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If you were in one of a handful of places in 1995 in the United States, you knew that a revolution was starting. It's been going on quietly ever since, even though most people are still blissfully ignorant of it. This game, Settlers of Catan, was the opening shot.

To continue a theme, my fondness for German board games is no secret. I’m hardly a Germanophile; it's just that the most complex, thoughtful, and engaging tabletop games seem to come out of that country. For the most part, they lend themselves to social gatherings, including family groups, are generally well researched, have far more substance than games like Trivial Pursuit or Taboo, and yet do not require the same commitment of time, study and focus of a game like Go. Ra, Modern Art, and Puerto Rico, the subject of this review, are among my favorites.

Like a well-written book, each playing of Puerto Rico reveals further complexities. A trading game set in colonial Puerto Rico, when ships had sails, the game tasks you, the player, with sending goods back to Spain. While there are several different mechanisms that become more or less important as the game progresses, there is really one way to win: amass the most victory points, something that's important to remember -- during a recent game, one of my fellow players adhered to what seemed like a foolish strategy, seeking out quantities of a commodity with no cash value, but won the game, having earned the most points by sending the most goods back to the Old World.