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Cost: $10
From: Queen Games
Players: 3-4
Playing Time: 30 minutes
Type of game: Card
Skill level: 7
Complexity: 4
Reviewed by: Peter Sarrett, Issue 19, Summer/Fall/Winter 1998
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Bohnanza pretty much came out of nowhere, an unassuming card game from an unknown designer. Now it’s a firm success, having spawned two expansion sets (including the new La Isla Bohnita seafaring expansion). No wonder, then, that designer Uwe Rosenberg’s next game was eagerly anticipated. Delightfully, this sophomore effort is as good as its predecessor and perhaps even more addictive.
When word came that Schnäppchen Jagd (Bargain Hunt) would be a trick-taking card game, a genre that’s been done to death and beyond, I sighed in dismay. Surely there was no more gold to mine in that vein. Wrong. The cardplay itself, while unorthodox, isn’t exactly innovative. But Rosenberg has put together an amalgam of mechanisms which work well together, then spiced them up with a between-hand “recycling” system which elevates Schnäppchen Jagd above the crowd.
The deck consists of six suits with a double run of 1-9 in each, plus a pair of super trumps.Cardplay is based on the familiar follow-suit-if-you-can, otherwise-play-anything rule, with the high card of suit taking the trick. But then it gets a little wonky.
With each suit having two cards of every value, it’s possible for identical cards to drop on the same trick. Whoever plays the second such card has the option to declare it higher or lower than the earlier one! So in a red trick of 3-7-7, the last seven can be called high (taking the trick) or low (ducking).
When a player doesn’t follow suit, he may declare his suit as the trump suit for that trick. If he doesn’t, a player sloughing a different suit later in the trick can declare that as trump, and so on. If a player doesn’t make his suit trump, a later player sloughing the same suit can’t override that decision. Only one suit can be trump at a time, but the slate is wiped clean at the start of each trick.
The net effect is to make it easy for players to jump on a trick, particularly when sitting to the left of the lead. The danger is that in the process of bagging some bargains, you might also pick up junk you won’t have time to recycle.
From his initial hand each player must choose one card to designate his “bargain” value- the value that player wants to collect. This is placed face up in front of him to start his bargain pile. When a player takes a trick, any cards of his bargain value go into his bargain pile where they‘ll be worth a point each. The other cards of the trick go into his junk pile and will cost him a point apiece at the end unless he manages to recycle them.
Recycling happens between each hand. Each player can look through his junk pile and discard any one set of three or more cards of the same value (two or more in a four player game). Cards beyond the third aren’t discarded but instead are converted into bargains, changing the player’s bargain value in the process. With three players, for example, a player holding four nines could discard three of them and put the fourth onto his bargain pile. In the next hand, that player would want to collect nines. If he’d had only three nines his bargain value would remain unchanged, but his junk pile would be smaller.
Strategy in Schnäppchen Jagd is hard to pin down. Collecting lots of tricks in the early hands gives a player more opportunities to convert junk into bargains later, but I’ve also seen players win by being very picky about which tricks they took. Either way, taking lots of tricks in later hands can be very dangerous, as it’s easy to be caught with too many sets to recycle. Often a player faces a trick which is junk to him but full of bargains for someone else. The dilemma is whether to jump on it and hope to convert the junk later, or let the opponent suck up some tasty bargains instead.
Schnäppchen Jagd is an easy game to play poorly, a difficult game to play well, and just plain fun to play. It’s also a rare game which actually works better with three players than with four. It’s received a lot of play lately and is still oft-requested. Rosenberg’s upcoming Mamma Mia is one to watch from Nuremburg in February.