Date: December 12, 2025
We finally made a video of us playing Crib Wars on our new Ebonwood board! The video is almost an hour long, yet as near as I can tell from a web search, it’s the shortest YouTube video of a Crib Wars game. Except for a couple of bloopers by me, it went pretty well overall as an example of playing the game. We had a chance to demonstrate and explain the different zones in the game. There are at least 2 mistakes I made in the game (which I pointed out); one of them is stealing the deal on one round (which I forgot to mention). There are likely others; just let me know! A recap of the rules as we understand them from what’s available on the web can be found below:
Ebonwood is a company located in Appleton Wisconsin and they make a variety of wood objects including cribbage boards including a Cribbage Wars game. It’s rectangular and similar to what we got. However, it lacks directional arrows on the track in the lower left quadrant. There is no Muggins Alley. The rules for Cribbage Wars are on the Ebonwood web site. I don’t know if the board ships with rules. Ebonwood charges $210 for it.
If you already know how to play basic cribbage, you can ignore most of what’s on the rules sheet (available on the web) because there’s only a short section for the Crib Wars rules. It describes the colored areas and what the players are supposed to do with them.
There’s no Muggers Alley on the Ebonwood board and we never play muggins. Below are my updated descriptions of the colored zones, which we discuss and demonstrate during the video.
Red Skips: There are 3 of these. The rule says if you land on the first red box you should slide to the next red box which gets you 20 holes further along the board. The red box just means the set of 3 holes highlighted with a red color. You get from the first one to the next one by just moving the peg 20 holes. You’ll land in the 2nd set of holes marked in red. This is a boon in the first Red Skip area. However, if you pay attention to the directional arrows in the path guiding you, it looks like they accelerate you toward two of the Blue Time Traps.
Blue Time Traps: There are 4 of these and there will be three blue lines, meaning the blue color covers all three holes and all three peg tracks (3 holes along the track and 3 holes across the track). If you land in a set of three holes highlighted in blue, you end up moving to a blue area of holes that actually set you behind several holes. You have to play your way out of them. Players note that you can end up in repetitious cycling back to the traps largely because of how often you can get one or two points at a time while scoring. In fact, some say that if their opponent gets close to a Blue Time Trap they may purposely lead with a five card (something you would rarely if ever do in a standard cribbage game). That could trap the opponent into playing a ten card or a 5 card, which might risk them moving only a couple of holes right back into the Blue Time Trap. The same thing could happen with falling into the Blue Penalty Boxes.
Blue Penalty Boxes: There are three of them. You fall into one of these by moving your peg into one of the single blue hole lines, meaning one blue track across the three peg tracks. This is a disaster because you immediately have to move back 20 holes and fold your hand and your crib while your opponent moves forward 20 holes and counts their hand and crib (if they have the crib). Asking AI is the only way I could find out how to learn how to peg moving back and forward 20 holes. The player who lands in the penalty box moves their front peg back 20 holes starting from the penalty box. You don’t move the rear peg. If your front peg lands behind the rear peg, it becomes the new rear peg. The player who doesn’t land in the penalty box moves their front peg forward 20 holes. The player who lands in the penalty box immediately folds their hand and crib.
Green Advances: There are two of them. If you land in a green hole, you take short cut path. The long one saves you from moving toward the Blue Time Trap in the left lower quadrant. You don’t avoid the potential other trap above. If you take the normal track instead you end up moving toward the lower left quadrant Blue Time Trap—but you have a chance at getting into the short Green Advance track before you get there which loops back away from it and you end up going in the direction of the upper Blue Time Trap.
You think you’re in the clear after that? You’re not because there is a sadistically placed Blue Penalty Box in the next to the last hole before the Finish Line!
Go Retire Psychiatrist 