Could be the quintessential Ameritrash game...and it rocks, unlike so many Euros that simply waddle. Seriously, the amount of dice rolled in this game is phenomenal. If you don't have fun tossing piles of dice into a box lid, go play Elfenland and push the little booties around. Monster slugathon indeed!

I remember looking at the playtesting credits and the Charlottesville game club is there. They played a lot of Titan and 18xx when I was there. A few people played ASL, but I think the majority of the games played were Settlers, Princes of Florence, and Puerto Rico interspersed with the lighter fare.

The Gorgonstar Edition of Titan was published in 1980 and the borderland expansion for it in 1981. The Bruce Shelly reworked Avalon Hill version was in 1982. see http://www.morgud.com/interests/titan/ for some PDFs with historic articles tracing the prototype beginning development in 1975.

As to where an 1980 add for Titan has you mail order from Gorgonstar in Joliet Illinois (which makes sense to me as I played in some early TitanWar conventions in Rockford,IL).

AmeriTrash, like Redneck, is not a geographic location, it's state of mind.

Oh, and Steve, as you say Tramp is very much missed, but no longer missing. He's driving a cab and doesn't want to talk abut fantasy art. Sad fur us, but the mans' gotta live his life the way he wants.

Truer words were never spoken. For instance, it is a fact that the Ameritrashiest wargame of all time is Warhammer 40,000. I don't think Advanced Squad Leader even comes close. Let's use this list to score it, yeah?

Item one: dice. If more dice=more fun, you will never want to play another game. WH40K players gladly roll dozens of six-sided dice all at once on the table. Then pick out the ones that come up six and roll them again. Then pick out the ones of _those_ that come up five or six and roll them again. The end result of which is that one of your Ultramarines chipped a nail.

I'd say that violence, destruction, and chaos are the three metathemes in Ameritrash...much better than dancing ducks or hedgehogs, that's for damn sure.

I would have thought that the idea that Canada was trivial would be offensive to most Canadians. I'm sure there are millions of Canadians who strongly believe that Canada matters.

Line of sight!

Well...at least we can still hang the guy responsible!

On Warhammer 40,000 as the Ameritrashiest Game of All Time:

Item two: Fantasy Themes. Are you kidding me? 40K is both Fantasy AND Science Fiction, of the cartooniest sort imaginable.

Score: 2 out of 2

I can't imagine asking any over the age of 10 to play "Hey Where's My Fish".

EDITED TO ADD:

Yes, I don't mind Anglo-American games being described as "American"- we can do without the bad publicity!

no

american is an off shot of britain

*pshaw* upstart colonials donchaknow!

Oh, this made my day.

On Warhammer 40,000 as the Ameritrashiest Game of All Time:

Excellent title? Besides the game itself, how can you beat "Codex: Space Marines," "Battle for Macregge," "Battlefleet Gothic," and so on? I mean, 40K _has_ chainsaw warriors, but they don't get a book title because they're only about the fortieth or fiftieth most awesome thing in the game!

Three of three.

I love seeing comments when people are "concerned" about components...I grew up with cardboard chits and I still love 'em...sometimes you even had to cut them out yourself!

And thank you very much for noticing.

Mmmm... chits...

I want it if only to hold and caress but my wife would never give it a go even though she loves Cthulhu-themed stuff. Because of the chits I reckon.

On Warhammer 40,000 as the Ameritrashiest Game of All Time:

This is going to be the big failing. There's not much cardboard in this game. (Star Fleet Battles, surely one of the top ten Ameritrashiest games of all time, would have been a good illustration for this item, by the way.) To be fair, if you were willing to extend the idea from cardboard chits to lumps of plastic, then you bet they're everywhere. Weapons, armor, communicators, accessories of all kinds must be modeled on the figures when the game is played According to Hoyle. Even the color of the paint job on certain models has an effect in game terms!

For that reason, I claim half a point.

3.5 out of 4.

Unfortunately, this is one of the prejudices that many folks have against Ameritrash games. The thing is, the outline/hierarchical structure for presenting rules is a great way to organize and reference rules- if Fantasy Flight did their rules like this they'd be a lot easier to use but then all the Eurogamers would freak out because of percieved "complexity". Of course, if you're playing a Euro with one page of rules it's sort of irrelevant.

27, Male, Arizona

What...did I miss something?

I completely Disagree.
Numerical numbering in a ruleset is no help at all. What helps is a good index for common and odd rules. Most good miniatures games don't use a numbering system.

