EPTSo I thought it'd be fun to do a couple blogs talking strategy for games that really aren't meant to be "play to win" kind of games. I'm talking fun, casual party games that people play as conversation pieces, not as competitive battlegrounds. This way while your friends are off learning to talk to girls, you can start establishing your reputation as the guy that never, EVER loses a game of Never Have I Ever.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3xsCrlo.jpg)
Look, nerds, Starcraft! Party games aren't so scary after all!
Cards Against Humanity is a great place to start. For anyone unfamiliar with the game, it's basically a dirty jokes form of Apples to Apples. I'll briefly review the rules, but you can learn more from the game's website:
http://cardsagainsthumanity.com
The Rules
Learn them now, and then win while your opponents are still figuring it out.
Learn them now, and then win while your opponents are still figuring it out.
Okay, so, quick review. You get a hand of ten white cards with things on them, like "A big black dick" or "Sadomasochism." Then players will take turns drawing one of the black cards and laying it on the table, with a prompt like "In L.A. County Jail, word is you can trade 200 cigarettes for _____." or "What ended my last relationship?" Whoever lays this black card on the table is the judge for this card.
Then everyone except the judge will submit one of their white cards, or two of them if the prompt has two blanks (It will say "PICK 2" at the bottom). The judge will shuffle everyone's submissions and read them aloud, and choose the one they think is the funniest; whoever submitted the winning card(s) gets to keep the black card. Then everyone draws white cards until they have ten in their hand again, and the next player lays a card out to judge; whoever has the most black cards at the end of the game wins.
Notable differences from Apples to Apples (besides, obviously, the mature content):
1) People maintain a hand of ten, not seven.
2) White cards are various things, not necessarily nouns (for example, "YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS.") Black cards are various prompts, not necessarily adjectives.
3) Cards Against Humanity features "PICK 2" prompts which take two cards as a submission instead of one. (Remember, the card to be read first goes on bottom. Don't accidentally screw up the order of your submission.)
How Most People Play
The casuals' approach to the game.
The casuals' approach to the game.
Obviously, it's important in playing to win at any game to have some idea of how your opponents are likely to play. Here's the usual dynamic: People draw their cards, and they look at the prompt. They look through their cards, and decide which one they think is the funniest. Then they play that card, and laugh at the other submissions.
This sounds fairly obvious, and might even seem at first glance like the optimal way to play. But it leads to a fair number of losing situations that could have been avoided. For instance, your card may be the funniest you have, but it doesn't suit the card very well; might you be better off saving that card for another prompt and burning a bad card? Or you might think "YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS." might be a really funny option to you, but does the judge even know anything about Starcraft? Maybe you should save that card for your fellow Starcraft nerd that's judging in a couple turns.
So how can you do better than these casuals? The first thing to do is to know the tools at your disposal.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DFEYrV2.jpg)
Know Your Hand
This was one of the subtitles in my guide to masturbation I was going to write, too!
This was one of the subtitles in my guide to masturbation I was going to write, too!
All cards are not created equal. Even without knowing what the prompt will be, you can still know with a fair amount of precision which cards will tend to be winning cards and which will not. A few trump cards will often win no matter the prompt ("A bigger, blacker dick" and "MechaHitler" are always popular). Other cards are only good in particular situations ("White people" and "Rush Limbaugh's soft, shitty body" vary a lot based on context). A few terrible cards are just terrible and will almost never win you a point ("Consultants" has never won anything ever).
Your strongest cards are easy to win points with, so they're likely to leave your hand fairly quickly. But you can also hold on to them until a really good prompt comes – one where everyone will be playing their best cards – and then win a point and burn everyone else's best cards in one go. Situational cards can be really good if you get good luck with the prompts, but they can also sit around forever clogging up your hand. And then there's the terrible cards you never want to play because they'll almost certainly lose.
To maintain the integrity of your hand while keeping a good income of black cards, you'll want to identify quickly what kind of card each new draw is: trump, situational, or shitty. Ideally, most of the cards sitting around in your hand will be situational cards, since trump cards can win something right away, and shitty cards will never win anything, but for situational cards, every new prompt is a chance to get lucky. So it's a good idea to to hold onto situational cards until they get a good opportunity, play your trump cards whenever you don't have a situational card that's dying to be played, and play your shitty cards when you don't have much of a chance of winning the point anyway. Obviously sometimes there's a prompt that is particularly perfect for a certain card ("What gives me uncontrollable gas?" and "Auschwitz" are a very strong pair), so make sure to take advantage of when luck favors you.
Pick 2 prompts present an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, you can choose two situational cards that go together and win a point, or play a trump card and shitty card that go well together. On the other hand, you can just forget the black card and burn two shitty cards in a single turn, which is an extremely nice opportunity. Weigh these options against each other when in this situation, but almost never should you play two trump cards on these, since each of those should be able to win a hand on its own.
But sometimes even the best trump card can lose a point because of a judge's preferences. So the next step is to consider the other players in the game.
Know Your Opponents
They're not your "friends" again until the game is over.
They're not your "friends" again until the game is over.
Presumably you're playing this game with people you already know; if not, you'll have to get to know them as the game progresses. Because exactly how good a card is depends a lot on who is judging it. How do they feel about politics? Holocaust jokes? Pop culture references? These will dramatically change how they judge submissions, so you'll have to know when choosing a card for their benefit.
Fitting your friends into various stereotypes may generally be a bad social practice, but for the sake of victory, I've outlined a few categories of people, how they tend to judge, and how to play to their biases.
