Schadenfreude is a surprising trick-taking game worth the pain
This Japanese import will have you taking joy in the suffering of your opponents.
Schadenfreude is a trick-taking card game that will make you frustrated, then laugh, then swing you back to a state of frustration, all in a span of just a few minutes. Designed by Japanese game designer ctr, this is a game that takes the tropes of trick-taking and melds them into a cohesive, surprising whole.
In this three-to-five player trick-taker, the winner of the trick is the player who has played the second-highest card in the led suit. Reasonable enough already, right? That’s a twist that seems not too unusual in the realm of trick-taking games; it introduces some slightly confusing card play, but it’s nothing with which you can’t wrestle. That’s the first of four tricks this game pulls.
The second: When you win a trick, you take the card with which you won, as well as any cards played off-suit. This is a must-follow trick-taker, meaning players must follow the played suit of the lead player if they are able; if they can’t, they can choose to play a card of any suit. Those cards you collect all become your points at the end of the round.
The third: If you ever collect a card you already have in front of you, you’ll discard both of them. Collected two 9s? They’re both gone. Two negative-threes? Gone! These cards are points, so you can imagine how losing them might be a blow or a boon.
The fourth — and easily the most important — trick: The game ends when at least one player passes 40 points. Anyone who passes 40 points loses. The winner is the player who ends the game with the closest point total to 40, so long as they didn’t pass the score limit.
None of these rules are complicated, and they’re still not complicated in conjunction with each other. The game itself is quite simple, but it’s the interactions between the features that gives Schadenfreude its glimmer.
You can divide trick-taking — very roughly speaking, of course — into “plain trick,” “trick avoidance,” and “point trick” games, recognizing that there are spaces between those areas. Very, very few games manage to pull off both trick avoidance and point trick as effortlessly as Schadenfreude does. Most games that try this sort of thing (and some do it extremely well — this is not a slight) are simply plain trick games wherein you’re trying to win only a certain number of tricks. Schadenfreude takes the more difficult path.
Each round of Schadenfreude has a maximum of 39 points, so it’s not a game of which you’ll ever see just one round. Instead, rounds ramp up the tension. Have you won too many tricks in the first round, and now you’re sitting with 30 points? (Quite a lot!) How will you avoid taking too many tricks this round? Say you’re avoiding tricks, and you give an opponent a lot of points, but it puts them in a stronger potential winning position — what then? There’s a balance you must strike with the players around the table. Will you let them storm ahead, potentially risking a loss when somebody ends the game and you have 10 points, as opposed to a winner’s 36? Will you take the lead, risking one mistimed trick bringing your downfall at the end of a round?
This game comes back to the name: schadenfreude, in German, translates literally to “damage” or “harm,” schaden, and “joy,” freude. Would this game shine with a different name? Certainly it doesn’t impact the rules. I think there’s a good deal of meaning here that actually ties the game together. The feeling when an opponent wins a second -3 card, having to discard both, and subsequently going over 40 points, leaving you the laughing winner: That’s schadenfreude. It’s the feeling of a player coming in with a high card, thinking they won’t win the trick, then the one 10 in the game is played — leaving them with points for which they weren’t prepared. Or even when you erase someone’s points by playing a second high-value card, leaving them trailing behind you.
I don’t know what exactly it is that makes Schadenfreude work so well with the name. I’d love to point and say, “there! That’s why the name makes the game work.” I suppose if I were to hazard a guess, it’s that it adds intention. The game is giving you a hint at what it wants you to feel. In trying to think of other games that do this, I struggle to find more than a few that are beyond just a simple descriptor. Anomia describes the condition it’ll induce, but it’s not particularly an optional feeling. Nine Tiles Panic, perhaps, does a passable job.
It’s entirely possible I’ve overthought this (there’s a first time for everything), but there’s something about Schadenfreude — the name, the game, the feeling they produce — that feels special. Creating an elegant trick-taking ruleset with four distinct features absolutely is.
We can’t really talk about Schadenfreude without talking about how difficult the game can be to buy. While it’s not one of the more difficult trick-takers to import generally, it’s been growing in popularity. It’s available right now on Japanese hobby market Bodoge (I use Buyee for my Japanese imports, generally, but your mileage may vary), so there is still hope. With any luck, somebody is out there working hard on publishing this game in English-speaking markets. There’s a winner here.
A note: You could also proxy Schadenfreude fairly easily with a standard deck of cards. Turn your J, Q and K into -1, -2 and -3 cards, and turn the jokers into a 0 and a 10. Once the game’s available to buy more widely, don’t hesitate. It’s so good.
Thanks, as always, for reading this little newsletter. It’s hard to believe this is the 85th issue I’ve published. (I only know because I keep a written list with each issue.) I’m also dangerously close to doubling subscriptions from the start of the year, which I could never have imagined.
To those of you who have shared this newsletter with friends, thank you! I’ve recently introduced a reward program (owing to Substack making it easy), wherein anyone who refers three subscribers gets a couple Don’t Eat the Meeples stickers. If you’re confident you’ve referred three subscribers prior to the implementation of said program, drop me an email — you should be able to just reply to this email, should you so desire.
Next week: It’s nearly Thanksgiving! We’ll go over games to take to your family gatherings — plus some of my favorite games featuring food.
Plus: My wife, Ginny, writes a newsletter about craft chocolate, one of our shared hobbies, and definitely my favorite snack while gaming. I’m biased, but I think it’s worth your time — especially if you have strong feelings about white chocolate.