I've been getting really into board games recently. A few weeks ago I bought a game called Settlers of Catan, where you trade resources with other players and try to use them to build settlements, cities and roads. It doesn't sound terribly exciting when I write it out like that, but trust me, it's a lot of fun.

Settlers of Catan

So much fun, in fact, that I bought another game called Carcassonne. It looks pretty similar to Settlers, but the gameplay is pretty different. With Carcassonne you take turns flipping and placing pieces of a map onto the table. You also have little wooden guys that you can place on the map to collect points for completed roads/cities/farms. 

Carassonne

I'm trying not to go too crazy with what is probably a phase I'm going through, so I've been resisting buying more games than those two. However, I really want a game called Merchants and Marauders. It looks like Settlers of Catan meets an RPG at sea: