Board Game Review: Cards Against Humanity
Quick description from Board Game Geek:
A card game which involves a judge choosing a black question or fill-in-the-blank card. Each player holds a hand of ten cards at the beginning of each round, and each player contributes card(s) to the “card czar” anonymously. The card czar determines which card(s) are funniest in the context of the question or fill-in-the-blank card.
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| Players: | 2-30 (best with 6,8) (3-12 is playable) |
| Play Time: | 30 minutes |
| Difficulty: | Easy |
| Learning Curve: | Easy |
| Price: | $25 on Amazon or free to print on their website, the First Expansion Pack is $10 |
| Best Place to Learn: | Play one sample hand an 99.99% of the population will fully understand the rules |
Review:
This is the perfect party game, with a 60 second overview and a sample round (nearly) everyone gets this game. The game is very simple, there are 2 decks of cards, a black deck of 90 cards with questions and deck of 460 white cards with the answers (the expansion adds 20 new black and 60 white cards, along with 20 blank white cards for writing in your own answers).
The “Card Czar” is the player who selects a card from the black deck and reads it aloud. Then all of the other player pick a white card from there hand (typically 7 or 10 cards) that they think the “Card Czar” will select. After all the cards have been handed to the Czar, they read the black card and then the white cards from the other players and pick the card they think is best. The person who played the winning white card gets the “point” (usually we just hand them the black card to make it easy to track) and then the next person in the line becomes the Czar.
A given round may have some funny, disturbing, and generally strange cards played
The biggest part of the game is understanding who you are playing. Some people are not going to like some of the more disgusting answers and may prefer irony or subtle inside jokes. Others (like me) generally like the most inappropriate and generally horrible combinations players can come up with. Knowing when to play certain cards will help the player win more rounds than just playing jokes you think are funny. Since the Czar has to read them aloud, sometimes it is possible to get people to read cards of things they definitely wouldn’t say normally. Getting the quiet girl in the group to read the card “A Big Black Dick” can be its own reward.
The problem is that after a few rounds, players start to get a collection of unfunny cards in their hands and the quality of the humor goes down. Players start playing junk just to get new fresh cards that are funnier. I think in future rounds I am going to create a rule that every few founds you can discard crap and pick up new cards to keep the funny flowing. Also after a while the cards will run out and then the same white cards start recycling and lose their shock value. Also there are some cards that make references which no one in the group understand, these cards I’m going to start trashing because they are pretty useless in the deck.
Overall, I recommend bringing the game to any non-houtie toutie party or gathering and busting it out for half an hour or so. It can be a good game for breaking the ice in groups of people who don’t really know each other and its simplicity makes it easy to pick up for anyone.
Anyone who has played, what has been the best combination of cards you have seen while playing?
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Cards Against Humanity |
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| Components | 3.5 | Pretty simple, there are only playing cards |
| Skill |
5 | The player has to know who they are playing with, or get lucky and get an (nearly) instant win card like “Kids with Ass Cancer” |
| Replayability | 10 | Get some friends together, have a few drinks, and this game works with any crowd |
| Complexity |
5 | One person pulls a black card and reads it aloud, then everyone else picks one white card that they think the original person will like. The first person then reads the answer aloud. That is all of the rules to the game. (you could argue this is a 1 or 10 either way) |
| Fun | 8 | I’ve played with friends, , strangers, colleagues, and senior management at my company and every usually leaves giggling |
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32.5 | A silly little game that anyone can pick up in 5 minutes and usually leads to a few hilarious moments. Not a game you’d invite people over to play, but good go pull out at a party. |
