Ameritrash Games are board games which are of the American style. The "Trash" in the title was put there because, in the 2000s, there was a sense of disdain from the Euro Game community for more luck-based games with plastic components rather than strategy, skill, and wooden components common in Euro Games. The Ameritrash game category essentially fits in a number of Tabletop Games that neither fit into the Classic Board Games or Euro Game varieties. Often such games will have cover art that is cartoony and plastic, toy like miniatures will be included. Some of these plastic minis are more detailed than others, and there are many internet arguments over the quality of Ameritrash game components.
Normally an Ameritrash game will have a theme rather than being an abstract game, making such board games reminiscent of NES cartridge art, with Covers Always Lie included. Covers Always Lie is more common on older Ameritrash board game box art, because more recent board games in this category, sometimes reprints of older games that have been around for a long time but went out of print - will be more in tune with modern aesthetics than you would find on the pre-Photoshop, Trapper Keeper style board game box art.
Compare Narrative Board Game, another type of game with an emphasis on theme.
Ameritrash Games include:
- Arkham Horror: The city of Arkham (and the world) are threatened by an awakening Ancient One. Are you a bad enough dude to save the world?
- Battle Cry: A Civil War themed wargame by Richard Borg, who also designed Memoir 44. In this wargame you play as a number of generals in the The American Civil War and there are historical scenarios included in the rules to reenact important battles in the conflict using the game and its pieces to refight an already existing historical battle.
- Deep Madness: Mansions of Madness under the sea! Cooperative Cyberpunk / Survival Horror-flavored Dungeon Crawling in an undersea mining facility rapidly filling with both water and monsters.
- Descent: Journeys in the Dark: A Dungeon Crawler where several players take the roles of adventurers, teaming up to battle the forces of the Overlord. Similar to a tabletop roleplaying game, except the Overlord is supposed to try to defeat the players at all costs.
- Dust: It's Risk, only Dieselpunk and you control mechs in a Zeerust setting and tactical forces to control territories, will you conquer the world?
- Elder Sign: Arkham Horror with dice! A quick-playing game with the same characters and themes as Arkham Horror.
- Eldritch Horror: Arkham Horror not in Arkham! Essentially a simplified "replacement" game for its predecessor.
- Krosmaster: Adorable Super-Deformed anime characters fight to the death. The same characters and components work in several related games.
- Mansions of Madness, which is more akin to Heroscape meets H. P. Lovecraft than Arkham Horror was.
- Mice and Mystics: A fairy-tale cooperative game which opens with the heroes being turned to mice by the Big Bad.
- Nuns On The Run: Catholic Splinter Cell like game where you must use hidden movement to track down your Secret Wish, a special item you must bring back to your cell without being caught by the senior nuns in the Abbey to win the game.
- Rum & Bones: Two pirate crews fight a boarding action, struggling to cripple each others' ships. Designed to have the feel of a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.
- Talisman: An adventure quest game originally made by Games Workshop which pits you and your friends against each other on a journey towards the Crown of Command, a magical object of power that allows you to rule the entire realm. Infamous for including a game feature where if you are turned into a Toad, you drop all of your items and cannot fight with your regular stats.
- Tales of the Arabian Nights: A strange adventure game based on the 1001 Arabian Nights. You wander around the Middle East as weird things that happen to your character are read from a storybook.
- A Touch of Evil: Similar to Arkham Horror, but with a Gothic Horror theme and minus the soul-crushing difficulty.
- Zombicide: It's the Zombie Apocalypse. A handful of survivors attempt to arm themselves and flee from an incoming zombie horde. Also available as Zombicide: Black Plague, with a Dung Ages theme.
