The Man Who Built Catan
Catan was my first German-style board game[0].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).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) no random elements to its gameplay, such as rolling dice or shuffling a deck. (There is one set of tiles that is shuffled, but it's rather inconsequential and could easily be made deterministic if desired).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.[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-style_board_game[1] http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/25613/through-the-ages-a-...[2] http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3076/puerto-rico[3] http://www.uncommonsnyc.com/