Skip-Bo - Be the first to get rid of all your cards

Object of Game

Be the first to get rid of all your cards in your Stock Pile by laying them all down in the Building Piles.

Requirements

Firstly you need a deck of Skip-Bo cards. The deck will come with 162 cards: 144 of the cards are numbered from 1 to 12 and there are 18 Skip-Bo cards. If the deck comes with a blank card, remove it because those cards will be of no use during the play.

The game can be played using three standard card decks. Where Ace will represent “1” and the kings and jokers will represent the Skip-Bo cards.

Players required for this is 2 to 6. The game can be played individually or with a partner. The age to play the game is 7 and up.

Skip-Bo is a simple card game that is based on sequencing the numbers, and there are 162 cards in the box. There are only two types of cards in the game. Numbered cards from 1-12, and Skip-Bo cards (which behave like Wild cards). The numbered cards are colored blue (from 1-4), green (from 5-8) and red (from 9-12). The colors have zero relevance in the game; only the number counts. Like other Mattel card games, a Wild card is simply a card that can be substituted for any numbered card as and when needed in the game.

Before Play

The game required a large space to play the game where each player can have some room in front of him. Because the game requires you to build stacks or pills to win the game.

Choosing the dealer is easy, shuffle the deck and put it on the table facing down. Now each player will draw a card from the deck. The player who gets the highest no value card will be the dealer.

Each player will get 30 cards when the maximum no of the player is 4. If more than four players are playing. In that case, each player will get 20 cards.

The remaining cards will be used as a drawing pile. And be at the center of the table so every player can draw the cards easily.

The last step before the game starts is all players will turn their top card face-up.

Stacks or Pills

This is the most confusing part of the card. Most players get confused in which stack is stockpile or draw pile. There is a total of Four stacks in the game. Below is the explanation of each stack.

#1. Stock Stack

These stack are the card which you get at the beginning of the game, it will 20 or 30 accordingly to how many players are playing. This stack is placed on the right of each player face down and the top card faces up.

#2. Draw stack

Draw stack are in many popular card games. The stack is the remaining cards after giving each player 20 or 30 cards. The stack will be placed in the middle, so every player can reach the draw stack. This stack is used for maintaining the required card to play the game ( for example – skip bo game requires you to have 5 cards in hand every time. So whenever any player left with less than 5 cards. The player will draw the cards to make 5 cards in hand.

#3. Building stack

you can only build four of this stack. These stacks will be used to get rid of your cards. This building stack is build up in numerical order. This means the stack will start from “1” or skip bo card can be used as “1” to start the stack and this number goes to 12. Once a stack is completed. It gets removed from the building place and a new stack will start.

#4. card Stack

just like building a stack, you can only build four discard stacks. This stack will be on the left of the stock stack. You can put any card in a discard stack. But the only top card can be played during the game.

Scoring and Winning the game

Scoring comes when you play more than 1 or 2 games in skip bo. If you are playing multiple games and want to record the score. The rule of scoring is simple:

The winner of each game will get 25 points for winning the game and 5 points for every card in their opponent’s stock stack. ( for example. You won the game and your opponent left with 3 cards in the stockpile. In that case you will get 25 + 5*3 cards = 40 points). The player who collects 500 points first wins the game.