We've seen THURN AND TAXIS come and go. PILLARS OF THE EARTH? Where are you now? TORRES anyone? Of course not--these games are favorites of yesteryear. As AGRICOLA ascends to the top of the charts, what will next year's flavor be?
Look at that poor kid. I hope you don't like this game very much, because once your old enough to play it, it will have been LOOOOOONG forgotten. Here's an accolade from a GenCon attendee:
Jamaica might be the best-looking game I've ever seen. The level of quality on everything from the four full-color rulebooks (each printed in a different language) to the cards, counters and boards is extremely high. All games have artwork; Jamaica's cards are works of art. The icing on this visual tour de force is the absolutely perfect interior box design which holds every single component firmly in place in a neat and well-organized manner. Along with being the best-looking game I saw this year, Jamaica has the best storage system possible.
So, visual quality and box engineering aside, is the game any good? Yup, it's great. It can be explained in a few minutes, it uses easy to see icons for every action, and it plays quickly. You only have to make a couple of decisions per round and every possible action, from loading goods onto your pirate ship to combat with other players, plays out quickly.
Explained in a few minutes? Check.
Four-Color Rulebooks, awesome interior box, other crap that doesn't matter? Check.
That's a reasonable prediction, but the thing that mitigates against it is that you can actually buy Jamaica. "It" games of the recent past, like AGRICOLA, CAYLUS, PILLARS OF THE EARTH, et al, became BGG favorites during the months-long wait for an English-language release.
The game might however replace TTR. The game is as complex as a kids game, the winner is determined mostly through luck and there is only really on strategy (saving the double-movement card for a high die roll). To quote Barnes: "If this game [Jamaica] was published in the 1980s, nobody would be playing it today anymore."
Nevertheless Jamaica has one problem which would kill its hype: Roll&Move. Oh, and combat.
Nah, the next Big Thang is Le Havre, the next design by Uwe Rosenberg some Elite Few are already saying it'll be better than Agricola. It's rumored to have resources in the middle of the table that more than one player may take. I don't need brown cubes, but my opponent on the left might! Do I take them or not?!? MAGNIFICIENT STRATEGY!
Oh shit, that does sound like a contender. "Well, Charles, I simply had to take the brown cubes---Charles, please put the brandy snifter down--don't swirl it towards me so threateningly. If I didn't take them, Sydney would have--and we can't have that can we? Are there any more canapes?"
Games
How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
