At Monday night game night, I played:
The Voyages of Marco Polo - I've had this one for a couple years and this is only the 3rd time playing it, but it was the first time winning. I love my large gaming group, but the only problem is that there are always new games that people bring that attract other players, as well as some "hot" games like Terraforming Mars is the hot game at the moment that gets played a lot, though I haven't tried it yet. But Marco Polo is a dice placement game, as well as resource management. You have five dice you roll at the start of the round and those values are what you will use for the round. There are several places to place the dice on the board, such as the market where you can get several different types of goods, a place to just get money, a place to get contracts that you can fulfill for VP's and other stuff, and there's a travel section that allows you to move your meeple certain number of spaces on the board for different costs. You have 2 secret route cards at the start of the game and can get VP's if you connect 2 of the cities on a card with buildings you place when stopping in locations. You also start with a character that gives you special abilities. Ultimately, you have to balance how much you travel with how many contracts you want to complete, as they both take resources, dice and time. Contracts require you to go to the market a lot to get various resources and you get VP's and some extra goods when completing them, plus the player with the most completed contracts gets 7VP's. Travelling can get you VP's from completing routes, or even having buildings on the cities on the routes, but you can also get benefits by having buildings on certain locations, as some give you an immediate bonus, while others give you an immediate bonus plus a beginning of round bonus, and there are others that give you an action space for a new action that is only available to people that have a building there. So there are different ways to try to get points to win, and sometimes your character ability will help steer you to one strategy more than another.
Lazer Riderz - If Tron and X-Wing had a lovechild, this would be it. You have 4 discs on the table that you are trying to get your movement templates to move through cleanly in order to take that disc and replace it with one of your color. The first player to get three of their color on the table wins. You start out blindly placing a starting prong shaped piece on the edge of your side of the table. Then on your turn, you will place an X-Wing type movement template on the table, extending from your starting point and then from the end of your existing template, as they stay on the table. You have the 1-5 straight pieces (several of each) and several 1-4 curved pieces. You also have a speed dial that goes from 1-5 and you can only alter your new speed (template length) by 1 either up or down. Going straight is easy, as you just place it at the end of your existing piece. Making a turn requires you to roll a d6 and you need to roll the number of the template speed you are using or higher. So the faster the turn the harder it is to complete. If you fail the roll, you end up going straight with that speed. If you roll a 6, you make the turn but you spin out and your speed is reduced to 1 for the next turn. If your template hits another player's line of templates, then all of yours are removed and you have to start again from the edge of the table, and the player you hit removes all of their templates behind the one you hit, and they continue as normal from their existing template. Kind of fun and wacky game, and it's totally retro packaged. Each player has their own box with their stuff and its like a VHS case box. The 4 VHS style boxes fit into an open ended box similar to what a boxed set of VHS movies used to come in.
Can't Stop - This is an older game that is the first time for me playing. It's a press your luck style game and is pretty fun. I won't go into details as I have to go, but people can check out the BGG link if they want to know about the game.