Idle Remorse

Review: The Apprentice Game

By On September 13, 2024 With No Comments

Review: The Apprentice Game
Publisher: Parker Brothers
Year: 2004
Tagline: Will you hear The Donald say “YOU’RE HIRED” or “YOU’RE FIRED”?
Players: 2 or more

how we met

I found The Apprentice Game at thrift recently, within the last couple of months. Unless you are new here (welcome!), you know I always pick up games that I have not seen before, and I have a keen interest in reality television. I watched The Apprentice during the mid-aughts. I could see that this game includes an electronic device similar to the eBay Game. On the one hand, that means I probably have to hear Donald Trump’s voice, which is not something I am eager to do. On the other hand, I’m definitely buying it.

how it plays

In a terrible case of foreshadowing, The Apprentice Game always has two teams: the red team and the blue team. There can be any number of people on each team.

To begin, press the power button on the electronic device and hit Start. From here, you will hear Donald welcome you and explain what to do.

The start button will repeat what Donald said in case you missed it. That came in very handy for us.

Each team is dealt (or may choose) six individuals from the COMPETITOR deck. In addition to names and photos, these individuals have statistics in various skills such as Sales/Marketing, Street Smarts, Education, etc. The cards also include barcodes on the bottom. Once you have your COMPETITORs, click your button to indicate you are done. Donald will wait for both teams and then instruct them one by one to scan each of their COMPETITORs into the system. A successful scan will always result in Donald saying the COMPETITOR’s name. Any other sound you hear indicates the card was not read.

A random selection of COMPETITORs. What does your bar chart look like?

After everyone is scanned in, Donald will instruct one of the teams to choose a TASK card and scan it in. TASK cards contain very little information, and each team then goes to their stable of COMPETITORs to choose three to complete the TASK, making assumptions about which skills are most valued for that particular TASK. Again, hit your button when you are done choosing your three. If you take too long, Donald will give you a hard time.

The tasks are a fun reminder of what the show was like.

Once both teams are ready, Donald will give one skill that is needed for this TASK. Then he will instruct each team to choose one of their three COMPETITORs and scan them in. The COMPETITOR with the highest level in that skill will win, and Donald will instruct each team to draw a certain number of EARNINGS cards. This continues for the remaining two skills and each team must choose only from their remaining COMPETITORs – so for the third skill each team will only have one COMPETITOR left.

Once all three skills are done, Donald will instruct the teams to count their earnings and click the button of the team with the most earnings. There is no need to track the amount long-term. Once one team has won the round, shuffle the EARNINGS cards back into their deck.

Some random EARNINGS cards.

If you remember The Apprentice then you know the iconic line “You’re fired!” still needs to be said. Unfortunately the three COMPETITORs on the losing team that round must go to the boardroom. Donald will immediately let one of them know they are safe and can rejoin their team. Of the two remaining, Donald will fire one of them. That COMPETITOR is out of the game for good.

Play continues in this way with new TASK cards in play. If a team loses two COMPETITORs in a row then Donald will instruct the other team to hand over one of theirs. The team handing over the COMPETITOR may choose who they give up. This keeps a balance (in numbers if not in talent) between the teams as more and more COMPETITORs get fired.

When teams get down to two COMPETITORs each, they simply reuse one of them on the third skill. On the last TASK, Donald will make sure there are only two COMPETITORs (one on each team), assess their skills automatically and assign EARNINGS cards accordingly. After the winner of the final TASK is determined, Donald will review the overall performance between the two COMPETITORs throughout the game and hire one to be The Apprentice!

how it went

I brought The Apprentice Game on a trip to my sister’s house, where we played with four players. I teamed up with my sister, Jaime, while Bill played with Aaron.

As I mentioned above, I watched a couple of seasons of The Apprentice back in the day. I love reality television, and I think the premise of The Apprentice is a great one. If you can get past the sycophantic attitudes and Donald Trump, the show is a neat real-life (white collar) test for the contestants. It is similar to Tough as Nails, another reality show I watch where the contestants do things like build pipes, hang drywall and pour concrete. The cards and challenges in The Apprentice Game are a good callback to the show’s challenges and how they test different aspects of a person.

I went looking for a “Jennifer” and did not find one. But I found this. Gross.

While the contents of The Apprentice Game were a nice reminder of the show, the similarities do not extend to how the game is played (not uncommon for a TV show property). The game takes such a black and white approach to determining the winner. A given game task might require Creativity, and so the competitor with the highest Creativity wins, period. The show, on the other hand, is beautifully nuanced, where different strengths play out differently in the tasks. In the show you are judged on the outcome and not on one single facet of your skills.