INDEX FTW

ASL isn't/wasn't the only game to use numbered paragraphs. Most, if not all wargames from the '70's were structered that way. Again for reference. We're going out to read a rpg book,memorize it word for word then play. Hey I rather play than read!!!

On Warhammer 40,000 as the Ameritrashiest Game of All Time:

Mountains and mountains of rules. For a game with so few stats, that is so unconcerned with modeling anything related to reality, how do they stretch it out to hundreds of pages of rules and unit types and exceptions and exemptions and exceptions to the exceptions? It's really a work of art.

A point that's really worth making, too: _Simulation_ games are often complex of necessity. There is an attempt to model significant parts of the real world, which is a complex place. So it may be necessary for the simulation to be complex in order to give a desirable level of verisimilitude. But the best Ameritrash games are massively complex just for the sheer hell of it.

Consider a fully tricked out, expanded and supplemented Car Wars. Did Steve Jackson ever go to the slightest effort to work out what rocket launchers would "really" do to armored cars with rocket engines? Of course not. He just went crazy because the discerning Ameritrash gamer _wants_ a crazy rococo system that takes as much work as a law degree.

In this sense, ASL is really not the definitive Ameritrash game. It works hard to model aspects of the real world.

Warhammer 40,000, on the other hand, is so pure it should almost get extra marks on this item.

Score: 4.5 of 5

That guy on the box looks just like you.

My gosh. Robert, I didn't know you were a Box Art Model. All this time I thought it was just your picture and you were about to play the winning card in a game of "Flinch."

Every time I see this picture I think that Dracula seems to be some sort of cyclops...

Doesn't that mean once out of every 200 games?

-shnar

On Warhammer 40,000 as the Ameritrashiest Game of All Time:

Chrome? You'd better believe it. _Most_ of the game is chrome, and the evil corporate masters are forever spitting out new reams of the stuff. You've got to subscribe to their magazine and check their web site every week just to keep up with all the new rules for the bright shiny they're pushing this month in their retail stores.

Score: 5.5 out of 6

The concept of this game is so unbelieveably awesome...the US nukes the middle east and the world freaks out and invades. Do you think there's an auction in this one? HELL NO!

This is one of my all time favorites. The suspense as your supply line stretches longer and as partisans pop up is nerve shattering! This was my first game which used something other than a D6, to boot! Gotta love those MB Gamemaster classics!!!

MB= M.Barnes. Coincidence?

This is what it is all about- lots of plastic, mayhem, and dice rolling-and there will only be one player left standing (or sitting).

MB Gamemaster rules!

According to BGG & IMDB, Fortress: America came out in 1986, Red Dawn in 1984.

And we were taking notes every time we watched it, too

On Warhammer 40,000 as the Ameritrashiest Game of All Time:

How about a military theme, as realized through the school notebook sketches of twelve year old boys? Steroidal Space Marines engaging ravening alien hordes at two paces with machine guns! Swords! Everyone's helmet gets knocked off without killing them!

Score: 6.5 out of 7

I certainly don't demand miniatures, but they are _fun_...given a choice between a bag of brown wooden cubes that I could buy at a craft store or a pile of ogres, dragons, and other fantasy crap, guess what I'll pick?

"And miniature bits are NOT for sissies, let me tell you. Not when you walk across 'em in the dark in stocking feet."

You're not supposed to sharpen the swords.

Cubes do not come with the game. Some people use them to mark which countries are controlled. So the guy you played with must have added them himself. Now, I don't know if that changes you previous comment, but I just thought I'd pipe in.

Yeah, what Barry said, miniatures are definitely not for sissies...

Back in the days when I still was into miniature gaming - and mind you, we are now talking about real, neat, metal miniatures, not any heretical plastic trash! - I somehow managed to leave one of my warriors with a wicked, barbed, sharp spear standing on my bed. Then, when I was going to sleep, I sat on my bed full-weight, wearing nothing but boxers. Went straight through them like, it was like hot butter and knives or hot knives and butter, what ever.

Next thing I know, I'm crawling down the hallway with a maniacally grinning warrior hanging from my behind, with his spiky, long weapon stuck nicely couple of centimeters deep in my flesh... And my brother laughed at me. Hard. I tell you, it hurt pretty much pulling it out, with all the spikes in the spear and all that. I still have a scar back there.

Don't you dare to tell me that miniatures are for kids!

On Warhammer 40,000 as the Ameritrashiest Game of All Time:

No need to discuss this one, is there? Except to say that the publishers maintain a whole worldwide network of retail stores to sell 40kers hundreds and hundreds of additional plastic miniatures at absolutely outlandish prices. That should be like twenty points of extra credit.

