Skyjo for 7

Anne's family had another gathering, and while we were still waiting for people to get there, I noticed the game Skyjo sitting on top of the usual stack of games.  I didn't think about it until after pizza, when a cousin said she found this neat new game on a trip to Guatemala.  The same Skyjo that we discovered a few weeks ago.  That was an odd coincidence, stumbling on the same game just a few weeks apart but in different countries.  Anyway, I covered Skyjo here, when we played it with just two.

One of the players said it reminded her of Nine Cards Down, which we covered here .

The main difference was that Skyjo has simple numeric Uno-style cards one a 3x4 grid where Nine Cards Down uses regular playing cards in a 3x3 grid.  But yes, there were similarities.

Since we could not get away before the gaming broke out, we ended up playing Skyjo with 7 players.  In my mind I wondered how much table space you would need for the full 8 players listed on the box.  The answer is ... a lot of space.  While we could put a few draw piles at various spot son the table so every player could reach a pile easily, the one single discard pile was a bit annoying.

Still, it had the same feel for seven players as it did for two.  I was expected to be the coach and explain all the rules, but I did not have my reading glasses, so the tiny tiny print in the rulebook was of no use.  Luckily there are only a few rules.  Anne & I usually end up playing games our own way.  We did not use the full scoring system, we just played four hands and when somebody won, we moved on to the next hand.

The one question that kept coming up: when you throw out a column of three matching cards, exactly what happens?  I thought that you discard the card that was replaced then discard the three matching cards on top of them.  And someone confirmed that's what the rules said -- the only thing it had an actual illustration of.

Another funny thing was how most of the time when we went to discard a card, we handed it to the next player if we thought they needed it.  We agreed that it didn't feel right, but just kept doing it.  It makes more sense to just discard it, and if the next player doesn't see they need it, it's their loss.  But handing the card to the next player was a more social way to play.

This was a fun time even with seven players.  There were some unexpected draws and funny moments, with hand scores ranging from about 8 to 30.