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One evening last month I sat down to a first session with a game I had been really been looking forward to. My goal: get two turns in. I wasn't planning to play a whole game; I wasn't even planning for two correct turns. I was planning for two turns with a bunch of take-backs and oopsies and lessons learned so I could beat my understanding of the game into shape. That way when I sat down to it the second time, I'd be all ready to go. I love this part of gaming.

Those of you who’ve been following my articles for a while will no doubt recall that I unconditionally hate all co-operative games as weak, lovey-dovey puzzle-based rubbish that no red-blooded Ameritrash fan should be seen dead playing. It is therefore to my considerable embarrassment that I find I’ve got no less than two co-operative games in my all-time top five. There are also another two I’ve discovered that just about merit a “worth playing” pass mark from me. So, obviously, I’m going to have to backtrack on the “unconditionally” part of my previous statement but I still have big...

F:AT Looks Back: This article was originally published Jan. 13, 2008. I wrote this last year for my own blog, which has a readership of about...oh, none.  The piece was inspired by one of Ubarose's columns on F:AT, and I thought some folks here on the site might find it interesting.  Thanks,  Paul Hedrick

I really can’t be bothered to preface this with too much detail. As many of you will know I keep a list of the Ameritrash badge-holders on BGG and every year following the post-holiday badge giveaway I compiled a list of average game ratings by those user. Minimum 30 users rating, expansions don’t count and only the highest-rated edition of a game is counted. There are nearly 600 badge holders now. Here are their favourite games.

If you're anything like me--and based on the forums, I know that some of you definitely are--you deal with pleasing different audiences on a regular basis.  In my case, it's not just pleasing different gaming audiences, but also pleasing different sets of readers. Since I'm not one for being constrained creatively, I'd like to talk a bit about meeting the needs of different gamers (and readers), what's going on with my reviews going forward, and get some feedback on things that are useful to our readers.

When I was young and freshly unleashed upon the world of boardgame columnists, burning with points to prove and issues to argue, one of the concepts that I did to death was the idea that Ameritrash games owe a huge debt to Euros. In spite of my flogging the subject to death, I still feel it’s worth resurrecting from time to time. Not least to remind people in the Ameritrash camp that no matter how many times we justifiably chant “boring Euro-clone”, it’s a self-evident truth that back in the early 90’s, AT games were in very much as...

Well, I got my dates mixed up this year and thought I had another Monday to squeeze in a column before the big event. But I was wrong. However, finding inspiration for things to write about is often difficult so having come up with the idea for a relevant article, I’ll be damned if I’m not going to write it simply because it’s a bit late. And besides, some people do have post-Halloween parties through the week and this is actually the closest article publication slot I've got to the big day itself. So here goes. ...

Being a self-confessed game whore, I jump at every chance I get to play a new game and, if necessary, I'm prepared to work pretty hard at getting to grips with a new title, understanding it and trying to see where the "fun" part of the game is, whether it's in the strategy or whether it's in the story. Over the many years that I've been a hobby gamer there have only been two games that have defeated me in this regard after multiple attempts at understanding: Magic Realm and Paths of Glory. Both are games which would appear...

As a general rule one of the things I usually look for in a game is some direct player interaction. I don't much mind if its heavily moderated by action selection or some similar Euro-style mechanic, indeed some of my favourite titles solve the perennial problems of multi-player conflict in this manner, so long as it's in there somewhere. My tolerance for low interaction games is very low - something I'll only bring out once in a while when the occasion demands it. So it's no great surprise that for a long time I found the idea of solo...

Reading some posts on the fading appeal of a few recently published Ameritrash games made me think about what actually "makes" a good AT game, and in a broader sense, a good game in general. Yes, I do think about these things, in between sessions of Tibetan humming (therapy for my angst of card based combat) and binge drinking (helping me to get through the occasional euro that hits my gaming group's "Friday-anything-can-happen" nights).