested in the universe.

Have you ever played the mobile game “Pandemic”, where you are a disease and want to destroy humanity? Well, this game is the opposite, but just as addicting. In Pandemic, it is your job to cure 4 diseases that have been plaguing different parts of the world. You are given a job, and you and your teammates must work together to find the cure for each of the diseases. This is done by collect 5 cards of the same colour and running back to the research centre. Careful, though, as soon as you run out of event cards, or have more than 7 outbreaks, the game is over, and the diseases have eradicated the earth. This game has lots of replay value, as no 2 games are the same. There are many expansions for Pandemic as well, that add new characters, new events, a new disease, and even the concept of the bioterrorist. They even have Pandemic: Legacy which changes the board every time you play.