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Apples to Apples
Out
of the Box Games
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5
Would you
consider Katharine Hepburn to be ‘feminine’? Or would Baby Showers be
a better choice? How about ‘sexy’ - would Rappers, Snakes or
Count Dracula be the best fit? Sound intriguing? Then you have to
play the sidesplitting game, Apples to Apples.
Apples to
Apples is a complete boxed card game. It consists of 321 red apple
cards, which are nouns-persons, places, thing, and also events. A few
examples are Whoopie Goldberg, Labor Unions, Computers, etc. There
are 107 green apple cards, which are a characteristic of a noun or
event-descriptive words. Some examples of green apple cards are
Luscious, Nerdy, Ancient, etc. And just to throw in some
personalized fun, they’ve also included 1 blank green and 3 blank red
apple cards for you to get creative with. I personally have a lot of
ideas for these!
You need at
least 4 players to play and you can have up to 10. I’ve found that
the more players you have, the crazier the fun is! For the first
round, you need to determine who will be the judge. The judge deals
out 7 red apple cards, face down, to each of the players, including
him/herself. Once everyone is “ready”, the judge picks a green
apple off the top of the deck and flips it face up on the table and reads
it aloud. Everyone races to lay down a red apple card, face down,
that they think best fits the green apple. With 4-5 players, only
the first 4 red apple cards laid down qualify to be judged and each player
can lay 1 or 2 cards down. It is up to the judge to watch and cut
everyone off after 4 cards are down. With 6 or more players, each
player can only lay 1 card and the last player to put a card down has to
take it back.
The judge
then determines which card he feels is the best match-unknowing who laid
which card. Now keep in mind, there is no right or wrong answer.
The judge may find it too hard to resist picking Bill Clinton as the best
fit for ‘Sexy’ even though Marilyn Monroe is the obvious choice.
We often find ourselves in friendly debates with the judge for not picking
our red apple. Sometimes we have a pretty good case for it,
too! The person who laid the judges best pick, wins the round and
gets the green apple card as his trophy. After the winner of that
round is proclaimed, everyone draws a new red apple card to replenish
their hand and they move on to the next round.
At this
point, the player to the judge’s left becomes the judge for the next
round. For a 4-player game, the person who is the first to collect 8
green apple cards wins! The more players you have, the fewer green
apple cards needed to win.
I have to
admit; I’m not big into strategy games, where you have to do a lot of
‘thinking’ and ‘scheming’ so this game is great for people like me
as well as the avid role-player. It is easy to learn and it is an
awesome game for parties! A typical game lasts anywhere from 20 to
30 minutes.
Rule
Variants
There are some variations to the game that are a on the back of the rule
card that comes in the box. They can put a whole new twist to the
game! I won’t go into them now - I’ll let you try it for yourself.
Apples to Apples have also put out some expansion sets to give you a wider
variety of red and green apples. I couldn’t resist buying a small
deck of blank cards to add some personal touches to the game. After
all, someone may find me ‘Sweet’ or ‘Profound’, but then again,
maybe they would find me ‘Chunky’ or ‘Creepy’ - I don’t know,
you be the judge!
I would
highly recommend Apples to Apples to anyone. It is a ‘must have’
for every game collection. If you don’t have any party games, this
is the first one you need to buy! Your friends will want to get
together every weekend to play “That Apple game”. I know mine
do.
Oh, and for
all you parents out there, there is also an Apples to Apples Junior! (Also,
the game even won a MENSA
award! – Guild Master)
Written by Angelique
(Posted 03-13-02)
Purchase
Apples
to Apples
NOW from Amazon.com