PLAYED FOR YOU

Skull King

Scary Mary Trumps Mermaid

There is a rumor that pirates fought their battles at the card table, announcing numbers of tricks and adhering to the announcement as exactly as possible. In this tradition you play ten rounds in Skull King and are dealt one card more in each round. The game comprises 52 color cards in four suits, numbered 1-13, and 15 Special cards - 5x Escape, 5x Pirate, 2x Mermaid, 1x Scary Mary and 1x Skull King.

All simultaneously announce the number of tricks they want to take by pointing fingers from a fist on a signal; if you want to take more than five you point five fingers and name the number. You must follow suit, whereby the black suit is always trump, those cards take any other color. Instead of following the suit that was lead you can play a special card: Escape has value 0, you play it to avoid a trick: Mermaid is the highest color card, trumps Black Skull cards, is trumped by pirates and trumps the Skull King. Pirates take all color cards and the Mermaid; Scary Mary can be used as an Escape or as a Pirate card and Skull King trumps all cards and can only be trumped by the Mermaid.

Depending on tricks taken and adherence or deviation from your announcement you score points or only penalty points and can earn bonuses from gold coins on cards by meeting your announcement exactly.

Announcing tricks, nicely varied - the special cards as additional "trumps" introduce new challenges and thrills; is the Skull King lurking? Has someone a Mermaid? If you say "Wizard", you are right, of course, but the scoring is different and special cards and simultaneous trick announcement are more than enough variation and also fun, lots of fun!

Players: 2-6

Age: 8+

Time: 30+

Designer: Brent Beck

Artist: Eckhard Freytag

Price: ca. 8 Euro

Publisher: Schmidt Spiele 2014

Web: www.schmidtspiele.de

Genre: Trick collecting, cards

Users: For families

Special: 2 players

Special: Many players

Version: multi

Rules: de en fr it

In-game text: no

Comments:

Standard mechanisms

Nicely varied with additional cards and simultaneous announcing of trick numbers

Lots of well-loved fun

Very attractive design

Compares to:

Wizard and other card games with announcing numbers of tricks

Other editions:

Scheming and Skulking, Grandpa Beck's Games

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0