Newbie's first impressions

[Chazar]

This thread has moved on already, but since someone mentioned that "Settlers of Catan" started a whole genre of these "german-style" boardgames: This is not true! There are much more of these board games around and most of them are much more entertaining (IMHO).

However, it is true that these games are much less fun on the PC than playing with friends around a proper table with a drink and a snack. Nevertheless it is worth to try www.brettspielwelt.de: One can play several modern boardgames there. It is entirely for free and without advertisments, but requires a Java-enabled browser to play. While it is less fun to play online (against humans only) this site is a perfect place to test a boardgame before actually buying it (nothing against the boardgamegeek-reviews, but a review can never replace the actual test play of a game). Most of this site is available in english as well.