Skull King - First Play!

25th April 2023

Tuesday is here again and we're with the Woking Gaming Club and The Sovereigns​ for a evening of gaming goodness.

Pirates; - they're known for spending their time burying treasure and going arrr! Skull King is a trick-taking game all about finding that treasure and going ahhh!

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What's in a game?

• Cards: Skull Kings utilises a lot of cards.
• Suit cards: Much like a traditional set of cards, there are 4 suits in Skull King. 3 of the suits are green/parrots, yellow/treasure chest and purple/treasure map.
  4th suit: The 4th and final suit is black/jolly roger. This is a trump suit that well.... trumps the other 3.
  Values: There are 14 cards in each suit numbered 1-14.

1 card of each suit.

• Special cards: These cards do not have a suit, instead they have a special ability that his triggered when played.
  Escape cards: There are 5 escape cards in the basic game. When played they allow a player to lose a trick. More on why this can be desirable below.
• Character cards: There are numerous character cards in Skull King (Including the Skull King himself!). As with special cards, character cards do not have a suit.
  Mermaids: There are 2 mermaid cards.
  Pirate: There are 5 pirate cards.
  Skull King: There's only 1 Skull King card and he's the strongest card in the game except against mermaids. Arrrr!
  Tigress: There's also only 1 Tigress card in the game but she can choose to act as a pirate card or escape card.

A treasure chest card... and the Skull King!

• Bid tracking cards: A pair of these cards is given to each player, They cards are used to track 'bidding' from round to round. More on bidding below.

Players can 'bid' to win between 0-10 tricks during the game.

The quality of the cards is exactly the kind of quality you'd expect from a modern game - so pretty good, fairly sturdy cards that look laminated.

There's lots of nice pirate themed artwork in Skull King. Most of it is bright and colourful with good quality illustrations. Importantly, the 4 suits all look distinct from one another as do the special/character cards.

The 4 suits are easily recognised by theme and colours. The special cards are also easily recognisable.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Deck setup: Add/remove the advanced game cards to or from the deck depending whether the normal or advanced game will be played.
• Dealer: Determine the dealer for the game start. The player to the left of the deal becomes the first lead player for that round.

On to play
Skull King is played over 10 rounds with players having increasingly larger hands of cards as rounds progress.
Furthermore, as the game progresses, players will play more and more tricks. Whoever wins each trick will earn the cards used in that trick - which will equate to points at the end of the round.
Skull King is a pretty traditional trick-taking game which uses a traditional turn order with the active player acting before play progresses to the player on their left.

• Round start: The dealer should shuffle the cards into a face-down deck.
• Deal cards: Now the dealer should deal cards face-down to all players.
  The number of cards dealt out should equal to the current round count. I.e., in the 1st round deal 1 card to each player, in the 4th round, deal 4, all the way to the 10th round where 10 cards are dealt to each player.
• Bidding: Each player should carefully look at their cards and try to gauge how 'strong' their hand is and secretly guess how many tricks they think they might win during the coming round. This becomes their 'bid' for the round
  Then all players simultaneously reveal their bids, which then can be recorded using the relevant tracking cards.
• Tricks: With the bidding out of the way, play can commence.
  • Lead player: The lead player will begin the trick by playing any card from their hand which will determine the suit for the trick.
    They are also free to play a special card instead which has no suit (The first suit card played will now determine the suit.)
    Follow: Now all other players must follow suit if they can, which means playing a card of the same suit. If they do not have a card of the same suit, then they can play a card of any other suit.
    Alternatively, regardless of whether a player has a card of the correct suit or not, they may choose to play a special card instead.
    Essentially, special cards have no suit and therefore do not need to follow suit.
  • Winner: Once all players have played a card, the trick is complete and a winner must be determined. There are several ways this can go.
    Suit cards: If only suit cards were played, whoever played the highest value card in the correct suit wins the trick.
    Cards of other suits can never win tricks unless it is from the black/jolly roger suit, in this case a black card will always beat the other suits regardless of value, only a black card of higher value can beat another black card.
    Special cards: As a rule, special cards will always beat suit cards, the exception being the escape card which always loses the trick!
    If multiple special cards are played, there are various rules for how they interact with each other.
    Once a winner has been determined, they collect all cards played in the trick and place them into their personal area.
    It's a good idea for a player to track how many tricks they've won for the end of round scoring.
• End of trick: If players have no more cards in their hand, the round is over and the game goes to the next round or game end as explained below.
  If players still have cards in hand, they continue playing tricks. Whoever won the previous trick will be the lead player for the next trick.
• End of round: When players have emptied their hands, the round is over!
  Players now calculate how many victory points (VPs) they have scored for the round and this is recorded.
  Bids: If a player won the exact number of tricks that they bid for at the round start, then they earn VPs. If the total tricks won is higher or lower, they lose points!
  highest value suit card: A player will earn VPs if they gained the highest value card of any suits.
  Special cards: These cards may situationally earn VPs.
• Next round: For the next round, the dealer and first player both move to the players on their left.
  The new dealer should collect all cards, shuffle them into a face-down deck and now deal cards to each player; the number of cards dealt should be 1 higher than the previous round.

Endgame
Once the 10th round has concluded and the VPs for that round calculated, the game is finally at an end and goes to end scoring.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
Despite being a bit of a stretch to fit, Skull King's pirate theme is fairly amusing with evocative artwork to match. It's a good looking game.

Mechanically, the game is for the most part a straightforward, familiar trick-taking card game, albeit with a handful of special cards that change things up a little.
What makes Skull King standout are the scoring mechanics and in particular the bidding mechanic.

Players are forced to make a decision based on contextual information such as what is the current round and what cards they currently have in their hand. Then they'll need to try and gauge how many wins and losses they can get from their hand and plan accordingly.
Sometimes this will be simple, in the 1st round with only 1 trick being played, it's fairly safe to bid on winning 0 tricks, especially if a player only has a escape card in their hand!
As the game progresses though, these decisions will get harder and harder as more and more cards, special and otherwise come into play, making longer rounds a bit more unpredictable.
Additionally, the scoring system for bids rewards players who bid high (And manage to achieve it!) while it increases the price for failing big. A genuine risk and reward mechanic.
Finally, the bidding mechanic also introduces asymmetrical objective for players, some will be looking win tricks when others are trying lose them.
There's also a higher level of play here that involves paying attention to other players' bids.
E.g., if an opponent has won all the tricks they bid for and the round isn't over, making them win a trick will scupper the points they get from their bid.

However, I'm not so sure how I feel about the bidding mechanic, it definitely adds an extra layer to the gameplay but it's also kind of swingy, hitting a bid can earn a lot of VPs while missing it can lose a not insignificant number of VPs and sometimes this will be very much out a players control.
Additionally. the scoring rules feel a bit overly complex and fiddly, this compounded by how the game is played over 10 rounds and needs to be scored 10 times.

This brings to my other criticism which is the game feels too long:
By my calculations, a total of 55 tricks will be played over the 10 rounds which doesn't seem too bad but actually means shuffling and dealing 10 times as well as scoring 10 times and that all adds up to make the game feel a bit overlong and also finicky.

Skull Kings is a (Completely acceptable.) average trick-taking experience that is enjoyable enough but is mired down by excess bookkeeping for a card game. It's not a bad choice for a game I feel its unique elements don't do enough to make the game differentiate itself from the crowd.
The pirate theme will appeal to some but wouldn't be my first choice for a trick-taking game.