Miscellaneous: Apples to Apples

I bought Apples to Apples one year after trying to find a game for my ILs for Christmas. We found this reviewer who makes videos of his reviews, taking out the game and showing how it is played. You can check it out for yourself here at Board Games with Scott. I bought it, we played it, and I loved it.

Up to ten people can play this game (more if you play in teams like I did at the work Christmas party last month.) The object of the game is to collect green cards, the number of green cards needed to win the game is dependent upon how many people are playing (tells in the directions). The other cards are red. The green cards have adjectives on them and the red cards have nouns or noun phrases.

Each person starts with 7 red cards. The judge of the round pulls a green card and reads it to the rest of the players. Each player, except the judge, has to find in their hand a red card with a noun that fits the adjective. The players put the card they've chosen face down on the table for the judge. The judge mixes them up (so he/she doesn't know who put down what card) and then choses the best red card. The green card the judge pulled goes to the person who put in the winning red card. Each player except the judge gets a new red card (to stay at 7), there's a new judge, and the next round starts. Of course if you are the judge you don't get to play a red card that round.

What makes the game so fun is how to win. If possible, you are trying to pick a card the judge will like. For example, the judge was M in one round and the green card was 'scary.' A decent red card to put down would be 'school' because most people say they hated school or it was scary. But M loves school so that wouldn't be a wise choice of cards. She would more likely go for a red card that said 'spiders' or 'spit."

Again, I love this game. My ILs would say this is because I win a lot, but that isn't true. They prefer the games that don't rely on wit or knowledge, like Uno (Uno Attack and Uno Spin) which are more like games of chance. I like playing Mexican Train Dominoes and Rummikub which involve a little more thought. In Apples to Apples, like any card game, you can get stuck with a yucky hand, but you can use a little strategy to help you out. The only caveat is who you play the game with. Strangers don't play this game well because they don't know each other well enough. All the negative reviews I saw were because they played with people they didn't know.

*The cards have changed slightly in appearance since Mattel took over.