Card Game Review 1: Skip-Bo

When I was a kid, my family used to play board games a lot.  I mean a lot.  Rather than having family meetings or talking with each other a lot, we would play board games and things would just naturally progress from there into stories of our days and all that jazz.  In my opinion it's the best way to get a kid talking and learning and I'd happily use this the same tactics on my own children.

In any case, I want to review a card game from my childhood called Skip-Bo.

In all it's glory.

Fist off, I want to address the name.  What the hell does Skip-Bo mean?  I did a bit of research and found out that the game is sort of a commercial grade Spite and Malice card game.  Well, that's disappointing.  I was really hoping that it had something to do with some kind of ancient sect of Bo fighters.  What a ripoff.

The idea is that you're playing competitive Solitaire, you build up the center piles while reducing your stockpiles.  The first one to get their stock to zero is the winner.  At least that's how we play it.  According to the rules there's some sort of scoring bullshit.  I guess that the winner of each game get five points for each card remaining in the opponent's stock and 25 points for winning the game.  Why the hell would you do that?  Just play each game seperately and don't keep track of score, it makes things a lot easier on everyone involved.

It's a pretty simple game, but it's highly addictive.  The center piles are empty at the start of the game, and play goes until someone has a one or Skip-Bo to lay down as a foundation. From there, you and your opponent(s), the game is for 2-6 players, alternate turns building each pile up to the 12 card.  Once a center pile is at that point, a new one is started until all of the stockpiles are gone.  As a twist to the original Solitaire, the creators introduced a card that allows you to skip a number; that's the Skip-Bo.  The game's directions indicate to you that it's "wild".  Well, it was wild when I thought it meant an ancient fighting style that use a Bo Staff like Donatello!  Now it's just some kind of skipping crap.  Now there's an image, skipping crap over Lake Superior.  Enjoy that for just a moment.

I'd love to know why Donatello looks like somebody just skipped crap in front of him.

So there's not much left to say about this, but I do find a few things just a little odd.  Why do the Skip-Bo cards have to have the copyright symbol twice?  Did Mattel think that we were going to forget that they copyrighted the phrase and the game?  Why can't they just have it on the damn box and call it good?  The last irk that this game has for me is that in the directions, every reference to something in the game is in capital letters like we wouldn't know that it's referring to what we just read.  Here's a great example:

4. Discard Pile: During play, each player may build up to four DISCARD piles to the left of his STOCK pile.  They can build up any number of cards in any order in the DISCARD pile, but may only play the top card.

Whatever, it's just a game.  My final and favorite thing about this has to be this phrase: "Also SKIP-BO cards are wild.  This is important."  Yeah, it's important alright, but can't we make that determination on our own?

Anyway, besides a few nitpicky things that I found while rifiling through the game, Skip-Bo is a great game, and I'd reccommend it to anyone.  It's fun to play with two players, and even more fun to play with six.  Either way you play it, I guarantee you'll have fun; and always remember...This is important.