A GAME OF WAR VS SKIP-BO

A Game of War is a book by Guy Debord and Alice Becker-Ho that illustrates a game devised by Debord by giving a detailed account of one of their table-top conflicts. It was first published in French as Le Jeu de la Guerre in 1987, but unsold copies were later pulped in 1991, along with other books by Debord, at his insistence when he left his publisher Champ libre. The book was reissued in 2006, with an English translation published by Atlas Press in 2008. In his 1989 book Panegyric, Guy Debord remarked: So I have studied the logic of war. Indeed I succeeded long ago in representing its essential movements on a rather simple game-board… I played this game, and in the often difficult conduct of my life drew a few lessons from it — setting rules for my life, and abiding by them. The surprises vouchsafed by this Kriegspiel of mine seem endless; I rather fear it may turn out to be the only one of my works to which people will venture to accord any value. As to whether I have made good use of its lessons, I shall leave that for others to judge. Apart from the books which contain the game, free online versions of the game are available. London based group, Class Wargames have reproduced A Game of War and taken it on a campaign around the globe, at Belo Horizonte, pictured above, St. Petersburg and a variety of other locations.

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Skip-Bo is a commercial version of the card game Spite and Malice, a derivative of Russian Bank (also known as Crapette or Tunj). In 1967, Minnie Hazel "Skip" Bowman (1915–2001) of Brownfield, Texas, began producing a boxed edition of the game under the name SKIP-BO. In 1980 the game was purchased by International Games, which was subsequently bought by Mattel in 1992. A mobile version of the game for iOS was released by Magmic in September, 2013. There is a new version called "SKIP-BO Mod" that comes in a white and blue case. Two to four people can play at a time as individuals, or, six or more players in teams (no more than three partnerships). The object of the game is to be the first player or team to play out their entire stock pile(s). The player with the middle age goes first. Each player is dealt 30 cards (recommended 10-15 for faster gameplay) for their pile with only the top card visible, and a hand of five cards, and the remaining cards are placed face down to create a common draw pile. The shared play area allows up to four build piles, which must be started using either a "1" card or a Skip-Bo, and each player also has up to four personal discard piles. Each turn the active player draws until they have five cards in hand, though there are cases of not drawing more cards to equal five cards, instead doing a draw of a certain number of cards. They must play either the next card in sequential order or a wild Skip-Bo card, using either cards in hand, the top card of their stock pile, or the top card of any of their four discard piles. If the player can play all five cards from their hand, they draw five more and continue playing. When no more plays are available, the player discards one card to either an empty discard pile or on top of an existing one and play passes to the next player. When a build pile reaches 12, it is removed from the board and that space becomes empty for another pile to be started; play continues until one player has played their final start card.

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