Skull King

Skull King is a trick-taking game where, like most trick-takers, you must follow the suit of the first-played card if you’re able to. But if you can’t, there are pirates or mermaids you can play instead – or even the skull king himself…

The deck is made of three basic suits (red, blue and yellow) numbered 1-13, a stronger trump suit (black) and then in ascending order – the mermaid, the black and green pirates, and the usually-deadly skull king – although the twist with the king himself is that he can be beaten by the mermaid. At the bottom of this food chain are the surrender cards, which are pretty much a banker for when you don’t want to win a trick.

The reason you might not want to win a trick is because in each round players make a bid for how many tricks they think they’ll win, and hitting your bid exactly is the only way to score points – 20points per trick, to be exact. If you miss your bid, you get minus points instead – minus ten for every trick you’re under or over by. Additionally, claiming a trick with a pirate in (using the skull king) gives you bonus points if you hit your target. But the risk is your skull king may be trumped by a mermaid, of course – potentially bonus points too.

In the first round, players only have a single card each, and in every subsequent round you receive an additional card until the final tenth round where players receive ten cards each. If you bid zero tricks at any point and make your target, you score the current round number multiplied by ten – not that impressive in round one, but a potential hundred point haul in the final round!