Almost everyone who’s ever been involved in a Barigord Studios adventure has been passionate for gaming! We love board games, table games, video games, roleplaying games, and game shows! This post is best viewed on the home site.
Last week’s post can be found here.
Hey gamers! Are you tired of playing conventional Magic the Gathering, with all of its deadly seriousness? I mean the game has both Murder and Murder of Crows, so all bases covered there.
Many players, like myself, long for mindless fun. And it’s just not enough to turn a bunch of goblins sideways regardless of the consequences. We want laughs. Lots of them. We will also accepts lols, laffs, and larfs. But we want them.
You’re the Inspiration
There is a category of games known as ‘party games’ that are often good for laughs. They differ subtly from ‘family games,’ mainly because the people playing ‘party games’ are generally assumed to be adults with drinks.
Party games often lack win conditions, or have ones that are closer to a time limit than anything reflecting player achievement. The real win condition is having fun.
Two extremely popular party games are actually pretty much the same game. Apples to Apples is a game of fun comparisons, where players match a card from their hand to one drawn by the dealer and hope the dealer thinks theirs is the best match. Cards Against Humanity is more of a fill-in-the-blanks version, but convincing the dealer your answer is best is the same. Cards Against Humanity is well known for being gross, obscene, snarky, etc.
Both games are really similar in a lot of ways to the old Match Game, a TV game show from the 1970s. They probably stole it from somewhere else.
But for Wizards
I’m always on the lookout for interesting ways to use otherwise irrelevant Magic cards. The chaff, bulk, or whatever it is that normally sits in boxes in the bottom of the closet hoping for some future printing that elevates one of them above the pile into dollar-plus land. The dream.
A lot of Magic cards are little more than a fun name, which actually serves our purposes perfectly. The more fun, the better! Your time to shine has come, Fissure Wizard!
Several years ago, I adapted the Apples to Apples/Cards Against Humanity/Match Game to use Magic cards. Since then, I’ve been adding cards from most new sets. It’s not something I’d buy specific cards for, and the cards come from my pack chaff, but it’s a fun group of names. The list is below.
I’ve also got an updated list of prompts. What are prompts? Well, the game works by each player taking their turn to read a prompt. This is a sentence or two that contains a blank, where any noun (person, place or thing) could be inserted.
Then players choose from the cards in their hand, and each gives one to the reader. The reader shuffles them up, then rereads the prompt, adding the first card’s name in the blank. Then repeats for each other card. We ideally all laugh at each one, because they are funny, and then the reader chooses their favourite, and that player gets a point.
For example, the prompt might be: ‘My Uncle Larry had a bad cold, and his voice sounded like he swallowed a (Blank). Players look through their cards and choose things like Hurloon Minotaur or Moss Monster. Hilarious!
We start players with 5 cards in hand, and roll a couple D6 to figure out the first reader, but those rules aren’t too binding. We track points by giving the player who won the point all the cards from the round. Then the tallest stack wins. Simple!
Prompt Me a List
Here are the updated Prompts!
And here is the list of cards currently in the box:
Wizards Against Apples Box
*The box also include Jumpstart deck title cards ‘Legion,’ ‘Beast Territory,’ and ‘Under the Sea.’
Conclusion
If you look around the web, you can find a lot of people who are down on Magic for a variety of reasons. A common one of those is the amount of valueless cards around. It’s assumed the complaining party is running low on closet bottom.
But there are a lot of ways to use cards, even the ones where the text box, stats, and mana cost are all fails. Wizards Against Apples is one of those ways, focusing only on the name.
It’s important to remember that value is relative, and defined by context. As Commander’s popularity grew, some previously bad, worthless cards changed completely. Commander is a casual format, where the goal is fun. Something to think about when dismissing a card to the bulk box, especially if it gives you a laugh.
Thanks for reading!