The Prude
This is your friend who tends to be a bit uncomfortable in conversations about sex. Maybe it's because they're very religious. Maybe it's because they've been brought up in a household where sex is a taboo topic. Whatever the cause, they react rather badly to the ample sex jokes Cards Against Humanity provides, so you'll have to try to accommodate their preferences.
You can often tell this person by the fact that they've either never heard of CAH, or protested strongly against playing. When the first sex joke comes up (it shouldn't be long), they'll be laughing a lot less than everyone else at the table. Keep in mind that just because someone is extremely religious or grew up in a conservative household does not mean that they'll react badly to sex jokes; it often means the exact opposite. So don't assume someone is in this category until they make it clear by how they play that your "A bigger, blacker dick" card is not going to impress them.
When this person judges, avoid the more profane cards in your hand. Because the game is so focused on explicit humor, you'll find this rules out a pretty sizable portion of your cards. The good news is that your non-explicit cards tend to be pretty hard to get rid of otherwise, so this person's turn to judge is a good opportunity to burn some cards that are unlikely to win points with anyone else. If you happen to get the card "Waiting until marriage," it's often particularly strong with this judge.
The Child
Here I refer to the player as a child, not because of their age, but because of their sense of humor (you probably shouldn't be playing this game with anyone in elementary school or earlier). Have you ever known a small child who always seemed to be unjustifiably amused by completely random non sequiturs? Yeah, that's what I'm referring to.
You might know from conversational experience that someone is often amused by randomness. That means that your card is judged more on its funniness in a vacuum than by its relevance to the prompt at hand, so play accordingly. A lot of cards that are normally only situational can be quite strong even though the prompt isn't relevant; and a lot of cards that are normally shitty can win you points.
A lot of times that means this isn't necessarily a time for trump cards, but if none of your other cards are especially funny in a vacuum, go for it. The important notes are that for this kind of player, 1) you can ignore the prompt a little bit more, and 2) a lot of normally bad cards can be good. This is one of the only times you can play "Consultants" and win a point.
The Activist
This is someone who considers themself politically active and aware of current affairs. Identifying this is usually pretty easy; political people are usually not very shy about it. But if you're playing with someone you only recently met, try to judge their reaction to other political jokes that have been played, because they might be an Activist.
Obviously political jokes are strong with this kind of person. But careful! Politically minded people nearly always fall on one side or the other of the political spectrum, and jokes making fun of their side tend to hit a bit of a raw nerve. So with your extremely conservative friend, jokes regarding "Former President George W. Bush" or "Rush Limbaugh's soft, shitty body" may not be taken well. With your liberal friends, accusing Barack Obama of incompetence or corruption will probably not do well, either.
A special subset of this category is the Social Justice Advocate. This is the person who posts a lot of outraged Facebook statuses about things like the Prison-Industrial Complex or the Zimmerman trial. For this person, cards like "Heteronormativity" can be strong, but racist jokes will probably fall flat.
The Hermit
Given that this is TL.net, this is probably someone like you. They don't go out a lot, they don't follow pop culture, and they have a few very specific interests that they pursue intensely. Since they do pursue them so intensely, you probably know what they are; so play to that. Cards Against Humanity has a fair number of pop culture references, and this player will probably not get them. So if they're a Starcraft nerd, go ahead and play "YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS." But probably stay away from playing Oprah Winfrey, since they easily might not even know who that is. In general, presume they don't know the reference unless you have explicit evidence to believe they do.
Everyone Else
Most likely your friends don't fall into particular stereotypes very easily. This kind of "profiling" is as ineffective in CAH as it is in law enforcement, so for the majority of people, you just have to treat them as people. But that doesn't mean they're all alike! If someone seems to like Holocaust jokes a lot, try to save your Holocaust- and Jew-related cards for that judge. If someone really likes Oprah and you get that card, save it for that person. Who is judging the card is almost as important as what the prompt is for whether a card will be successful or not.
Going All-in
Like Poker, and unlike Starcraft, this is a strategy generally reserved for the late-game.
Like Poker, and unlike Starcraft, this is a strategy generally reserved for the late-game.
If you knew there were only going to be five turns when you sat down to play Cards Against Humanity, how would you play differently? Obviously, you'd try to get points fast. That means play your trump cards right away, and don't worry about burning bad cards. This will increase the number of black cards you take, but at the cost of quickly filling your hand with shitty cards.
See, the thing is, you're probably not going to be playing Cards Against Humanity for all eternity. In fact, you probably won't even play for more than an hour. So you want to know when the game is going to end, and start sacking your hand for quick wins when that time draws near. Maybe ten hands in advance, forget about burning bad cards, and forget about waiting for the perfect situation for your situational cards. Just play whatever has the best chance to win this point.
Of course, your friends probably haven't decided when the game is going to end. So you'll have to get a sense of when it's likely to end anyway. Which of your friends will most likely head home first? Which of your friends are getting kind of bored of the game? And are those friends the out-going, take-charge kind of people that will try to get the group to do something else when they get bored?
I hope you had fun considering with me how to play to win at Cards Against Humanity. Obviously, as noted at the beginning, Cards Against Humanity is not a game that rewards playing to win. Despite all this strategizing, your wins and losses are still mostly determined by the luck of what hands you draw. And more to the point, the game isn't about winning; it's about having fun!
That said, if you have any other interesting strategies to share, please do! And as always, thanks for reading!
