Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude turns everything you know about trick-taking games neatly on its head. You play with three to five people and you must follow the suit that's led, no choice there. But you don't win a trick with the highest card. The person who plays the second highest card of the lead suit takes the pile instead. That asks for a completely different way of thinking at the table. The winner of a trick collects their card plus any cards that didn't follow suit. But watch out: you can only keep one card of each rank in your pile. Pick up a second and both of them disappear. Some cards even count as negative, so you don't want to grab everything you see. At the end of a round you add up the values of the cards you've gathered. The game ends the moment someone goes over 40 points. And here's the twist: whoever sits closest to 40 without going over wins. Scoring too many points is just as risky as scoring too few. In a short half hour you balance together on that fine edge, happily wishing each other one point too many.