Skull (mug)
| Skull | ||||
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| Doubloon cost: 5 | ||||
| Decay rate: 60 days | ||||
The Skull is one of ten mugs used in the Drinking puzzle.
The skull gives the user an extra move and a 40 point penalty when playing a special piece; this includes fries, cask, or hook. A player will receive these effects when they play the piece onto the board, but not when they chug it. The extra move must be taken from the pieces already on the board at the time the special piece was played. The pieces will not refill until the player's turn is over, meaning the maximum moves they may have during one turn is three.
The skull is the wild card of the mugs. This mug, more than the others, is subject to the whims of the piece generator. Reaping the benefits of the skull requires very little planning. If a special piece comes up during the player's turn, they will most likely take it. A relatively infrequent exception to this is during the first few moves of the game, if there are cask pieces that cannot be played (fries are the only piece on the board, or the board is clogged) or the hook will take away the only piece and there are no fries waiting to be played. In these situations the skull player may forego the usage or drinking of these special pieces and play normally.
The skull player may encounter a small disadvantage during games with larger point totals due to the point penalties adding up, but smart usage of the bonus pieces throughout the match should even it out. The skull is not strong against any mug per se, but has a tendency to finish off rows as a surprise, somewhat negating the horn's abilities.
History
- In release 2009-02-04 the mug was fixed to only penalize on playing special pieces but not chugging them.
 Drinking
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