Additionally, luck really determines how the game will go for you. First of all, if you decide to assign COMPETITORs based on the luck of the draw, you get who you get. Your skills might not be well-balanced, and you might get some real losers that somehow made it onto the show. You can kind of ignore the losers until you run out of your rockstars, but still, if your stable of COMPETITORs is lacking, your gameplay will be too.

A look at our play where we are choosing COMPETITORs from our stable.

Secondly, the EARNINGS cards have various amounts on them between $1,000 and $5,000. Obviously the more EARNINGS cards you are allowed to draw, the more likely you are to get the most money. However you could easily draw all $1,000, $2,000 or $3,000 cards while your enemy draws $4,000 and $5,000 cards. So winning a round is a bit of a crapshoot.

Whether it was these two variables bringing bad luck to us or a deeply flawed strategy, Jaime and I were terrible at The Apprentice Game. Our stable was constantly the target of firings, the other team was constantly having to hand over their shittiest COMPETITOR to us, and the downward spiral continued. We rarely won a round.

This made Bill and Aaron’s COMPETITOR Andrea the clear winner as the last one standing on their team, and Andrea became The Apprentice! Not bad for a two-dimensional woman whose skills are represented in bar chart form.

play or pass

Pass. The novelty and nostalgia factors are high, but so is the luck factor. And to some, the ick factor. The only decision-making is in choosing your competitors, and often this is an obvious choice anyway. You are essentially just a method to scan the cards; you do not need to be there to determine the outcome of the game. And that’s decidedly ungamely.

Review: Luck O’ The Irish

By On August 30, 2024 With No Comments

Review: Luck O’ The Irish
Publisher: Reilly O’ Company
Year: 1985
Tagline: Win Pots Of Gold
Players: 2 to 6

how we met

On this day, at this particular thrift shop, the only item that caught my fancy was Luck O’ The Irish. Why? Look at that cover. I will wait while you scroll. I felt like I just won a bonus game on a slot machine. And the box is unusually tall, which just made carrying it that much more ridiculous and fun.

I felt luck was on my side, and I paid my $2.99 happily.

how it plays

Luck O’ The Irish is a roll and move set collection game. The first player to Dublin with a Pot of Gold, a Harp, a Shamrock, a Shillelagh and an Emerald wins!

Players start the game with one Pot of Gold and must roll doubles to move. If after a third throw a player has not thrown doubles, they may pay to move by giving up their Pot of Gold.

In future, if a player rolls double they get to roll again.

Players can move in any direction they like at a crossroads, but they can’t double back on the steps they have taken except at a dead end. Players can trade if they are on the same spot. Players must pay a Pot of Gold to collect many of the other items, such as Harp, Shamrock or Shillelagh.

A look at our play. We appear to have used the stacking method when landing on a space occupied by another pawn.

Certain spaces on the board cause other things to happen. The Leprechaun space allows a player to pick up a Wishing Card, which may be good or bad. The Celtic Cross causes a missed turn. The Banshee will cause you to give up items. The Sea is so beautiful it causes a player to drop their Emerald into it!

Some good, some bad

Again, the first player back to Dublin with all of their items safe in hand wins Luck O’ The Irish!

how it went

When I got Luck O’ The Irish home and saw the wild board in the shape of Ireland and saw that the game includes a Banshee, I was utterly delighted! My family was game to try and play on one of our game nights.

The board is gigantic and I love it

The game box advertises winning a free trip to Ireland on the back, which in hindsight might have been a good sign that very little planning went into game design here. Roll and move can be a bit of a bummer, but it’s not enough alone to dampen my enthusiasm for a vintage game. One of the issues with Luck O’ The Irish is that you have agency in how you travel all the different roads. This has a couple of effects:

  1. It can take patience to count out all of the possible paths you can take to try and make the most advantageous move after rolling two dice.
  2. You mostly avoid any negative spaces because usually you can simply choose not to move to them. There is only one Banshee space on the board and she remained safe from our encounters for our entire game. Rather disappointing.
She seems nice

This agency in choosing your direction probably occurred to whoever made Luck O’ The Irish because the game rules do include difficult-to-find guidance like: The Emerald can only be obtained by going one way via Galway out into Galway Bay. We played this correctly, but how difficult would it be to put arrows on the board indicating a one-way road?

