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.