Through the Lens: Board Games - Game Design Theory - page 133

Eurogames are games created by Europeans, most frequently by
Germans. Germany has become something of a mecca of board-game
design, and it hosts the world's largest board game convention, The Spiel
(held in Essen). These games usually have somewhat dry or minimal
themes, often about farming, medieval courts, or trading in the Mediter-
ranean Sea. They are notable for two things: first, thematically, they are
almost never violent or about war. Secondly, they embrace game mecha-
nisms and the art of game design in a really unprecedented way. In fact,
Eurogames are also sometimes called designer board games because the
game designer's name appears on the box.
Ameritrash was originally a pejorative term, which has since been
adopted by lovers of the style of game and is now in common use. These
games, usually created in the United States, tend to have much higher
quality production levels than Eurogames. They often have really in-
tricate components, and bright, striking graphic designs. Ameritrash
games also tend to use more exciting themes, such as those based on
popular science-fiction TV shows, Dungeons & Dragons , or the Love-
craft mythos. They are typically extremely dice-heavy and often derive
much of their gameplay directly from Dungeons & Dragons .

Area-Control Games

Examples: Go, El Grande , Chaos in the Old World , Small World , Samu-
rai

An area-control game is one in which you try to capture more territory
than your opponent (they are sometimes referred to as area influence
games). Sometimes the mechanism is expressed through a realistic mili-
tary conflict, but more often the representation is abstract. There's al-
most always a grid of some type, although the grid not need be square or
hexagonal; games such as Small World feature spaces that are unequal
in size. In some games, such as the popular tile-laying game, Carcas-
sonne , the area to be captured is laid down as the game is played. In these
instances, the composition of the area that can be captured is not even
known to players at the beginning of the game.

Breaking Stalemates
An inherent problem with many of the area-control game designs is that
the simple “I capture one of your spaces, you capture one of mine� pat-
tern makes the game feel static, and in some cases can even stalemate a
match. Many games use an element of randomness to alleviate this. For
example, the Warhammer -themed Chaos In the Old World uses dice to