During gameplay you can expect to collect items, bumble them into the sea, get them stolen, not be able to afford them, and all manner of good and bad.

It’s always a good sign when someone sets a time limit to finish the game within.

During play we encountered leprechauns, stole from each other, lost items, gained items, got sent to Dublin and counted our moves out over and over. Our play took about an hour but felt much longer. Jaime ultimately made it back to Dublin with all the necessary junk first. Fair play to her.

play or pass

Pass. I enjoyed finding Luck O’ The Irish and carrying the giant box at the thrift shop. I enjoyed watching people’s faces the first time they saw the cover. I enjoyed temporarily owning a game with a banshee in it, though we did not meet. I did not enjoy much of anything else about the game.

Review: THE Yuppie GAME

By On July 25, 2024 With No Comments

Review: THE Yuppie GAME
Publisher: Waddington’s
Year: 1985
Tagline: are you yup to the challenge?
Players: 2 to 4

Cover shows the board and next to it, BMW car keys, a canape, white wine, flowers and a copy of Architectural Digest

how we met

I found THE Yuppie GAME very recently at a thrift shop that I had previously almost dismissed for pricing their games and puzzles so high. But good thing I returned because, apparently, even the thrift shop knows no one wants THE Yuppie GAME. I paid $1.99 and walked out with my head full of white wine and canapés.

This was one of my favorite finds in a long time in terms of how weird and rare the game seems.

how it plays

In THE Yuppie GAME, each player starts with $50,000 cash and will win when they have achieved:

  1. $150,000 cash
  2. A marriage partner
  3. A career (min salary $40k)
  4. A yupling (that’s a kiddo)
  5. A private school for said yupling
  6. A living space
  7. A yupmobile

All seven items are needed for someone to be considered worthy of winning THE Yuppie GAME.

A player starts their turn by rolling the die and moving that number of spaces. Most spaces on the board will cause the player to draw a card, hoping to achieve those elusive yuppie dreams. Some spaces on the board will allow the player to steal a dream from another player. Another space on the board leads you to the largest deck in the game, Yupheavals. These cards can be bad. They may require you to lose a turn, to pay a “poor taste tax” to others, or they may upset all the progress you have made so far! Some of the cards are good though and result in you moving your pawn further along or getting more cash, upsetting fellow yuppies, etc.

The board. Look at all those pretty, pink Yupheavals spaces.

The goal is to move around the board and collect as many cards as you can. Each time you land on another player’s home base, roll again. If you land on or pass your own home base, this represents one year in your trying-to-be-a-yuppie life. It’s time to do some accounting:

  • Get paid any salary and other income owed
  • Pay any annual expenses
  • Pay off your Yuppie Express card if able (if you drop below $5k during play, take $10k from the bank and turn your Yuppie Express card over)
  • Then continue play
    If you land directly on your home base, you also get $5,000 and roll again!
A quick look at a few of the cards you are working to collect. “Let’s have fun watching our mutual funds mature” 🤌

Once a yuppie has all of the required cards to win the game, they still must play until they pass or land on their home base.

how it went

Look, THE Yuppie GAME is not perfect. I tend to be interested in games with a niche topic that have a bunch of humorous cards in them. The game I created, Panic Mode, is precisely that. I was looking forward to this 1985 time capsule, and in a lot of ways I was not disappointed.

Yes, the cards are often very funny and the poking of fun is relentless and brutal. I know the term yuppie as a thing, but I don’t know the subject so intimately that I could really predict all the ways in which yuppies would be ridiculed in the cards.

A few Yupheavals to feast your eyes and maybe lose your sleep.

And as much fun as the cards are, there are some blatant drawbacks to gameplay:

  1. It takes forever to get around the board, so the one year in your yuppie-hopefulness is probably 45-60 minutes in real life. Making the first yuppie to achieve their goals have to protect their cards long enough to reach their home base is a stretch.
  2. The type is so small! It’s so small. You end up fighting to read each card, which not only contributes to the time spent but also starts to chip away at your enjoyment.
  3. The cards get stolen and moved and discarded constantly. I’m all about some take-that mechanics, but it felt like such an uphill battle to even get a few cards toward the goal. And then, many times, when cards were removed it was from gameplay and not to other players, removing them from play entirely. And, like, we felt entitled to those cards! As gameplay continues, yuppies tend to start having more and more cards in front of them, but it takes a great deal of time.
  4. Some of the cards are confusing. You are often getting cards in which you buy something – from a magazine subscription to season tickets. Sometimes you pay the bank, sometimes you pay another player. It was unclear if all of these cards are required, so I assumed that they are. It was unclear if you should keep them in front of you. Some, like the subscription, seem to come back as references in other cards while others don’t. This could be commentary on conspicuous consumerism. It could also be bad design.
Yup-yikes!

