Game of Ham
$39.99
Game of Ham at a Glance
| Game Type Humorous, Card Game | Play Time 20 - 60 mins | Skill/Complexity (1.5 - 5) Light |
| Age 18+ | Publisher(s) Game of Ham LLC | Published 2019 |
| Categories Party / Adult | Players 4 - 16 (6 is perfect ) | Rules Manual No Official Online PDF |
| Our Rating 9/10 | Cost approx $39.99 |
About – Description
Bill S. Naim designed the Game of Ham that was published in 2019 which is an adult party type card game with a board . Bill is said to have been working on this project and was perfecting it for more than two years.
The HAM stands for “Hating All Mankind”! Nice ey? Well, this is the kind of humor intended and for an audience that enjoys a more dark and kind of shameless humor.
The best comparable game to HAM is Cards Against Humanity which is a party game for horrible people and has sold many copies worldwide. The difference with the Game of Ham is players can use a board, although they do have the option of just using the cards.
If you have played and enjoyed Cards Against Humanity then you’re likely to get along very well with this game.
Best Suited For Parties/Groups – Over 18’s
The Game of Ham plays best with over 4 players. We played out a test run with 4 players and could see how it would play out better with 6 – 8, but over 6 – 8 would have seemed too many to include using the board.
Warning! You do need a certain kind of twisted sense of humor as the answers can be very inappropriate for the question asked by the judge/dealer. If you are easily offended or very politically correct in what you say or hear then in no way is this game for you.
Here’s a quick example:
You’ll see the gray card asks what is the guilty pleasure for people in India? The answers: A little bit of of sexual harassment, Human trafficking on a budget and Feeding pigs bacon.
Some people are not going to like this kind of humor while others will find it hilarious.
The age advisory on this game is age 18+. I doubt anyone under the age of 16 would get the humor or have the required knowledge of some of the question cards.
Skill – Complexity
The Game of Ham isn’t about skill and complexity, it’s all about fun. There are ways to answer though that are more accurate for the question that matches best, which requires some thought.
Set Up & Rules on How to Play
Setting Up
Setting up is quite straight forward which requires setting up the board (you can create variations), preparing card piles and each player having a marker piece for moving.
Inside the box you’ll find:
- 810 Cards (includes gray for questions, pink for answers, and 4 colored card sets)
- 4 Board Pieces
- 16 Mover Pieces
- 4 Placeholders
- 1 Rulebook
- 1 Quickstart Guide
There’s a heck of a lot of cards, mostly pink for answers! This is a great thing of course as there are plenty of questions and answers to keep any size group going for a session and more. You might want to use some elastic bands to separate all the cards as we did to keep them tidy in the box.
How To Play & Rules
There are 2 rule guides which includes a quick start and standard main rules. I couldn’t grasp the quick start properly and watched the video on the gameofham.com website and then we got started with the main rules which all made sense while playing as usual with most games.
Learning the rules is not difficult although you do need one player to be the chief of the rulebook at first to explain aspects of play while just getting on with learning and having fun. There’s a good variety of mechanisms that can be played out which your rulebook chief can point out along the way.
You can play Game of Ham with just the cards (like Cards Against Humanity), just the board, and the main way with the board and cards together.
We played the main way and this seems the ideal way to play, however, we could see that if more than 6 – 8 players was playing that the board may be too much and overcrowd the table, then using just the cards might be best suited.
Basics of Play:
You choose a judge for the first turn and then the next person who won the last turn (not round) becomes the judge. Everyone becomes a judge at some point, if they get an answer correct, which is a cool feature.
The judge reads a gray card and then each player submits their answer (pink card) that they think the judge will choose. The best answer chose by the judge moves their mover piece forward on the board with the amount stated on the card (i.e, 1 – 9).
You will play in this manner until someone reaches the last goal spot and finishes the board, and wins the game.
So simple…….however, there is much more to it when you add the mandatory rules, but that is the core object of the game.
Mandatory Rules:
While the basics of play are very simple there are lots of fun little twists and mechanics to be added from the mandatory rules. The mandatory rules include Gift Giver, Bottom-Up, HAM Lord, One-Way Ticket, Stack Pile, Adding Up, Piece Bully and Royal Decree that all provide various actions of play from the colored cards you receive after winning an answer.
Additional Rules and Mechanics, and Game Modes:
If there isn’t enough going on for you with the mandatory rules, or you just want to add a couple of extra twists within the game then you have a bunch of other optional rules you can use, and you can change the mode of play with optional variants (e.g., split into teams).
Also……….
I never noticed this before the review and after playing – there are also optional rules for potheads and for those boozing. So, if you’re getting stoned or drunk with your friends playing this then somebody is going to get even more plastered or stoned ‘for sure’ on your games night, if you dare to use that rules section.
Board Functions:
The board functions work very well. You even have a kind of monopoly…go back to go (i.e., Piece Bully – back to the start or last white spot, and move spaces forward etc. There’s board variants also available, although using the standard method is best at first for most people playing.
Different Ways to End the Game:
Another aspect of Game of Ham is the ability to end (have a winner) the game in various ways. The standard way is to land on the last end spot, then you could choose the winner to be the person that has the most gray cards, or the person with the highest points, or other variations.
Versions & Editions
This is the first edition. I’m sure expansion card packs will be released in the future based on the future success of the core game.
You can download a free version of Game of Ham from their website. This requires you to print all the components available and the rules that are with that version. So, if you’re broke, tight or anything else then you can check the free online version out.
Likes & Dislikes
It was an excellent idea to create a very simple version of the game and then mix board and card mechanics to give it that feel of playing a card and party type board game.
Yes, it’s much like Cards Against Humanity with a board, but then Cards Against Humanity was a lot like Apples To Apples with more humanity. How the board and the mechanics work between the board and cards creates a much better game than Cards Against Humanity and it’s great to see plenty going on in this type of game within the party genre.
The aspect of additional rules and game functions was obviously well thought through. It allows the game to be built up if needed.
We did struggle to see how more than 6 or 8 players would get along with the busyness of the board and table of people. This might be a good time to play with just the cards to keep it simple or check out how to play in teams.
Final Thoughts
If you’re a fan of Cards Against Humanity and play board games then Game of Ham is a great mix. The functions on the board and between the cards was well thought through and they work great together, and the ability to enhance with additional rules is pretty cool.
You must have the right audience to play and not friends who are easily offended. For those that like a bit of twisted humor they should get along very well with this game.
There’s a lot to explain and further advance the game which we apologize for if we may have missed some stuff, although I am sure we covered all the fundamentals for you.
You can stay up to date with what’s going on with Game Of Ham on their facebook page or gameofham.com.
A great party game for the right audience!
