One of my favorite games these days is Cards Against Humanity. For those who don't know about this game, it started as a Kickstarter 3 years ago. Some friends in Chicago came up with a game similar to Apples to Apples but with much more hilarious or horrible responses depending on your point of view.
To play, all players draw 10 white cards. White cards are usually nouns, phrases, or whatever. Someone is chosen as the card czar, and they draw a single black card. The read the black card, which is either a fill-in-the-blank, or a question, and the other players use one of their white cards to complete the black card. The card czar then chooses the "best" card, which can be on any criteria they wish be it appropriate, inappropriate, or just funny. The player whose white card was chosen gets the black card, and the person with the most amount of black cards wins the game.
I first bought my copy of the game at Pax Prime 2012. At that time, there were 2 official expansions. SInce then, there's been quite a bit more. All in all, there's the following add-ons:
First, Second, Third, and Fourth (Official) Expansions
Holiday Expansion (Christmas 2012)
12 Days of Holiday Bullshit (Christmas 2013)
PAX East 2013 Promo Packs
PAX Prime 2013 Promo Packs
(The ever elusive) Reject Pack
The Bigger, Blacker Box (which includes the Box Expansion)
and.. Crabs Adjust Humidity Volumes One and Two (Fan expansion from one of the creators)
Again, I'm a huge fan of the game, so I have everything listed above EXCEPT for the Reject Pack which has never been sold, and may not even be in production anymore. People have said they've gotten it from events in Chicago, and sometimes when they've had to order replacement cards.
Here's my collection from after PAX Prime 2013 after purchasing the Box and getting most of the PAX Prime cards
Since then, I've added the Fourth Expansion, the Christmas 2013 Cards, and Crabs Adjust Humidity Volume Two. And now, I've added one more thing...
In addition, Cards Against Humanity has released a version in Canada and the UK with localized cards. The Canadian edition only has a few changes, so the box includes a base USA set with an extra box labeled the Canada Expansion. This is not available on its own, and the only way to get it is through Amazon Canada which doesn't ship to the US.
The UK Edition released overseas is much more localized. So much so that there is no little expansion included in the box, it's all mixed in. Several of the base USA cards have been changed slightly to reflect the English dialect over American. Several USA cards have been dropped, with UK specific cards added as replacements. They've gone to great lengths to actually make a UK version of the game, rather than just tacking on a couple cards.
Much like the Canadian edition of the game, annoying collectors and completists, such as myself, want to add these cards to my deck, even though there's plenty of English idioms I either won't get, or think are as funny as the US counterpart.
I was searching around eBay for both these localized editions (and the Reject Pack), and I came across the following:
Some seller from the UK, had this listed on eBay. The "UK Expansion" it reads, and looks all official. At the time, I searched around the internets, but didn't really see anything about it. Everything kept coming up UK Edition, not Expansion. But still, I was really curious. Well, it was only $20 shipped, and would go anywhere in the world. Why not? I'll buy it and have it shipped to my place in Japan.
and It arrived today! So here it is:
Oh yeah? This thing is counterfeit. The outside of the box is set to look exactly like the other expansions. Lots of care was taken in making this thing look official. Right down to the little version number each official Edition and Expansion has printed on the box.
The biggest give away are the cards themselves. While they are the correct font, correct size, and basically the correct weight, there's no linen finish on the cards that give them the "player card" texture and feel. They're just straight matte card stock. It makes them feel pretty flimsy and cheap.
You can see it pretty well in this photo:
But, honestly, while the card quality themselves is a pretty big deal, it's the only fault of these cards. Everything else is damn near perfect. A user on the Boardgame Geek forum wrote up a review about these cards as well, and details all the cards included in this set. Weirdly, the set is actually missing a few cards from the UK Edition of the game. And then included some US cards from the 1.5 version of the base set.
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1119851/review-of-the-not-official-125-card-uk-expansion
But, overall, not bad. They're even labeled as UK expansion, so you can easily tell them apart from the normal cards. Though, the card stock is a real easy way to do that without even needing to look. With the addition of this set, my Bigger, Blacker Box is nearly full!
The extra box in there contains all my empty custom cards. If I completed all those, I don't think I could fit another expansion.
There is a down side to having all these cards, though. How many times have you been playing this game, and have totally unplayable cards? It's happens very often. I think with the base set and the expansions, there were actually thinking about how to expand the deck and have more playable cards. Ones that actually cleverly work with the black cards, and create more plausible, cohesive combinations.
But with the PAX cards, the Christmas cards, and DEFINITELY the Crabs cards, so many of the white cards turn into dead ends, and the hilarious combinations get lost with all the noise.
I think the next times that I play with friends, I'm going to start culling some cards and get rid of the fluff. Collecting and completing collections is fun, but there's still the game to play underneath. The collection shouldn't get in the way of that. My deck needs to be tighter. :)
I think the box is a good bar for the amount of cards any person should have. Anymore, and you continue to dilute the quality of the hands you'll draw. Plus, it's not like you'll actually finish a game to completion. With just the base set and two expansions, it took about 4 or 5 hours to play through all the cards. And now my box has more than twice that!
Though, I will say, I think the more black cards the better. I don't think there are really any terrible black cards.
So, anyway, that's the UK Expansion. It is counterfeit, so take that into consideration if you're thinking of buying it. I haven't had a chance to play any games with the new cards, but hopefully I won't need to wait too long.