I played THE Yuppie GAME with Bill, Jaime and Aaron on a recent Friday evening after we visited the local brewery and played a few rounds of Monopoly Deal over dinner.

Mid-play.

In our play, only a few notable things happened. One was Bill’s steady play, which he brings to most games. He was pretty consistently in good shape, stealing cards and getting stolen from in turn. Always in good shape but never running away with it.

Another was my late-game, mother-of-all Yupheaval cards, which removed all of my cards in play and half of my money. I became super broke. Aaron was handing me $10,000 here and there, because…

Aaron strongly disliked the game. He played like a champ, but he lost interest the soonest and would warn you the most fiercely away from THE Yuppie GAME. He probably lost a BMW or something.

Jaime had the most lose a turn cards. Maybe six? A lot. But she also enjoyed the most cards in front of her in late-game. Again, five or six. She was well on her way to yuppiedom.

And that’s why when we all decided we couldn’t go on any further, Jaime won THE Yuppie GAME!

play or pass

Pass. The cards are funny, if dated (and if you can read the small print). But the progress is mind-numbing, and the yupheavals are soul-crushing. I expected life in yuppiedom to be sweet and easy, but it was unfair and painful.

Review: Wild Wooly

By On June 3, 2024 With No Comments

Review: Wild Wooly
Publisher: Parker Brothers
Year: 1995
Tagline: He’s Wacky! He’s Wild! He Wants OUT!
Players: 2 to 4

Since my copy is missing the box, this photo is courtesy of @mevans444 on Board Game Geek

how we met

A couple of winters ago, our friend Alex wanted Bill to sell some of his childhood items on eBay. He brought over a couple of boxes, mostly dinosaur junk (jk, I love dinosaurs). Amongst the old toys was a ziplock bag containing Wild Wooly! And I stole/kept it. It’s just. so. 90s.

This version was only missing the box and instructions. NOTE: Hasbro keeps instructions online for their games so missing instructions are often just a google away.

how it plays

Wild Wooly is a rare and wild creature that you captured, and now your job is to create the best cage wall that you can! And quickly before he tries to burst out of the cage!

Wild Wooly!

Each player gets one side of the cage to guard. There are cardboard doors for sides where you may not have a player / for fewer than 4 players. Each player gets 7 cage bars in a specific mix of colors. They then place the cage bars in whatever manner they choose on their side of the cage as long as each top and bottom hole only contains one bar. You can’t just stack them in a couple of places.

What the cardboard wall looks like. This is used when you have fewer than four players and when someone goes out.
Here is a look at the slots that you can use to plan your cage wall strategy!

The game also includes a series of cardboard foods. Set these to the side where all players can reach them.

Once all players are ready, poke Wild Willy in the nose. This will anger him and cause him to try and escape the cage! Once he has started moving, the youngest player should start play by spinning the spinner and then play will continue to the left.

One of these things will happen after you spin:

  • Single color: remove a bar of this color from your own side of the cage
  • Rainbow space: remove a bar of your choice from your own side of the cage
  • Feed the beast: throw one of the food items to Wild Wooly to calm him down
  • Wild Wooly: remove any color bar from any of your opponent’s cage sides
A closer look at the spinner and food bits. I know a couple of humans that are calmer after a key lime pie slice, so it makes sense.

Soon, Wild Wooly will break out of one side of the cage!!! The player in charge of that side of the cage is eliminated, as they should be. Place a cardboard cover on that side of the cage, place Wild Wooly back into the cage and continue play. Repeat this process one more time if needed, until you have one player left and they win Wild Wooly!

how it went

Every time I have played Wild Wooly with a new group, two things have happened consistently. The first thing is that everyone gets a strange look as I begin to set up the cage. It’s a kind of, “Oh what does she have now?” look. The second thing is that everyone wants to play again immediately.

The cage bottom has a nugget on it, which makes the cage shake and rattle as Wild Wooly throws his weight around. This is much more fun than if the cage just sat flat on the table.

