All I play anymore is trick-taking games.

When it comes to Schadenfreude, the supernal title by the Japanese designer known as ctr, that seems like a good thing to me.

Cards and a scoring track.

What stands out, looking back on all the pictures I’ve taken from my Schadenfreude sessions, is just how bare it looks. We’ve looked at so many visually engaging trick-takers over the past few months. Ghosts of Christmas, with its pastel dials. 9 Lives, its cats lounging on the carpet. The scoring board from Cat in the Box has a sense of mystery to it; the round table from Bug Council of Backyardia is clearly a rondel. By comparison, Schadenfreude is some cards and a scoring track. That’s all it has.

That’s all it needs.

But this unadorned appearance always comes as a surprise. When I snapped those pictures, I was midway into a game of intrigue and deception. Every round bristled with unexpected occurrences. In many cases, we were laughing out loud only moments before. Belly-laughs, the kind that make your cheeks hurt and take the wind out of you. My wife, always a good sport at reminding me to snap a shot, would touch my shoulder and say, in between breaths of recovery, “Honey, maybe this is a good time to take a picture.”

And I would. And the memory crystallized in my mind would be mirthful and bright. And then I would look at the image, digital-bright, the colors not quite real, and see some cards and a scoring track. Not even a pastiche of what had just transpired.

There’s an undeniable ephemerality to play. We enter into an altered state, one where the counterfactual is real and the real becomes, if not removed entirely, a little bit more remote. Schadenfreude is one of those “themeless” games. Like plenty of trick-takers. But its ability to transport is well documented. For a moment, we become card-counters and schemers. Then: gone.

Winning a bunch of cards means I’m liable to lose a bunch of cards.

Second place. That’s the rule that makes Schadenfreude so magical. Apart from that, it’s as plain a trick-taker as ever there was. You know the drill. Everybody puts down a card. Suits are binding. There is no triumph. Yadda yadda. But then, in a calculation that defies reason, that takes a moment more to evaluate than it ought to — so ingrained in our consciousness is the ability to parse “high card” without truly examining the remainder — it’s the second-highest card that wins.

Trick-takers have a problem at their core. I’ll be the first to admit it. There’s the very real chance that you won’t draw a good hand, one full of triumphs or high cards or whatever this particular iteration rates for victory. Designers have found plenty of ways to skirt the issue. Contract bidding is one solution. Awarding something nice to the low card is another.

Schadenfreude’s solution is that the second-highest card wins. It’s so simple. Now high cards are as much a liability as low cards. The probabilistic distribution of a hand isn’t perfected, but it’s dang near normalized.

And that’s only the first step. Schadenfreude isn’t done with you. Winning a trick means claiming the winning card — plus every card that was played off-suit. Which maybe sounds like another instance of being disfavored by a rough draw. Except here, that’s a dual opportunity. First of all, every card you win is arranged in front of you. These are your points. But there are negative cards, too, little hand-grenades your rivals can tuck into your winnings. Even more devious, you can only hold one copy of any given number in your winnings. It feels great to bring home an 8, but a duplicate will annihilate both copies. Hence the schadenfreude of Schadenfreude. This is a game where it’s entirely possible to turn a victory into a big old stink-pickle just by tossing the right off-suit card into a trick. Here, have a card that brings your score to negative.

Crud, have a card that pushes your score even higher. Because the goal of Schadenfreude isn’t to have the highest score. It’s to have the highest score after somebody goes over 40 total points. If you’re over 40, you can’t win. How’s that for a young person’s estimation of aging? 40 is incomprehensible. 40 is death. And it’s transformative. For most of Schadenfreude’s duration, your goal is to earn points… but not too many points. Second place is the best place to sit right until the end of the game. Unless everybody goes over the hill at the same time. Then you’re all destined for decrepitude.

Not much visual dynamism, huh?

What really sets Schadenfreude apart, though, is that it’s as tactical as it is funny. Or is it that it’s as funny as it is tactical? Yes. Both. It looks to all concerned like the sort of game that lacks control, that puts the big question of those uninitiated to trick-taking front and center. “Isn’t it just, we all put a card down and someone gets all the cards?”

I understand why it looks that way. Why it feels that way. But Schadenfreude is a shockingly steady hand. Oh, there are upsets. There are surprises. The higher the player count, the more chaotic it becomes. But there’s more command to this feud than first meets the eye. It demonstrates why trick-taking games are first and foremost games about managing a hand. There are so many strings to pull, all concealed within the microscopic decision space of “pick a card that matches the led suit.” It’s a trick-taking game that shows why the genre flourishes when it’s internal, preoccupied with the contents of that singular hand, and why it blossoms when it’s external, when you’re eyeing opponents across the table and counting their cards and trying to nuke their winnings.

Of the many, many, many trick-taking games I’ve played this year, this is my runaway favorite. Or should that be my second favorite, just to let it win on its own terms? Perhaps. If only I could pick a game that came close. Because when you get right down to it, even if it’s as photogenic as a black hole, Schadenfreude never fails to squirrel some joy into me.

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