Game Review: Schwarzarbeit

By Brad Keen
February 8, 2008

Publisher: BeWitched Spiele
Designers: Friedemann Friese & Andrea Meyer
Players: 3-5
Ages: 12+
Playing Time: 30-40 minutes
Rules Language: German / English rules on BGG (PDF)

Schwarzarbeit, published in 2003 by BeWitched Spiele, developed from a 1997 discussion between Friedemann Friese and Andrea Meyer, when the designers discovered that they both enjoyed deduction games and would like to design one. A few hours later they had a design that was sent out for review by a publisher; a few years later their game was returned by the publisher who had just finished cleaning off its shelves and apparently did not want to publish the game. After changing the theme and tweaking the rules, the design team created a finished product that is a blast to play.

What Do You Get?

• 60 Employee Cards
• 5 Company Cards (1 for each player)
• 1 “Ich-AG” Card
• 10 Lawyer Cubes (2 for each player)
• 5 Detective Cubes (1 for each player)

Schwarzarbeit comes packaged in a nice plastic case with enough extra room to store a folded printout of the English rules. However, once opened, the case does not seem to latch shut. I now use a rubber band to keep the case closed. The included wooden blocks are, well, wooden blocks and are functional if nothing else. The cards have a very nice feel to them and are a pleasure to shuffle. As with many cards printed on thin cardstock, I am somewhat worried about how well they will standup to repeated plays.

My only major complaint about the game is over the translation, or the original construction, of the rules. They are written in a conversational style found in a number of Friese’s games, a style that I find very confusing and unnecessarily complicated. The supplied rulebook is in German, but an English translation can be found online using the link given above. Play examples are provided in the text, and I highly recommend studying the examples and playing through a sample round. After one round you, will find that the game rules are very straightforward and easy to explain.

What Are You Doing

In Schwarzarbeit, players represent the owners of various gaming institutions. Designers Friese and Meyer point out that while we are undoubtedly honorable and law-abiding citizens, this will not stop us from illegally hiring employees under the table to help us out on the weekend. The goal of the game is to legally hire as many employees as possible, while at the same time figuring out who the other players are employing illegally so that you turn them over to the proper authorities (or denounce them).

So how does this all work? Schwarzarbeit is a deduction game with a deck of 61 cards. Each card depicts a potential employee, all humorously named after real board game designers (such as Klauz Knizia and Richard Rosenberg). There are 20 employees in the game, and each employee has three cards to show different work shifts: weekdays, weeknights, or weekend.

At the start of the game, each player is dealt two or three face-down weekend worker cards. These cards depict those individuals who are working illegally for a player on the weekend. These employees cannot be legally hired by any player during those employees’ weekday or weeknight shifts, nor can they be denounced by the player who illegally employs them. (It wouldn’t make sense to have your own employee arrested, would it?) The remaining weekend employee cards are shuffled into the deck with the weekday and weeknight cards, then a number of cards equal to two plus the number of players are drawn from the deck and placed face up in the center of the table to form the labor pool.

After forming the initial labor pool, the “Ich-AG” (translated as “Me Ltd.") card is shuffled into the deck. When this card is revealed, the current labor pool is moved to the discard pile, the “Ich-AG” card is removed from the game, and a new labor pool is created. During the first run through the draw pile, an employee may have only one card in the labor supply; if a second card for that employee is revealed, it is immediately discarded and a new card is added to the labor pool.

A player’s turn is composed of three phases. First, he asks the player to his right how many employee cards in the labor pool that player can legally hire or denounce. Since you can’t legally hire or denounce one of your own weekend workers, you are essentially asking “How many of these employees are not in your face-down pile of weekend employees?” Also remember that your answer is based on the number of cards, not employees, that you can legally hire or denounce.

In the second phase, the active player must either hire or denounce one of the workers in the labor pool. If you believe that a worker is not working illegally during the weekend for another player (i.e. its weekend card was not one of the cards distributed at the start of the game) then you can hire that worker by taking its card and placing it face-up in front of you. If you believe that one of the workers in the labor pool is working illegally for another player during the weekend shift, then you can denounce that worker by taking its card and placing it face-down in front of you, in a staggered pile, on top of any workers you have previously denounced.

Each player additionally starts the game with one detective cube. Once per game, a player may turn in this cube to either denounce an employee when it is not his turn or to denounce an additional employee during his turn.

In the third phase of your turn, you have the option of using one of your two lawyer cubes. If you believe that one of your opponents has incorrectly denounced a worker—and you remember its location in their staggered piles of denounced workers—then you can place one of your lawyer cubes on top of that card. This card remains face down in the staggered pile and is not revealed until the end of the game. A card may not have more than one lawyer cube on it.

At the end of your turn, you refill the labor pool until there are two more cards than the number of players in the game and play continues clockwise to the next player.

When the draw pile is depleted for the first time, the discard pile is reshuffled to form a new draw pile and a number of cards equal to the number of detective cubes left in the game are set aside in a separate face down pile. If a detective is used from this point on, the replacement for that employee is drawn from this pile. During the second run through the deck, employees can have more than one card in the labor supply. When the deck is depleted for a second time, play continues until the end of a player’s turn when the number of cards in the labor supply equals the number of players in the game. When this happens, the game ends and the players reveal their weekend workers and total their scores. The player with the highest score wins.

