Skull King

Skull King is a trick-taking card game which is pretty conventional compared to many others I have played. Most of the familiar elements are there. So this is something easy to get into if you are already familiar with the genre. It is also easy to teach new gamers. Many non-gamers have some idea of trick-taking games, and Skull King will be somewhat familiar to them. Just say it's a bit like Hearts. 

You play 10 rounds, and each round you draw a number of cards equal to the round number. At the start of a round, you must predict how many tricks you will win. You score points if you get it right, and you lose points otherwise. If you are right, you score 20 points per trick won. There is incentive to win more tricks. If you are wrong, you lose 10 points per trick difference, whether you overestimate or underestimate. You score some bonus points when you manage to beat some specific cards with some other specific cards, and when you manage to win certain cards.  

There are four suits in the game. This is a follow suit trick-taking game. You generally have to follow suit if you have a card in the lead suit. There is a trump suit - the Jolly Roger. There are several special cards. The escape card always loses. This can be helpful to avoid winning too many tricks. The pirate, mermaid and pirate king cards can be played ignoring the lead suit rule. They beat all normal cards. Mermaids are beaten by pirates, pirates are beaten by the pirate king (there is only one pirate king), and the pirate king is in turn beaten by mermaids. 

The game is not that complicated. The powers are simple. Skull King does not offer any wild innovation, but it is solid and it will scratch that trick-taking itch. The biggest focus is making the right predictions. If you can do that well, weak hands won't stop you from winning. In the late game, if you predict zero and you get it right, you score 10 times the round number, which can be a lot. The special cards are fun. They are certainly powerful, but there is always some anxiety when you play them, because someone else just might have that other special card which will beat yours. 

One thing I probably should not be doing is playing this on BoardGameArena.com with 5 players. The game takes a long time to play in asynchronous mode, because there are many turns. Turns are very short, so this game will be better if played in person, or played live online.