K. David Ladage
United States
Cedar Rapids
Iowa
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Apples to Apples
By: Matthew Kirby, Mark Alan Osterhaus
Published: Out of the Box Publishing
Web: http://www.amazon.com/Apples-Party-Box-Hilarious-Comparisons...
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A Brief History
I am a gamer. My wife, although not a gamer, does love card games and the occasional board game (we both love to play Scrabble, Sequence and the like). She will play the more in-depth games with me as well. But my family... they think that board games stopped being developed with Monopoly and Aggravation and that anything later is just not worth playing. Sad, really.
But every now and again, you can introduce a game that will spark their interest. I introduced Apples to Apples, not as a 'game', but a 'social activity' and 'conversation starter'. They joined in. They loved it. Since introducing this game to them, I have to bring with me to each and every social gathering we have (Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.). It helps that this is a game that can be played by the adults and the older children alike. In fact, if the kid can read and is somewhat aware of the greater world around them... this game is perfect.
Red Green
In Apples to Apples, there are 'red' apple cards and 'green' apple cards. Red apple cards are 'nouns'; green apple cards are 'adjectives'. Each player has a hand of red apple cards. Each round, one player -- the judge -- will draw a green apple card and announce what the adjective for the round will be. The remaining players are the participant players for the round. On the green apple card will be a few (generally three) synonyms that will help to spark the imagination of the participant players.
Each participant player looks through their hand of red apple cards and tries to find the noun they have that is best described by the adjective that has been presented. Each participant hands the judge a red apple card. The judge, once he has them all, will shuffle these cards (so he does not know who gave him what card).
Each card is examined by the judge and evaluated. Participant players can give arguments for one card or another, but cannot say which card they played. Once the judge has decided what card is the best noun for the adjective, he will announce his decision. The participant player that played that card will then reveal themselves. They have captured the green apple card (and thus, have earned a point).
The remaining cards are removed from play; the participant players draw a new red apple card to replace the one they just played; the judge passes to the next player. Lather, rinse, repeat until a player has accumulated the winning number of green apples.
Considerations
One of the things you learn very early on is that you are not always going to have a noun that can be described by the adjective at all. So you have to learn to play the judge. If you have a noun that, to be described by the adjective, would be funny or ironic... would the judge get it? Is the adjective a favorable or unfavorable description? Does the judge like or dislike something in your hand and to have that noun described that way would be of value or funny to them? This is a big part of the game -- knowing who is judging the cards.
We instituted a rule that states that, at the end of a round, if you have a red apple card you do not like, prior to replacing the played card, you may discard one card and then draw two (one to replace the played card, one to replace the discarded card). This helps a lot.
The game comes with hand sizes listed and as number of green apple cards to win the game. IGNORE THIS. Decide within your group how many cards in hand makes sense for your group (if you have smaller kids playing, then have each player use less cards so the smaller kids can hold theirs; use larger hands if you all want more choices to work with; in the end, as long as everyone has the same number of cards, all is good). How many green apples you want to play to? It depends on how long you want a given game to last. Hell, just keep playing until you all want to stop and count up points.
One way to keep a player for running the table multiple rounds in a row is to have the winner of each round become the next judge. Since the judge cannot win a round, this allows other players the chance to catch up.
Conclusions
This is the perfect party game. I highly recommend the expansions as well.
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