Trash talk around here with our games usually devolves in to a very pretty and smooth flowing litany of obscenities which well endeavor to insult what ever ethnic group the country you happen to be playing represents, especially Italy and Poland for some odd reason.
The Italians get yelled at by the other players if they’re doing well while the Axis players yell and Italy if they do poorly (or historically accurate as we like to call it!).
For reasons that have become utterly lost to us now but I believe stretch back to a game I played as a freshman in high school (scary to think how long ago that was now) we blame any poor anti-aircraft rolls on the Poles. I can’t really explain that last one but every single time someone rolls for AA and wiffs it’s always blamed on the “stupid-crossed-eyed-Pol*k AA crews” regardless of which country they were playing (an interesting side note to this, In one game a Soviet player would shout the same obscenity listed about about his AA gun rolls, pick up the piece and shout “TOO THE GULAG!” and place them back in the box for another one, something he also did with his dice. The main difference was he would be very serious when he did it with his dice but he would laugh like a madman when he was “punishing” AA guns, to the point where it was getting creepy and we had to tell him to stop)
On another note, the most surreal moment I have ever had playing in Axis and Allies was when Global’40 first came out and I brought the game over to set up and play with my friends for the first time. I brought to my friend Brian’s house and we set it up in his gaming room (really just the dining room that he never uses). Now my friend Brian is very Jewish, he wears a Yarmulke and has a Mezuzah hanging up in his home. After laboring for about 45mins to set it up for the first time he and I sat and considered the board for a while, thinking on possible first moves and grander strategies for the game over all. I got up and left the room for a moment to get myself a glass of water and when I came back was greeted with one of the strangest sights I have ever seen. There stood Brian, leaning over the board, plotting out Germany’s first move, he became consumed with all the possibilities Germany had for its opening move and was fixated on trying to figure out a way for Germany to simultaneously invade Britain while still building up for Barbarossa, all while humming “Deutschland Uber Alles” to himself, wearing his Yarmulke, with a copy of the Torah in a glass case across the table from him. I took a long hard look at the glass of water I had just taken a gulp of, another long hard look at the scene in front of me, and decided that I needed to go sit down in the other room until I had regained control of my senses again.