A Sample Turn with Three Players The labor pool consists of Richard Rosenberg (night shift), Klaus Knizia (day shift), Maureen Moon (night shift), Christwart Casasola (day shift), and Wolfgang Watts (weekend) I am illegally employing Richard Rosenberg, Klaus Knizia, and Bernward Brunnhofer during the weekend. Mike, to my right, tells me that he can legally hire or denounce four workers. I can see that Mike had, on a previous turn, hired Christwart Casasola for the weekend shift. Since I know that I am illegally employing Richard Rosenberg and Klaus Knizia, and Christwart Casasola and Wolfgang Watts are legal workers (since I can see their weekend shift cards), I know that Mike must be illegally employing Maureen Moon. Thus, I decide to denounce Maureen Moon. I also remember that, on a previous turn, my opponent Dan had denounced Wolfgang Watts. Since Wolfgang Watts cannot be working illegally for someone on the weekend shift if his weekend card is in the labor pool, and since I luckily remember Wolfgang Watt’s location in Dan’s staggered pile of denounced workers, I place my lawyer on the face down card in this pile. Dan also somehow figures out that I am illegally employing Richard Rosenberg on the weekend and rushes to place his detective cube on Richard Rosenberg’s card in the labor pool. At the end of my turn I reveal two new cards to refill the labor market and play passes to Dan.

At the end of the game, players score points according to the following rules:

• 1 point for each legally hired employee (0 points if the hired employee is not legal)
• 3 points for each correctly denounced illegal employee (-2 points if you were wrong)
• 2 points for correctly placed lawyer (-2 if you were wrong)
• 1 point if you did not use your lawyer
• -99 points for hiring your own illegal weekend worker during the day or night shift
• -99 points for denouncing their own illegal weekend worker

These last two may seem silly, but in a momentary lapse of judgment, I actually denounced one of my own weekend workers and ended up with a very low score at the end of the game!

Why Is Schwarzarbeit My Game of the Month?

I really liked this game; in fact, it is easily my favorite deduction game. I have played other deduction games (Zendo, Mr. Jack, Clue, Alibi, Julchen und die Monster, and Dream Phone), and with the exception of Dream Phone—which, by the way, is actually kind of fun—most of the games require intense concentration and the ability to keep a long running track of information. I believe that Alibi is a perfect example of this problem (or what I perceive to be a problem) as you are required to keep track of the cards that you have previously passed to your opponents, the questions that you have asked, and the questions that other people have asked over the course of the entire game if you want to accurately deduce the culprit. Alibi does allow for some mistakes and forgetfulness, but when I forgot or lost track of information, I often found myself becoming frustrated—a feeling that I did not get during my multiple plays of Schwarzarbeit.

In Geeklists describing the origins of their games, Friedemann Friese and Andrea Meyer mention that their intent was to create a game that relied on intuition, not perfect information. Friedemann specifically said that this game plays better when players are not allowed to take notes. This is an excellent point. Although you can approach the game with the objective of remembering every bit of information, it is not necessary. When I played it the first time with my parents, I mentioned this to my mom and she agreed that she had more fun after taking this to heart. In fact, the “Ich-AG” card works as a reset button in the game, allowing players who have lost track of information to catch up with everyone else.

This does not mean that Schwarzarbeit is devoid of deep thought or the necessity of keeping track of illegal and legal workers. But what I have noticed after repeated plays is that, on most of your turns, you can clearly find a legal worker to hire. If, for example, you see a weekend employee card in the labor pool you know that it’s a legal worker and you can take that card and place it in front of you. These easy decisions allow players to temporarily zone out of the game or momentarily lose track of information without feeling like they are completely out of contention. On the other hand, denouncing workers is important, and in the games that I played the winner of the game was the person who correctly denounced the most illegal workers. The harder you concentrate and the more information you retain, the better you will do in the long run. As such, the game rewards good play but allows players to make mistakes.

Schwarzarbeit can be played quickly or slowly and with total or fleeting concentration. Multiple plays also revealed different strategies. For example, the more workers you hire, the more information you are giving to the other players. However, if you denounce many workers you are providing information that is much harder to keep track of since your denounced workers are placed face down in front of you. It may also be worthwhile to bluff in this game and hire a worker that you know is illegal (scoring zero points at the end of the game), then later denounce that same worker to throw other players off. I have not yet tried this tactic, but it would be fun to give it a shot.

What’s My Final Verdict?

Ultimately, Schwarzarbeit is a quick and fun card game that plays in about 30 minutes. The card names are funny and mesh well with the humorous artwork, both of which contribute to a general sense of lightheartedness when playing the game.  It is for these reasons that Schwarzarbeit is my game of the month for February.

Thanks to Andrea Meyer, Fabio Tola, and Mike Troxell for providing the images used in this article.

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Comments:

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Thank you, Brad, for the excellent review!  Serendipitously, I just read through the English rules the night before reading this.... Posted by Jeffrey D Myers on Feb 8, 2008 at 08:49 AM | #

Brilliant review!  I will have to try to play this in March.... Posted by Nathan Morse on Feb 8, 2008 at 10:43 AM | #

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