I didn’t really get into gaming until I met David. Sure, I had played Monopoly, Cranium, Risk and Clue (my brother and I may have designed our own Clue sheets with way more columns to help us deduce who dun it) but it wasn’t until David introduced me to, I think, Roll for the Galaxy, did I realize how much I loved real board games. Ok, those games are real board games, but they are more mainstream or commercial games, where as what I found I loved were hobby games.

So, needless to say, I had never heard of terms like Eurogame or Ameritrash let alone be able to say for sure which side of the fence I fell on. And it wasn’t until the last few weeks that I would be able to say for sure that I am an Ameritrash gamer. There you go. My name is Brittni and I am an Ameritrash gamer. Hi, Brittni.

For those of you who don’t know the difference between Euro and Ameritrash, I’ll steal the definition from BGG. Simply put, Eurogames tend to focus on streamlined, well-balanced play, with a minimal theme and more abstracted game mechanics, while Ameritrash focuses more on theme and dramatic gameplay.

While I have yet to find an Ameritrash game that could knock Blood Rage, Pipeline or Flotilla out of my top lists, I find that I enjoy the experience better. I just need to find a Viking or fantasy Ameritrash game with good art and components and Blood Rage will get an eviction notice.

David, on the other hand, is not just an Ameritrash gamer, he’s a wargamer. The problem he has had since he was a little boy sitting in the toy section with Axis and Allies in his lap while his mom shopped (true story) was that he didn’t have anyone to play these games with. He loves history and politics (he actually has a bachelors in Government International Relations) and wargames are perfect, but wargames are long, have a ton of rules and they are ugly. So ugly. He has been trying to get me to play wargames with him pretty much since we met and I’ve been able to fend him off until recently. Yeah, it took a global pandemic to get me to play wargames with him.

So, when this new wargame called An Attrition of Souls came out he was so excited I couldn’t not play it. But this is the board …

I almost died of boredom just posting that photo. It’s terrible. But David set up the game, read the rules to me and we played, me on the Entente side, he the Central Powers. Russia surrendered in the spring of 1915 and by fall the Germans and Austrians had taken over all of Europe. I was left yelling “WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE AMERICANS?!” So, immediately we set up the game again, and we added all of the optional rules. This time the Russians laid down their arms by the fall of 1914 and I was taken out by the spring of 1915, and I was again yelling “WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE AMERICANS?!”

Obviously, I was doing something wrong. Everything we had read said that the Central Powers was the harder side to play and there was even an optional rule to add an Industrial Point in the Rhineland to help the little guys out. So, David and I switched sides and we played again. The Germans took over Russia in the fall of 1914 before they even had a chance to surrender and we quit before the entirety of Europe was speaking German. And David would never be as uncouth as I, so I yelled “WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE AMERICANS?!” for him.

We went to bed, just knowing we were missing something. There was no way a game that has an 8.0 on BGG is that unbalanced. While I was sleeping, David was reading reviews and watching videos, trying to figure out what we were doing wrong. So, the next morning, instead of putting the game away, he reset everything and we played again. This time the British hit Salonica hard, and tried to push into Belgrade. Same outcome. Still no Americans.

Finally, we decided to take out the extra Industrial Point optional rule (something we really should have done sooner) and after a push by the French into the Rhineland and the Russians going crazy and making it all the way to Berlin, the Americans finally decided to join the war after Mexico invaded Texas. The Entente won in the Fall of 1917.

It was insane how taking out that one Industrial Point at the beginning made the game a balanced fight. Now I can’t wait to try and play on the Entente.

The big takeaway from this entire experience was that even when we thought the game might be unbalanced, we played it five times just to make sure, because it was so much fun to play! There are a ton of really interesting decisions, and the battle mechanics, where only one set of dice is rolled and either side hits off those rolls, is awesome.

Aaaaaannnnndddd you don’t even have to be a wargamer or even an Ameritrash gamer to enjoy this one. The designer, Scott Leibbrandt, has even said that despite working for a wargame company, he’s a “dirty Eurogamer at heart.” He came up with the mechanics first (and there are some really cool mechanics in this game, especially the bag building and movement rules) and then found a war to apply it to. So, if you can stomach the ugly, ugly, (sweet Baby Yoda it is so ugly) ugly art, you should try this one out!