You have a game. Maybe you made it, maybe you bought it, and you want to play it with someone else. When they ask you what kind of game it is, all you tell them is “it’s a Euro”. They don’t feel up to a 3-hour engine building game about farming, so they say, “No thanks”. But what if the thing you actually held in your hands was a 45-minute tile-laying game they actually would have liked?

WHAT’S A EURO?

Euro and “german-style” board games have been around since the 1960s and 70s. If Euro still literally meant “games designed in Europe”, it would be descriptive enough. But the tabletop game arena has evolved, and game designers all over the world design use the aesthetics of early European games, as well as mix and rematch mechanics in new ways.

Opinions are very divided because they’re often complex and subjectively nuanced. The term “euro” contains too many qualifiers that aren’t universally held.

WHAT’S AMERITRASH?

Ameritrash, with roots back to the year 2000, is similarly vague, unhelpful, geographically inaccurate jargon, and littered with caveats now that game design has evolved. It has the added negative slant of the word “trash” in it, which is off-putting to newcomers to our hobby.

WHY BOTH TERMS BELONG IN THE TRASH.

What do people mean when they use the words “Euro” and “Ameritrash” to describe their games? Way too many things. And it’s become useless to the community of game designers and enthusiasts:

• It makes us lazy about describing our game to our playtesters and potential publishers.
• It unnecessarily polarizes opinions in our own communities.
• There are so many exceptions to the rules of what fits into what camp that the terms have no meaning.
• It creates a wall of indecipherable jargon between gamers and people who are new to board gaming and want meaningful recommendations.

A BIGGER, BETTER DICTIONARY

Here are some terms I like to use when describing games. Note that even if you don’t 100% understand what a term means, you can break it down and make some reasonable deductions:

Worker placement – You have a pool of pieces, which are used to activate different parts of the board.	Variable player powers – Players have different powers and abilities.
Limited action selection – Your options are reduced as the game continues.	Engine building – Creating a system to generate the maximum number of points.
Dice rolling – Dice play into the game.	Hand/Deck Building – You will be assembling a personal hand or deck through the course of the game.
Set Collection – The strategy of this game revolves around collecting resources of certain types or combinations.	Bidding – You will be wagering in-game currency to give yourself some advantage in this game.
Territory Control – The strategy of this game revolves around claiming the most territory and strategically cutting off your neighbors.	Player Elimination – Players will be removed from the game until only a single winner remains.

FOCUS ON TERMS THAT ARE OBJECTIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE

We need to ditch Euro, Ameritrash, and similarly useless blanket terminology. The more we practice using stronger and more accessible descriptions, the better we can explore the nuances of our own games and guide newcomers to game experiences they’ll enjoy.

• Tzolk’in is a worker placement game with a scarce resource availability, several upgrade paths, and features that make timing very important.
• Concordia is a hand-building game with aspects of territory control and resource management.
• Carcasonne is a tile-laying game with area control strategy.
• Keyflower combines map-building, worker placement, and bidding.
• King of Tokyo is a press-your-luck dice-rolling game about giant monsters fighting over Tokyo.
• Tsuro is a light “last-man-standing” tile-laying game where you’re trying to connect pathways.