This is probably too late, but if your malls had those Christmas-season kiosks, a lot of mine had massive sales first part of January. There was one kiosk that was for a game store, and had everything for 50% off-- we bought Cranium Turbo for 20 bucks, instead of 40, even WalMart wanted 35 for it. Pretty fun game.
I always enjoyed both Risk and Axis and Allies, but Risk is definitely more newbie-friendly, and easier to pick up and play. A&A is almost too indepth, but of course it depends on your playstyle and compatriots.
My college roommate had a couple of those games:
A&A;
Shogun;
Invasion America or something, which was a little simpler than the above two.
And I'm still trying to get people to play Illuminati....