The Man Who Built Catan
Catan was my first German-style board game[0].<p>I've since "graduated" on to more complicated games, so I rarely play it anymore, but I find that it's an effective "gateway" German-style board game. Almost all of my friends who have played it love it, and have gone on to try (and enjoy) other German-style games. Catan is nice because it's sufficiently more complex (and well-designed) than Monopoly so as to be interesting, but not so complex that the rules take ages for newcomers to learn (as is often the case with many more complicated games).<p>My personal favorite at the moment is Through the Ages[1], though I'm also a fan of Puerto Rico[2], as it's a rare example of a good game that has (almost) <i>no</i> random elements to its gameplay, such as rolling dice or shuffling a deck. (There is <i>one</i> set of tiles that is shuffled, but it's rather inconsequential and could easily be made deterministic if desired).<p>Here in NYC, there's a cafe dedicated to board games and which was funded on Kickstarter[3]. As a huge board game geek, I'm really glad they're catching on.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-style_board_game" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-style_board_game</a><p>[1] <a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/25613/through-the-ages-a-story-of-civilization" rel="nofollow">http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/25613/through-the-ages-a-...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3076/puerto-rico" rel="nofollow">http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3076/puerto-rico</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.uncommonsnyc.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.uncommonsnyc.com/</a>