Some of you who remember the early days of the Ameritrash "movement" on BGG probably remember me offering little quality commentary or insight, but a vast quantity of unwanted opinions, insults, pictures of bombs, chicks, off topic off color youtube videos and other worthless drivel.
When the Fortress: Ameritrash blog was started, I was one of the original eight - the bunch that came together and decided to start the blog that eventually became this website. This column, and the columns to follow, explain why until my blackbeard review, you haven't seen much of me on this site.
What follows is investigative journalism, an expose on a degenerate, perverse, corrupt, demented and disgusting subculture of board gaming.
Its going to take a while to tell the full story of everything that happened and what I saw. Some of it is still hard for me to talk about. These articles are going to serve not only as an expose on a depraved subgroup of gamers, but as a record of what happened to me, a biography of one of the most bizarre experiences of my life..... going deep undercover to unmask the devils in our midst.
EUROSNOOTS IN OUR MIDST
Sometime in 2007...
We had some inside information, some intelligence on the eurosnoot "inner circle." Malloc had been doing some investigation into a shipment of Hannibal pre-order generals after overhearing some conversations at the WBC. Apparently, the generals had arrived at port in Baltimore and triggered some sort of eurosnoot high alert. A couple of very large bearded men were discussing where to meet later that night - apparently "the generals" would be there. His curiousity peaked, Malloc made a mental note of the specific dock in south Baltimore the cube pushers were talking about.
That night, at the warehouse, Malloc quietly snuck in through a side door. Immediately, he saw with his own two eyes what many of us had suspected for years. A secret society of hardcore uber-eurosnoots. Bad games were only the beginning and stealing the Hannibal plastic generals was only the tip of the iceberg. Cubes, meeples, and ducats were flowing like wine. Hundreds of overweight and poorly groomed 40-somethings, men and women alike, were gathered around what looked like a huge assembly line. The plastic Hannibal generals were being melted down, and being formed into... Wicker baskets? What the fuck? The melted generals were also being formed into cubes, meeples, and tiny houses. The assembly line was an unbelievable sight, and for a moment, Malloc was mesmerized as his brain tried to process what his eyes were showing him.
A scrawny guy with a Days of Wonder logo press on tattoo bumped into Malloc, jarring him back into reality. Then it hit him. He looked around the room and took in a scene that blew his mind... There were guys playing ticket to ride and snorting coke out of the trains. Four chunky women were playing some game about medieval farming with huge stacks of real cash sitting on the table beside them. Everyone was speaking in a broken combination of german and english. There was a huge game of werewolf going, and as people were being eliminated, the guy running the game was coming up behind them and slitting their throats. In the corner, mint copies of Dune were being used as dartboards. At one table, three bearded chunkers were shooting something up while they played Taj Mahal. Thats when Malloc noticed the stylized meeple-pentagram on the wall painted in what looked a lot like blood. And what were the live goats for? And why was the six foot seven obese man with green hair wearing a kilt and a gimp suit staring at him?
Malloc looked down at his T-shirt - he had forgotten to change out of the fantasy flight games shirt he had worn to the con. He turned and ran like a man possessed, like a man with the devil on his heels. He made it out alive... barely.
You see, Malloc had stumbled across something that was bigger and more sinister than the rumors had let on. The uber-snoot hyper-spielfreak counterculture was stranger and more depraved and evil then any of us had imagined.
When he returned from his odd journey, all the Fortress Ameritrashers got an email. We talked it over and decided that we had to do something. We couldn't just sit by while these cube pushers destroyed a good company like Valley Games. Plus, the gaming world deserved to know the truth about "these games of ours" and their proponents. These were sick, depraved, meeple worshipping freaks. Someone had to go undercover and find out who was behind all of this.
Ubarose couldn't do it - an attractive female would have stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the spielfreaks. With Malloc already on their hitlist, Bradford, Barnes and Robartin too recognizable, Skeletor and MattDP overseas, that didn't leave much. I was expendable and knew some local euro players with "ins" at the gathering of friends. Did I mention expendable?
We decided that I was the best option to go deep undercover and blow the fucking roof off the spielfreak eurosnoot ring. It would require me to lay low for a while and not post much on the site... but if we could get to the bottom of this it would be worth it.
I had already received an invitation to play Through the Ages with some local euro players. I had to become one of them if I wanted to get to the bottom of all this.
Next time... A review of Through the Ages and the second chapter in DEEP COVER
I hope this type of semi-fictional article isn't too bizarre for the site. This first one is setup, the rest will have reviews sprinkled in with the bad fiction.