Fortress: Ameritrash Blog

"Sail Ho!" comes the cry from the heights of the main mast. "What do you make of her?" bellows the Mate. He moves towards the rail. The spray of water from over the side feels good upon his face. "She flies the Union Jack," comes the reply. The mate nods grimly. If it is the ship they have been seeking, the British vessel that has been molesting American trade in this part of the Caribbean, it was apt to get hot. He lays his hand upon the shoulder of near by...

I first reported on Quarriors! a long time back, when it was first released at a GenCon 2011. Anyhow, I played it three times and I talked to a bunch of people who had just dropped fifty bucks on it; unanimous love and gushing praise was on their lips. Well, after a year of not playing it, I decided to get a copy of it so my kid would have a game that we could play together that wouldn't bore me to death. Turns out that not only does my kid not want to play it, it bores me...

The small red dome offers solace. It gives the eye something to focus on. A feature to keep the mind from snapping as it searches for anything to occupy it other than the horrible white. The  nylon sides snap and crackle as the winds blow unimpeded across the wasteland.  The man wipes away the flakes from his goggles with one heavily gloved hand, adjusts the fur lined hood of his parka and trudges on. Not too far to go now. The tracks left by his shuffling feet are soon obliterated by the layers of snow that continue...

Names of games are important to help a potential buyer understand what the game is about, and to invoke certain emotions or points of view that may help persuade the customer to buy the game.  For example, “Dragon Rage” tells you a lot about that game.  Yet the trend in Eurostyle boardgames for a while was that names told you absolutely nothing about the game: Carcassonne, San Juan, St. Petersburg, Puerto Rico, those titles tell you absolutely nothing.Perhaps such uninformative titles are selected because most of the good game titles have already been used. It may also be because...

If you’re someone who would be following my blog but didn’t listen to my interview of America’s next top Summoner Wars playtester, you can find it here.   Back in Episode 53, I was the first one to get the ‘podcast origin story’ treatment, with Colby.  Perhaps he knew even then that he wanted to get rid of me so he thought he’d get mine out of the way first. I decided to pass the torch to Cory Bullock with an interview, because I’ve grown to know him pretty well and figured people...