Professional footballer Morgan Rogers has confirmed the English World Cup team’s latest obsession, and it’s an obscure board game called Skyjo. Rogers told the BBC the players were “addicted” to the abstract card game introduced to them by midfielder Jude Bellingham.
Skyjo is a 2015 game designed and illustrated by Alexander Bernhardt. Players receive a 12-card hand, and a card is placed in the middle of the table to create the discard pile. Each player places their hand in four vertical rows of three, choosing two to reveal face-up.
The highest pair of cards determines who goes first. After that, players draw a card each turn, either from the public discard pile or the face-down draw pile. Choosing from the discard means swapping this card for one from your rows. Meanwhile, if you top-deck the draw pile, you can choose to swap it with one of your existing cards – or you can discard it and reveal one of your remaining hidden cards.
Skyjo’s final rule is that, if a player ever uncovers or places three of the same cards in a vertical row, they must discard the entire row. A round ends when one player has revealed all cards, and after everyone else takes a final turn, points are totaled. The game ends when someone reaches 100 points, and the winner is the one with the lowest score.
It’s a casual card game that can accommodate a large player group. It’s a quick, numbers-focused game of luck and pattern recognition, in a similar vein to games like No Thanks and Flip 7. Its average BoardGameGeek ranking is 6.6, but the England team are clearly more taken with Skyjo than the average forum dweller.
The BBC says this is one of several board games that have been used to boost morale and team bonds during the USA World Cup. Other team favorites include ‘Wolf’ – which, based on descriptions given by the BBC and The Standard, appears to be Stellar Factory’s version of the popular social deduction game, Werewolf.
The England team are also keen on Impostor, an app-based game where every player except one receives a secret word and works together to discover the odd one out.
The team are certified tabletop lovers, then, but it sounds like they’ve barely scratched the surface of the best board games out there. If anyone wants to fly me out to the US to teach them how to play Blood on the Clocktower, I’m down. I think they’d love it.
I’m not expecting the England team to call any time soon, but if you’d like to chat about your favorite games, join our official Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