In my personal opinion, there is no real solid approach to building the cage wall that will get you a better outcome. (Side note: I have almost never won, so grain of salt and all that) The escapes seem to be somewhat random. But it can be a lot of fun to watch someone with a wide open space that Wild Wooly would just glide right on through, and watch him just flirt with getting near it. He’s a wiley one, that Wild Wooly.

Here is a look at our later play, with Wild Wooly searching for an exit.

I appreciate the absurdity of having to feed the beast. I can just imagine playing this as a kiddo and throwing a cardboard hot dog at Wild Wooly, hoping it will calm him down.

The first time we played with my regular group we played a few times in a row. I think both Bill and Keri won. I certainly did not. Most games had me go out, then John, then either Bill or Keri. Maybe there is a strategy to cage building?

Nah, I don’t believe it.

The deconstruction of your cage wall is at the luck of the spin, especially if you only have one bar of that particular color. The rest of the deconstruction is based on whether your terrible friends decide to target you. And finally, the random way in which Wild Wooly moves decides the escape. Such are the trials of caging a wild beast.

Finally, a very quick look at Wooly in action.

play or pass

Play! I’ll admit there is a lot of randomness and luck involved here, so Wild Wooly is not very gamely. But it’s cute and scary and tons of fun.

Review: idiomaddict

By On May 23, 2024 With No Comments

Review: idiomaddict
Publisher: Marbles the Brain Store
Year: 2013? per BGG
Players: 4 or more
Tagline: PLAYING IS AS SIMPLE AS SHORTCAKE

Cover has various idioms in different colored boxes, like Happy as a clam and Have butterflies in my stomach

how we met

I found idiom addict at my local town thrift shop, which doesn’t always have good games but when it does, they are quite random. If you are not sure what an idiom is, the box cover should remove all doubt since it is plastered with them. In fact, the game doesn’t really have a tagline I just used one of the examples from the box.

I love word games, and this one didn’t cost an arm and a leg. idiom addict was coming home with me.

how it plays

Players divide into teams of 2. The goal is to guess the common idiom based on the clues given, usually like the common phrase was fed through a thesaurus. (Example: the clue Punt the pail would become Kick the bucket) Teams take turns rolling the die with potential outcomes:

  • Synonym Twist is like an all play where each team has one representative guess the synonym based on provided clues. The first player to correctly guess two different synonyms gets to move their team pawn two spaces.
  • X1 or X2 then the opposing team will read your team Mixed Messages cards for 30 seconds. Guess as many as you can in the time limit. At the end, multiply your correct number of guesses by 1 for X1 and 2 for X2, and move your team pawn that many spaces on the board.
The die and pawns on the tiny board

Once a team’s pawn reaches the Idiom Addict end of the board, they must successfully win one last Synonym Twist to take the cake!

how it went

I first played idiom addict with my sister, Jaime, also a lover of word games. We played 2 player, and for the record 2 players vs 2 teams is six of one, half dozen of the other. 2 player works fine as long as you can drag someone else to the table to read out the Synonym Twist challenges to you. One of my fondest memories of playing was when one of us rolled Synonym Twist and we simultaneously whined, “Aaaaaron!” as my poor brother in law tried to do anything else for five minutes together. He’s a great sport.

In that initial play, Jaime soundly whipped me. She was ahead most of play and ultimately won! I put up a good fight though. We are both pretty good at word games.

The cards are double-sided, so here are both sides showing Mixed Messages and Synonym Twist

The next time I played idiom addict was with a group of friends in a conference room. The players ranged from my usual gaming group, with John insistent he would be terrible at it, to friends that I don’t get to game with very often. One is Polish, and I was worried how the cards would translate, if at all.

But the thing about idioms is, they are as ubiquitous as oxygen. They are a piece of cake. In the large group setting we had, we quickly abandoned the board, teams and official rules for just taking turns individually. I imagine this happens with idiom addict a lot.

Check it out, even the box of cards is thoroughly dipped in idioms

And, this type of casual play in a large group is a good rule of thumb. When players are in teams, play becomes a race to answer first. When players get a chance to answer on their own, the game is more enjoyable, more chill and more inclusive. If keeping score is important, just let people keep the cards they answer. Even if people don’t win, at least they got to play.

play or pass

If you are a fan of word games, don’t get cold feet over picking up idiom addict, especially at thrift. The official rules are for the birds in a large group, but there is still idiom fun to be had with the cards. Most of my friends that didn’t think they would like idiom addict ended up having fun with it. I don’t think the replayability is very high, so I am donating mine to a local brewery for others to enjoy.

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