I think Eric Raymond's post on the new generation of boardgames (starting with Settlers of Catan back in the 90's) is ontop something. I'm not as hungry for the kind of wargame that he is; for one thing, it's a lot harder to find like-minded gamers for that than it is for the more general game. That, and I'd have to be convinced that a wargame didn't involve investing an entire weekend :) Anyway, I think Raymond is spot on with this evaluation of the changes:

I enjoy strategy games. I’ve been playing them since the heyday of the elaborate hundreds-of-tiny-counters hex-map historical-simulation wargames in the 1970s and early 1980s. But those games don’t get played much any more, largely because they took so long to set up and learn; after 1985 or so younger gamers moved to computer simulations instead, and as the hex-wargame genre stagnated many old-school gamers eventually abandoned it in favor of military-miniatures gaming.

The set up is a killer. I used to play Third Reich (a European Theater level game of WWII), and just setting up for a game took over an hour - part of that was deciding how to do initial deployment. It took forever, and the game mechanics were tedious. Computer Automation has taken that ground over, I think. Where I've gone is the so-called "EuroGame":

Be that as it may…in the late 1990s we started to see a new wave of fresh, innovative game designs in a different style. Settlers of Catan in 1995 was the harbinger. This game of trade and civilization-building featured an elegant combination of simple mechanics with tricky, relatively deep strategy. There are several possible routes to victory in Settlers, all requiring both positional tactics and careful management of constrained resources. The game is made more attractive by colorful, high-quality physical furniture and tasteful artwork. It can be played lightly and socially or in an intense minimaxing mode, and (importantly) is really designed for three or four players though it can be played one-on-one. It rewards repeated playing.

Our current favorite is Caylus, which combines many of the elements of Puerto Rico and Settlers of Catan. It's a longer game, but well worth it, IMHO. I'm not looking to get back into wargames like Raymond is, but I'm sure glad that board game design has had a renaissance.