Earlier this month, Army Times wrote about an irreverent, military-themed game akin to Cards Against Humanity that blasted through its Kickstarter goal and was well on its way to production.

As it turns outs, the makers of Disgruntled Decks already have some friendly competition. A similar game, called F.U.B.A.R. has also quickly gained a legion of fans — and a green light — thanks to Kickstarter.

F.U.B.A.R. is the creation of a team of writers from the popular military satire site Duffel Blog. It's described as a Cards Against Humanity-compatible party game with the tagline: "Bringing out the Worst in America's Best."

An example of the F.U.B.A.R. card game. Courtesy of Kevin Jacobson

An example of the F.U.B.A.R. card game.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Kevin Jacobson

"We have a group together to talk Duffel Blog articles, pitch ideas and bounce ideas off each other," said Kevin Jacobson, a former Marine Corps sergeant and Duffel Blog writer who goes by "Jake Slager."

"One of the things we came up with one day was: Why is there not a military edition of Cards Against Humanity? With so many comedy writers why can't we do this?" he said.

Starting in October, the team developed the idea and about 17 contributors wrote the playing cards. Four of the vets (two Army, one Navy, and Jacobson, the Marine) formed an equally-shared business called War Games LLC., and they launched their Kickstarter on Jan. 27. It has raised more than $60,500, well in excess of their $10,800 goal.

When Jacobson first learned of Disgruntled Decks, an Army lieutenant's iteration of Cards Against Humanity, Jacobson naturally worried that his group's idea had leaked. But after learning more, he said his team quickly realized the ideas had germinated into action independently and around the same time. And that, Jacobson said, wasn't the real surprise once you thought about it.

"It's actually more of a surprise that, in the years since Cards Against Humanity came out, nobody had done this already," Jacobson said.

To the uninitiated: Cards Against Humanity features prompt cards, on which players can play a card from their hand to complete the sentence or answer the question. The responses are usually ludicrous and crass.

Jacobson said F.U.B.A.R. differs somewhat form Disgruntled Decks in that it focuses on all branches (Disgruntled Decks remains Army focused, but also hopes to produce versions for other branches as well). Both games are CAH-compatible, and Jacobson said they aimed to create broad appeal, including appeal to civilians.

Former Marine Corps sergeant and current Duffel Blog writer Kevin Jacobson has worked with his three co-owners of War Games LLC along with about a dozen other contributors to develop F.U.B.A.R.

Photo Credit: Courtesy Kevin Jacobson

"We wanted to get our main deck to be our base game to be as coherent as possible for all the services, and we try to avoid too many inside jokes other branches wouldn't understand," Jacobson said. "We've also planned service-specific expansion decks from the beginning."

In addition, he said they've reached the funding level to design and ship out the official F.U.B.A.R. drinking game deck to those who pledged (which creates new rules and features "action cards.")

Upon publication of an Army Times article on Disgruntled Decks, that Kickstarter shot up from around $20,000 generated in its first couple of days (already achieving its goal) to about $120,000 in less than a week. An announcement on its Facebook page said it is ending the Kickstarter page to begin production. Its founder, 1st Lt. Matthew Coble, also announced in the post that he's handing the company's operation off to a veteran friend, saying "my responsibilities in the military come first."

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