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February 17th, 2008

February 17th, 2008

11:18 am [Link]

The Apples To Apples Project One of my favorite games in the whole world is Apples to Apples. (I've chronicled my love of it before, in this post, which - should you ever play with me - not only explains the game's concepts, but reveals the trump card that will always win for me.) But the problem with Apples to Apples is the surfeit of crap red cards. There are two types of good red cards: Effective and funny. The effective cards are cards with strong emotional attachments, like "The 1990s" and "New York City," that you know everyone at the table has a strong opinion on. Funny cards are things like "My Bedroom" and "Driving off a Cliff" - things that are so amusing out of place that they can sometimes win out of sheer randomness, and make you giggle even if they don't. (The best cards that are cards with both a strong emotional attachment and humor value - "Tom Cruise," anyone?) Sadly, generic cards like "The Everglades" and "Eleanor Roosevelt" will never have enough of an emotional attachment to win anything. Yes, there are circumstances where "The Everglades" might win, but it's with a really boring green card like "Old" or "Magnificent"... And even then, something like "The Pyramids" are likely to trump it. And there's nothing worse than having a hand full of crap while everyone else plays funny and/or good cards. (And yeah, Eleanor Roosevelt was a great lady, but nobody I know has such a deep love for her that they're going to pick her over anything else.) Hence, the Apples to Apples Hygration Project. My wife and I have gone through the base set and the three expansion packs we own, yanking out the uninteresting cards like "Nebraska," "Moths," and "Cary Grant." About a third of the red cards are now gone. Extinct. Eradicated. What's left, we hope, will be a more interesting game now that we've narrowed the contestants down to all cards that could, in theory, be a winner at any time. Next up: Printing our own cards. But that's a project for another time. We're going to see how this goes first. (76 shouts of denial | tell me I'm full of it)