How can you talk about board games and not mention Catan?

I particularly enjoy Agricola, Carcassonne, Pandemic, and Settlers of Catan.

Arkham horror, pandemic, pureto rico, ra, catan, powergrid, star trek, shadows over camelot..

Big fan of Descent. Unfortunately, most of my friends are into sissy "everybody wins" shit like Cards Against Humanity. If nobody is left sobbing at the end, it's not a real game!

King of Tokyo, Zombicide, Escape, Mansions of Madness, BSG the Board Game, Mice and Mystics (great co-operative game), X-Wing Miniatures game, Android: Netrunner (perhaps best 2 player game out there), Arkham Horror are just a few of the better games on my board game shelf... want to try 7 Wonders and many others... I play Small World, Forbidden Island, Eclipse, Ascension, and Summoner Wars on my iPad
Catan is a decent game, and does well as a gateway (I think Ticket to Ride is better, and perhaps even Pandemic)...
Love board gaming...

+1. Descent is awesome. Been working through it with my friends.

To play devils advocate:
the problem I have had trying to convince other people to try board games is simply learning the rules. Often they have a bewildering set of rules that must be learnt and enforced to play the game. This leads to arguments over interpretations of rules and so on.

Which is were video games win, because if there is one thing computers are good at, it is interpreting and enforcing byzantine rules.