7.5 out of 8

Cards add flavor and variety...things that scare Eurogamers.

Oh yes it is - TI:3 is Ameritrash Supreme. By trying to Euro-fy the game, they made it orders of magnitude more complex and top-heavy. I like the game but it's about one step away from collapsing under its own weight.

Why does TI3 confuse people so? It's the Un-Eurogame. It's the Anti-Eurogame. But since it has Euro mechanics, players fall for it every time.

Of course, my games of PR don't go 8 hours without finishing, so I may be wrong...

The political cards are the best part of TI. One of our group members loves to read the cards in a stately voice, really over the top. Everyone gets a kick out of it.

Yeah the game is cheese but if you play along, it is incredibly fun.

On Warhammer 40,000 as the Ameritrashiest Game of All Time:

Okay, you got me on this one. No cards, thank God, in 40K. Don't tell Games Workshop: someone might get an idea.

This game has a ridiculously long set up time, but once you invest the time it's a fairly decent game.

oh yeah, grognads?

what did spock find in kirk's toilet?




the captain's log.

I'm still waiting for the game to come out based on the movie "My Dinner with Andre". Given the theme, though, it would probably be best represented with Euro mechanics.

Ohmigosh, I know this thread is three years old....but reading this post made me spew coffee through my nose.

On Warhammer 40,000 as the Ameritrashiest Game of All Time:

40K is so Ameritrashy, it makes it's own franchise. (Kind of like making it's own gravy...) Novels, computer games, you got it! Well, that's if you can call brain-numbing tripe like "Black Sky, Dead Sun" a "novel." I tried to read it for the sake of my 15-year-old brother, I really did, but it just made me want to drink heavily.

Score: 8.5/10

You could not have chosen a better game for this, aside from Nuclear War. I don't think I've ever played a game of Supremacy that didn't end in nuclear winter!

It doesn't get any better than plastic mushroom clouds. Every time I introduce this game to a new person they'll spend at least 20 minutes putting little mushroom clouds on things and getting really excited over the thought that it's been nuked... and really... who can blame them?

OMG...MB...that comment just made me shoot milk out my nose at about 400 psi...which is weird, because I'm drinking 7-Up.

Which is why Nuclear War is an Ameritrash game! (and a fun one at that, didn't realize it's from the 1960s!)

-shnar

On Warhammer 40,000 as the Ameritrashiest Game of All Time:

Had to check this, because the guiding principle of 40K is to have nothing that makes sense or comes from the real world if possible...but they have "melta bombs" (remember that 12 year old boy with his sketchbook?) that are described as fusion weapons. So, yeah: nukes.

9.5/11

They do have the Cube Tower.

more accurately, that's the "Euro" 'Battle' tower! `cause everybody KNOWS that it was the preferred 'mechanic' of "Warfare" huh?
"mon dieu! zhat Wellington hast 'out-gravitized' moi Left Flank with his 'troop droppings'! I curse YOU Sir Isaac Newton and where were OUR 'gravitaciously' endowed scholars in ALL of zhis!?!"

<--Feld Marchel NAY

Newton and Einstein. Double envelopment.

On Warhammer 40,000 as the Ameritrashiest Game of All Time:

I don't really know how to evaluate this criterion. Seems like its just an extra point for being "Dark Tower."

Score: N/A

Fantasy, Military and Horror themes---I think that makes 3 themes you mentioned, but I can't be sure.

And you've forgotten the Capitalism theme, so far in my reading. Special Ameritrash points if a game makes you shuffle around a lot of play money.

I bought a toy helicopter just for this game!

I admire you.

On Warhammer 40,000 as the Ameritrashiest Game of All Time:

With appropriate allowances for the sci-fi theme, we have a couple of good examples. First, the "Necrons:"

"Terrifying, immortal, soulless warriors have risen from ancient stasis-tombs, their weaponry able to strip a man to atoms. But the true terror of the Necron lies with their divine masters, who gorge themselves on the essence of billions."

Robot zombies. Hey, why not?

Also, the Space Marines have their Dreadnoughts, which are mecha thingies with "mostly dead" marines at the controls. For some reason or another.

Score: 10.5/12

"Conservativism" is an understatement...I'd much rather play a game with the garish, dayglo pallet of Nexus Ops than the brown-on-darker-brown mush or pastels that so many Euros seem to favor. I swear, Euros tend to be either the same colors as dirty dishwater or Precious Moments figurines. Give me BAROQUE!