How to Play the Pick Your Poison Board Game

Today we have the board game Pick Your Poison for you. It’s the game version of would you rather, kind of Apples to Apples style.

We love a good Apples to Apples style game. Games like Red Flags, Relative Insanity, and Cards Against Muggles. So we thought we’d give this one a try.

In this post we’ll cover the rules, how to play and how to win Pick Your Poison. Let’s get to it.

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How Do I Set Up Pick Your Poison?

To start, there is a mat that goes in the middle of the playing area. It has two spot on it for cards—A and B. Next, everyone gets 6 poison cards, an A card and a B card and a double down card.

Sample Cards

Here are some of the cards that you would have to decide from:

Have a chronic runny nose or wear a Bluetooth headset at all times.

Have your keyboard randomly reorganize itself every day or Only be able to communicate through Morse code.

Shed your skin every morning like a snake or drink all the water from the toilet without using your hands.

How do I Play Pick Your Poison?

First, you pick a judge. The instructions say that it should be the last person to have had a birthday. The judge will look through his hand of poison cards to pick one that he wants to battle with. He reads it out loud and then places it on the spot A on the mat in the middle.

Now, all other players look through their own poison cards to see what would make a difficult choice between it and the one on the mat. These players are the “picking” players. Once they have their card, they slide it to the judge face down.

When all the cards are in, the judge then says “would you rather…” and reads his card followed by the other players cards. He will then choose one of the cards to go head to head with his original card. The idea is to pick the card that would make the hardest decision for the rest of the players. He will place the card in the B spot on the mat. The player who submitted the card gets one point.

Next, everyone chooses either option A or B. They can ask the judge any questions they like about the choices. Once they have their choice, the put that card face down in front of them. They can also choose to play their double down card. This card doubles the amount of points they earn for that round. But if they get no points for the round, they lose their card for the rest of the game.

Once everyone has made their choice, they flip over their cards. And they move on to scoring.

How Do I score Pick Your Poison?

The points depend on how many players have made the same choice.

If all the players have picked the same choice, they each get one point and the judge loses two points.

When some players have picked A and others B, then the players who picked the choice with the most votes each get one point. All others get no points.

Last, when there is a tie vote, the judge gets threes points and no one else gets any points. See below if you’re playing with an odd number of players.

When all the points have been awarded, all the poison card that were used in the round, go to the bottom of the deck and each player gets a new poison card to add to their hand. The position of judge moves to the left and a new round start.

How Do I Win Pick Your Poison?

The first player to reach 15 points wins the game.

Are There Any Other Rules?

Yes, there are a few different rules that you can play with to mix up the game or make it more interesting.

The first rule is for when you’re playing with an odd number of picking players. In this case, the judge will also choose either A or B. The judge only gets points when there is a tie.

The next rule is the Super Judge rule. With this rule change, when there is a split vote, the judge gets a point for each player who chose the small choice. For example, if three players picked A and two players picks B, the judge would get 2 points for the players who chose B.

Lucky Draw. The Lucky draw rule change is that the judge will turn over the top card from the draw pile for the A spot. Their own cards are not used in this version.

The Freshen Up rule allows a player to put their hand of cards on the bottom and get new cards. This will cost a player one point.

There is one last rule that I’m not sure I understand. In the Two for One rule, the judge will pick two cards for the A spot. Players will also pick two cards from heir hands to submit.  There are no more details on this one and I’m not sure how it would work.

What We Like

First, the packaging is very sleek and compact. There is no wasted space in this one! Next, we liked the idea of the game. There are some funny cards in the deck. We also like the idea that you can win and lose points, making it fresh. Also, there is not a clear winner early in the game. We also like the idea of being able to ask questions about the choices. This made it more interesting when we did it.

What We Don’t Like

To be honest, there’s just something that we don’t like about this game. It might be that we only played as a family of four. Or it might also be that we know each other very well. It might also be that the sense of humour doesn’t line up with ours. We found a lot of the choice kind of icky. I guess we should say that would you rather is not our favorite either.

Should You Add Pick You Poison to Your Family Game Shelf?

If you love would you rather and you love playing debate games with a large variety of people, the I would say yes, it is worth adding to your shelf. It is well thought out and put together. Otherwise, I would maybe skip this game and look for something else.

If you’re into it, then you can get your Pick Your Poison game here; Canadians here.

For more fun check out these games

Apples to Apples (the original fun)     Risk It (a dice game with lots of choices)    13 Dead End Drive (a funny gonna get you game)

And be sure to visit our Family Game Shelf shop where you can find favorites like Whacky Putt the mini golf dice game, a whole section for Halloween games and the Sticks card game.

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