This post won’t go over the rules of Skull. You can view a copy of the rulebook here.
Often on Reddit threads and BoardGameGeek GeekLists about games that can be played with a standard 52 card deck, I see the bluffing game Skull being brought up among the top options. Unfortunately, a “true” version of Skull can’t be played with a single deck of cards, since without identical Roses, you can leak crucial information to other players.
Let me explain with an example. Let’s say that we are trying to play Skull with a standard deck of cards. For my Skull, I’ve got a Jack of Spades, and for my Roses, I have the 2, 3, and 4 of Hearts. Imagine the following turns.
- On the first turn, you lose your Skull! Your cards are now completely safe to take from, but luckily nobody else knows it yet! You can still bluff.
- On the second turn, your 2 and 3 are revealed during another player's challenge. Everybody knows that you have a 2 and a 3, but they don’t know what your third card is yet.
- On the third turn, the 4 on the top of your stack is revealed. Everyone else knows that you have all Roses.
By contrast, let’s go through the same series of events, but playing with a Skull and three Roses.
- On the first turn, you lose your Skull! Your cards are now completely safe to take from, but luckily nobody else knows it yet! You can still bluff.
- On the second turn, two Roses are revealed during another player's challenge. Everybody knows that you have at least two Roses — but they already knew that, so no new information was gained.
- On the third turn, a Rose on the top of your stack is revealed. Nobody knows if this is the same Rose that they saw the previous turn or not.
If you have a hankering for Skull and don’t have a commercial copy, luckily there are still options. As long as you have three identical cards of various types within a deck, you can borrow from other games to play Skull. If you’d rather have something more personal, you can print-and-play your own copy. Or, you can just ignore the information leakage and play with a standard deck anyways.
- Previous: Exact Change
- Next: Can't Stop Calculator