Game 37: Skull King

 This was one of the games played with family during our Fourth of July celebration.  It's put out by Grandpa Beck.  I really like the products that Grandpa Beck puts out.  I especially like the fact that Grandpa Beck is a real grandpa who loved playing games with his kids and grandkids and because of that developed a business producing games. Sometimes I'm bothered by the fact that some of them are games that he didn't really create but rather are games that I'd played for years with a regular deck of cards.  That's the case here where Skull King is almost identical to the card game Up and Down the River.  To be fair, Grandpa Beck has created some special cards that add some significant twists to the game, cards such as Pirate Cards and Escape Cards.
Basically in this game you earn points by trying to correctly predict the number of tricks you will take on each hand.  Some cards are also worth points.  The first hand consists of each person being dealt only one card.  In each successive hand one additional card is dealt, so the bidding strategy changes throughout the game.

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