Schinderhannes

About this board game

Schinderhannes is a deduction game for 1–4 players, playable in about 45 minutes, in which you identify the locations of crimes committed by the infamous robber Johannes Bückler.

Known as “Schinderhannes,” Bückler robbed, stole, and murdered in Germany during the 18th and 19th centuries. His criminal career lasted only about five years before he was beheaded in Mainz in 1803. In the game, players investigate this history by working out where each crime took place.

Players use cards representing rumours or police files. Each card provides information that helps narrow the possibilities, such as a particular season, the people involved, a geographic region, or a relationship between locations. A clue might identify a group of possible places for a donkey theft, state that a livestock theft occurred in the south, or place one crime in a district neighboring another.

• Deduction gameplay based on the mechanisms of Old Town
• Clues covering crimes, people, dates, regions, and neighboring districts
• Points awarded for removing clue markers through deduction
• A race to define every crime and determine the highest score

For each clue marker a player removes as a result of the information revealed, that player receives one point. The game ends when all crimes are defined, meaning that only one possible location remains for each crime. The player who has gathered the most points wins.

Combining historical subject matter with focused logical deduction, Schinderhannes offers a compact investigation built around progressively narrowing possibilities and interpreting connected clues.