Black Market
- Board's Eye View
- 48 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Black Market, from Heartcode Games in Sweden, is a darkly comedic small-box card game designed by Mikael Rosenqvist where players are harvesting human organs. The publishers made quite a stir at Spiel Essen 2025 by suiting up in surgical scrubs. Hopefully all those who stopped by for a demo of the game left the table with all their internal organs intact!
Players start with a hero card, a card from the deck and three coins. The 12 different heroes all have a unique special ability and most have just two lives, with loss of a life represented by flipping the hero card. Death isn't necessarily entirely fatal, in that it's possible that a twice-hit hero might be brought back to life... However, eliminating all the other players is one way of winning, so you shouldn't hold out too much hope of an act of altruism from a rival player.
On your turn you can just take a coin from the bank, you can use your hero power, or you can bid for one of the cards in the black market display. When a player places a bid in this way, other players can try to outbid you for that card or they can place bids on other cards.
Another option is to sell organ cards to the bank for their cash value. You want to collect organ cards because having four organs is an instant win condition. However, you can make good use of money in the game so it can sometimes make sense to sell organs. And having the most money when there are no cards in the Black Market is another win condition. If you sell an organ card it goes face up in any space previously opened up in the black market display.
There are also various cards that can be played for their actions, including 'take that' cards that can be used to target other players and those that manipulate the black market display. A gun card can be used to take one of the lives of another player, tho' if they have a bodyguard card, their bodyguard can take the bullet for them. If you've accumulated enough money you can spend 8 coins to directly attack another player. This cannot be defended against even if your opponent is holding a bodyguard card: your victim immediately loses a life.
Another option on your turn is to offer another player one of your face-down cards in exchange for one of their cards. The only card that can legitimately be offered in this way is the Blood Bag but you can bluff and offer any card claiming it to be a Blood Bag. If the other player accepts your trade, the swap just goes ahead. If they challenge you and it turns out you played a Blood Bag after all, you get to swap and they lose a life (flip their hero card). If the challenge catches you out in a lie, the exchange doesn't go ahead and it's your hero that loses a life...
Black Market is an easy-to-play 'take that' bidding and bluffing set collection game. Some cards are worthless but there are some that are especially valuable; for example, a Cadaver card can be used as two organs - so makes it much easier to hit the 'four organ' win condition. Bear in mind tho' that having a valuable Cadaver card face-up in your possession can be a bit like painting a bullseye on your back: other players are bound to target you and try to steal it.
Tho' it has player elimination, games of Black Market are generally very quick so nobody is likely to have to sit out for very long. And tho' the theme is dark, it's tongue-in-cheek and unlikely to offend many prospective players.
