You look around the table. You're the challenger because for some ridiculous reason you believed you could flip over four discs without flipping over a skull. No one was willing to bid higher, so you're stuck for it. You've flipped your two discs - thankfully you were smart enough to plan that far ahead. But you're hardly out of the woods. You'll have to flip over two of your friend's discs to complete your bet of four.
You reach for your friend Charlie's disc. His face is stone cold, implacable, blank, resolute. Is he trying to hide his eagerness for you to flip a skull? Or is he panicking because he knows it's a flower, bringing you a step closer to victory? As the table holds it's breath, you flip over his disc.
Flower.
Charlie shakes his head in rueful defeat as you turn towards your two other friends. Jacob is looking you dead in your eyes. He's got two discs on his mat. Sara only has one, and she seems to be actively avoiding your gaze. Whose disc should you go for? The table is silent as they wait for your decision with baited breath. Sara's eyes dart toward your hand, fixating on it as it slowly reaches towards her disc. Your eyes are glued to her face, looking for any give away, any twitch that might save you from a fatal error.
Placing your hand on her disc, you flip it suddenly as a smallest smile cracks across her lips...
In a box a little larger than the size of an adult hand you can find a game as mindbogglingly deep as it is simple and easy to learn. That game is Skull, and spoiler alert: for your buck you're going to have trouble finding a better deal.
Skull is a bluffing game in the same vein as Poker or BS that can take anywhere from three to six players.
In this tiny box you'll find six player mats, and six sets of discs (four in a set). In each set of discs three of the discs have a flower on one side, and one disc has a skull (from which the game, obviously, gets its name). In Skull, each turn consists of a disc-placing round and a betting round. In the disc-placing round, each player will take turns placing a single disc on top of their mat. Discs always go on top of previously placed discs. The reason why will become clear, later.
But before we get into the nitty gritty of the game, just look at it:
It's absolutely gorgeous! I was a little worried when I pulled discs and mats out of the box and discovered that I had to punch them out of perforated placards, but that worry was short-lived. The game does not look nor feel cheap. The art is a joy and one can't help but play around with the discs between and during rounds (provided you haven't placed them on your mat).
Okay, back to our review.
The disc placing round continues until everyone has placed each of their four discs or someone issues a challenge. To issue a challenge a player simply states the number of discs that they are willing to flip over.
Once someone has made a challenge, the challenge round is initiated. The challenge round is a betting round: each player has the opportunity to raise the amount of discs that they are willing to flip over by at least one until no one else is willing to bet higher or someone bets the maximum number of discs currently in play. This person becomes the challenger.
If the challenger manages this (flip over the amount of discs they challenged without flipping over a skull), they win the round and flip their mat over to indicate this. If they lose, then the player whose skull they flipped over gets to randomly discard one of the challenger's discs. When you run out of discs, you're out of that round. Win two challenges, and you win the game. Oh, and one tiny thing:
The challenger must flip over their own discs first!
This means that if you tried to be cheeky and place your skull on top, then you'd better be careful about challenging. You must challenge at least one, and so you'd be forced to randomly discard one of your discs after you inevitably flipped a skull. On the other hand, maybe you feel like making your opponents feel safe. I mean, surely you wouldn't bet if your top disc was a skull.... right? Bid low, hope someone raises by at least one, and watch them fall for your trap. The game is so tense, so fun, that it's really hard to fully describe the feeling to someone who has never played. Suffice to say that this one is nearly guaranteed to be a crowd-pleaser with people of all ages and larger groups.
To win, all you have to do is win two betting rounds. This keeps the games nice and short, even with larger groups. You can play two or three times late at night without breaking too much of a sweat. It's perfect as the last or first game of the night in a board game night, or after chilling out at your place with friends after an evening out, or with family.
So, without further ado:
Buy If:
You want a simple to teach game for a mid sized group (three to six people) that travels well and has all of the tension and much of the strategy of games like poker without all of the intricate rules and long, drawn out games. Also, it looks great sitting on a coffee table, so there's that.
Don't Buy If:
You're looking for smaller, more intimate games that are best with two to four people. Skull starts getting good with four people. With only three it might get old a bit faster. Also, if you're looking for something a little more board game-y, you might be better off with Quantum.
Thanks for reading and, as always, proceeds from these posts go towards more board games!
Author's Note:
To be honest, it feels great to get back to my nerd roots with these geekier posts, again. I'd been experimenting for some time with posting more journal-like, reflective posts and with posting every day (and I intend to still do that to an extent), but I think that I'm going to change from that to longer form posts and posts about things I care about and feel are more valuable to the community.
The Big Post comes along. I've learned a lot by doing it, and can't wait to apply that knowledge to the Big Post following it. I've gotta finish this one first, though. It's going to be close. Because of scheduling I'm leaving one day earlier than expected for the nearly week long trip at the end of this week. If I don't finish it today there'll be no time for editing, pushing the post back to near month's end.
With everything on my plate, the @geekdom channel will remain on indefinite hiatus until I can get a slice of time and figure out what the hell to do with it.
I'm also considering a four day post week. For some reason my weekend posts tend to struggle, even when I've put in a lot of effort. It may simply be that people are less engaged during certain times of the weekend. I'm not sure.
Big Post Progress Meter:
Really love this review! Im also a boardgame-fanatic and planning to write some reviews myself too! Keep up the good work!!
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Board games are great, aren't they? Thanks for reading!
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This post was almost as much fun to read as Skull is to play! I particularly enjoyed the narrative in the beginning, especially Sara’s little smirk. Nice review!! I agree that the game is uniquely gorgeous. And probably my favorite betting game that I’ve learned so far. I look forward to our next time playing it!
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