Matthew BaileyDisclaimer: This is a bit of an unusual review that I spent ages deciding whether to post but after an all-important chat with Nicola Asker (who I do not openly thank enough for all of the help she provides on here) I decided to go with it and hopefully turn it into a learning experience for all.
Game 15# of the “Now & Then Summer Marathon 2024” is “Skip-Bo” played with Jack(9) and Toby(6).
After playing today’s game, “Skip-Bo,” I realised that my copy from Amazon was, in fact, fake. Luckily, I realised this before coming here to tell you all how absolutely terrible the quality is. The cards are really difficult to shuffle, making the game almost unplayable. Fortunately, I caught this in time.
Normally, I’m pretty good at spotting fakes almost immediately, but I didn’t examine this game closely, thinking it was just a simple card game. I had already opened it and got the cards out before I looked at the packaging too closely.
I was then sat in a quandary: can I actually post a review of a game that I know is fake? In the end, I decided to talk briefly about the game but also provide some tips on spotting fakes.
Firstly, “Skip-Bo” is a card game from the makers of “Uno.” Essentially, you start the game by shuffling all of the cards together and giving, in our case, 30 cards to each player, face down. This then becomes your draw pile that you are trying to clear to win the game.
You then imagine that you have four discard piles in front of you and four build piles in the middle of the table. You try to build in order, by laying a three on top of a two, a two on top of a one, and so on.
On your turn, you take five cards from the central draw pile. Using your hand and whatever you have in your discard pile (you discard one card from your hand each round to one of your four discard piles), you can then lay cards in the centre of the table onto one of the four build piles. What you are trying to do is favour the cards in your draw pile and only use your hand and discard piles to build up the piles in the middle so you can lay down the cards from your draw pile.
This continues until one person has gotten rid of their draw pile. It’s a simple card game with a basic mechanic, which, if I’m being honest, goes on a little too long and isn’t overly interesting to play. If you are going to play this, I definitely recommend using 20 cards in the draw pile rather than the suggested 30, even if playing with a small number of people. It will make the game quicker. It’s fine, but I wouldn’t really recommend it.
Now, normally I would talk about quality, but in this case, as my version was counterfeit, I’m not going to discuss that. Instead, I’ll talk about things you should look for to avoid ending up with fake products.
Chinese Shops – Firstly, if you’re going to order from websites such as Temu, Wish, or AliExpress, 99.9% of the time, you are going to end up with a fake. There’s a reason why games like “Dobble” and “Uno” on these sites are two or three pounds, and that’s because they are simply not official copies. Now, I know there might be a temptation to think, “Oh, why does it matter?” but I can tell you, after playing “Skip-Bo” with a fake deck, it was absolutely miserable in terms of having to shuffle this thing. The cards are open to play, and I genuinely had to think really hard about the mechanics of the game and what parts of it I enjoyed when I was writing this review.
Amazon – You do need to be careful on Amazon as well. Quite often, third-party sellers will sell fake products on Amazon, and even if you are ordering from a legitimate place, the stock from the third-party fake sellers can get mixed in with official Amazon stock. So if you buy a game from Amazon, especially if it is one of the semi-mainstream games, it’s always worth checking to see if you have a fake version.
Retailer Reputation: Buy from well-known and reputable retailers.
Price – If the price seems too good to be true, it probably is. Authentic board games generally have a consistent price range across reputable retailers.
Barcode and Serial Numbers – Some games come with barcodes and serial numbers that you can verify on the publisher’s website. Check if these details match the official product.
The Packaging – The packaging is often quite an easy way to tell. Normally, these fake versions don’t print the company logo. For example, if you look at the version of “Skip-Bo” I got, you will see that the Mattel logo does not appear on the box. You might also end up with some unusual writing, such as Arabic writing on the back. Equally, it says “Made in China.” The box will also usually not be printed to the high standard you would expect. It’s often worth checking to see if the game you are expecting has anything particularly notable on the box, such as maybe a satin finish or any kind of foil that would be obvious. Additionally, sometimes you will notice that fakes don’t come in the type of box you expect board games to come in. It’s very rare to find a hobbyist board game in the kind of box that opens at the top, and if you’ve got that kind of box rather than the one you would expect, then it could possibly be a fake.
Components – Have a quick check either on here, if it’s a game that we’ve reviewed, or alternatively go to somewhere like BoardGameGeek and look at what the components should look like. Especially if there are minis or plastic-moulded parts, you’ll often find these are of lower quality than you would expect. “Azul” is a good example, as there are a lot of fake versions of that floating around which don’t have the same quality plastic components and instead come with these weird one-sided hollow plastic cheap components. Things like cards and tokens will be printed on cheaper cardstock and paper. Normally, you can feel or even see bad printing or bad cutting, which indicates these things are fake.
Inserts – Finally, check to see if the game comes with an insert. It’s very common that fake copies won’t come with an insert at all or, if they do, it will be a cheap insert and not the kind you expect.
If you do come across a fake copy, please make sure you get a refund from the company you got it from. Please don’t accept fakes, and I would really encourage you not to buy them. Luckily, it hasn’t been a problem on here for a while. I have had to remove the odd post over the years from people linking to websites where you can buy cheap fake copies.
I’m not an expert, but if you do suspect you might have a fake, please post pictures here, and I will do my best to determine from your pictures if it is indeed a fake or not.
