Skull Queen

• Designer: Stefan Dorra
• Publisher: Schmidt Spiele
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Amazon Affiliate Link: https://amzn.to/3C3y9dZ
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Ahoy, mateys! Time to grab your pirate hats and set sail! Ready to claim the bounty of a lifetime?

You’re each the captain of a pirate ship, and your lookout has just spotted a ship full of bounty on the horizon. You need to line up your pirates so they are ready to board when you attack. Start by placing each Pirate on any one of the 5 spaces on your Plank. Be savvy when playing your cards so you can move your Pirates to the highest value spaces. But make sure you don’t lose a Pirate off your Plank—you don’t want a pirate ending up in the water! A Pirate that has fallen in the water cannot return to your Plank and so will score you 0 points later on. Once you’ve all played all your cards, for each Pirate you have on your Plank, you score the points shown on the space that Pirate is standing on.

Skull Queen is a trick-taking game in which you determine before the game starts whether you will win or lose tricks for every suit. The player who chooses wisely and outplays their opponents will be victorious.

Players start the game by taking a plank and one pawn of each of the four colors.  The deck is 50 cards, 4 copies of values 1 thru 12, and a single 0 and a single 13.  It is shuffled and dealt out evenly. If there are any cards left over, they are revealed to all in the center of the table.

Once players look at their hands, each then decides which side of their plank they want to use this round.  The narrow end is always closest to the player, but the numbers is ascend on one side of the plank and descend on the other.  Now, freely place your pirate pawns on the planks.  The goal is to have your pirates end up on the high valued numbers at the end of the round.

The player to the left of the dealer leads the first trick.  The color of that card must be followed by later players in the trick if possible.  When all players have played a card, the trick is resolved.  Note that any cards that were remainders from the deck are also included in the resolution!

• First check if there are colors with a single card in them; move these singles to the center of the table; they will not affect this trick but can come into play on later tricks
• Next, look at colors where there is more than 1 card in play; the player who played the highest valued card in the color moves the corresponding colored pirate on their plank up one space; the player who played the lowest of the color moves their corresponding pirate one space back.  If you have a pawn that goes off your plank (at either end) – that pawn is out of play for the rest of this round. Players who played intermediate valued cards do not move anything. Do this for all colors with multiple cards played.
• Also check to see if any of the special cards are in play
  • Aye (8) – if this is in play, the winner of this color moves their pawn forward two spaces instead of one
  • Snack (5) – if this is in play, the loser of this color moves their pawn back two spaces instead of one
  • Monkey (0) – it takes on the lead color of the suit and automatically loses. You can play it whether or not you have a card of the lead color.
  • First Mate (13) – it takes on the lead color of the suit and automatically wins. You can play it whether or not you have a card of the lead color.

Once the trick is resolved, discard all cards except for the singletons. The player who played the highest numbered card in the previous trick leads the next.  If there is a tie, the later played one leads.  Continue this process until all players have played all their cards.

At the end of the round, you score points for your Pirates – points equal to the space they ended the round on.  Any pirates that are off the plank score zero points.  Play a number of rounds equal to the number of players. The highest point total wins.

My thoughts on the game

When I first heard about this game, I thought that maybe it would be similar to Skull King – another trick taking game (also published by Schmidt).  After a first glance at the rules, it does not seem to be so.  It does however fit nicely into their line of royalty TT games: Skull King, Skull Queen, Voodoo Prince and Vampire Queen… 

Much of the strategy of the game comes in the initial decision each round on which side of your plank to use and the positions of your pirates. In general, if you have low cards, maybe you want the numbers to increase as your pirates move down – so that you’ll end up with higher values as you have the lowest cards in a trick?  

Of course, you have to pick the right place to start your pirates; because if you are too successful, you’ll walk off the plank and end up scoring nothing.  And, it’s hard sometimes to predict what will happen.  First of all, the two special cards, the 5 and 8, which grant double movement can be played at just the right time to screw someone over and give them an extra and unexpected step.  Secondly, as the round draws to a close, it’s much harder to follow suit and as players slough cards, it is also more likely for an unexpected duel to occur in a color causing your pirates to move when you didn’t want them to.

I really like the way that the single cards from the previous trick remain on the table and can affect the outcome of later tricks; it is a nice puzzle to try to work out.  However, this facet of the game didn’t happen as often as I wanted it to (even at 5p when I thought there would be more sloughing)- the cards seemed to clean themselves up nicely.

The game definitely has a bit of inherent mean-ness to it as well as some turn order shenanigans. It seems to be mostly better to be last in turn order so that you have more control over what happens.  But, it’s always amusing to watch someone else have a pirate walk off the plank after an unexpected result, and that lightens up the game a bit. 

The gamers I have played it with seem to fall into a bimodal distribution of opinions.  One group (myself included) feel like there is a fair amount of skill/planning needed to choose the right side of the plank and the initial position of the pirates.  For me, it’s a nice combination of planning and trying to foresee how the cards will play out (and yes, of course, hopefully some skill on my part in playing the cards in a way to accomplish my goals).  The other half feel that the game is too capricious and unpredictable, and this overwhelms any planning that can be done.  As you would expect, the former group tend to like this game and the latter group don’t ever want to see it again.   Given these disparate opinions, you’ll likely have to play it yourself to see if you add this to your Loot pile or you maroon it on Davy Jones’ Gameshelf or the Poop Deck.

Amazon Affiliate Link: https://amzn.to/3C3y9dZ

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Rand: Like Dale mentioned, this game slots well into the royalty series of TT games by Schmidt. In contrast to Dale, I do think there are some great similarities with Skull King in that the game does not take itself too seriously and creates some high tension and drama. I think it creates even better tension than Skull King, in fact, thanks to the plank. For players who want a zero luck game, the concerns over it being uncontrollable are fair, though I think the same is true for the other Schmidt royalty TTs and, to large extent, trick taking in general. Imperfect information is what makes these games fun for me…and watching someone else walk the plank due to a sneaky card play only amplifies that fun. What holds me back from loving the game is another commonality with the Schmidt royalty line of trick takers: cards with special powers. These add to the lightness and fun, but are always going to be an extra bit of rules overhead and make the games a bit more swingy than I prefer.

Joe Huber (1 play): It’s never a good sign for a new game when my first thought is “I wish I were playing (Game X) instead.”  And that was exactly my reaction to Skull Queen.  Here, the game I wished I was playing was Die Steven Seagal (also designed by Dorra); it’s _also_ a somewhat mean game, but the meanness feels focused and a choice rather than random – you can, to some extent, decide whether or not to be mean based upon how players are doing.  Add in a more interesting hand evaluation problem and more interesting play, and I don’t feel any desire to play Skull Queen a second time.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, John P, Rand
• Neutral.
• Not for me… Joe H.