Layoff (Black and White)
Layoff game is yet another role game similar to "Food Chain" from season premiere. It is a story of South-Korean company that is going through downsizing. Pecking order in the company goes like this:
- President is at the top. Nobody can fire him. He, however, has no executive power to fire people directly.
- Director Lee can fire anyone but the president (and his son).
- Head of Department Park
- Park's deputy — Shim
- The lowly regular employees are not executives and can't fire at all. They are Mongryong, Choonhyang, Seondal, Shimchung, Gildong, "prince" Kim, and an intern.
It is beneficial for players to hide their identities. Some roles allow "peeking" at other players. Seondal is special in that he can disguise himself to appear as someone else when peeked at. Also President and his son and office couple Mongryong and Choonhyang have a special relationship so they know each other.
Winning conditions for top 3 executives require successful downsizing: president wins only if total sum of all fired employees' salaries is over 220 million, director Lee wins only if sum of salaries he personally saved by firings is over 120 million and head of department Park needs to personally cut down at least 70 million in salaries.
Some roles are dependent on others to win: Shim only wins if his boss Park is fired, Shim can also reinstate his niece Shimchung if he won the game but she was fired, similarly "prince" Kim wins only if his father, President wins.
Other regular employees just have to survive to win. Survivors out of four of them (excluding intern) can become un-fireable if they all happen to be in the same room-department.
There are only three rooms that correspond to three departments within the company: Manufacturing, Sales and HR. Employees can start in any department, but they can't spend more than 1 turn outside of their "designated" department and have to come back. President and intern of all people are special in that they don't have designated departments and can move and stay in any rooms freely.
The game is for 11 people so 6 guests join 5 players. All guests are players from previous season of the "The Genius": Kyungran, Jungmoon, Changeyop, Yuram, Junseok and Sunggyu. If they win they get money equivalent of 1 garnet (1 million Korean won). Because they don't compete in this season they don't have to fear about elimination nor they care about garnets and can play for fun and want to achieve beautiful joint win and each take a prize home.
Drawing starts and as par for season 2, Sangmin once again lucks into getting the most powerful role — (just like when he got Snake in "Food Chain" and "bonus 50 point if you have no chips at the end" bill in "7 commandments"). He is director Lee who can fire almost anyone.
Because Sangmin is targeted by all other players of season 2, he goes over to "season 1" alliance. Sangmin becomes assassin for them and goes on a firing spree. With him "season 1" has all of the executives with the firing power except Park. Junghyun is Park and is taken down by Sangmin. Now only season 1 players can fire. They target season 2 contestants and save their people.
During the last turn Jiwon talks down Sangmin into not firing him and he becomes the only winning season 2 player with Sangmin. All other winners are season 1 players: Kyungran who got Shim, Sunggyu, Jungmoon the intern (who managed to bully other people into thinking she is some kind of executive) and Junseok who managed to escape Sangmin at the last moment when Sangmin realized that he needs to sacrifice one more person.
Winners pick Yoyoung for Deathmatch and she picks Junghyun as her opponent. They are playing "Black and White".
"Black and White" is played with 10 numbered tiles. Players present tiles face down and dealer sees their number through the glass on the table and announces which tile had the highest value (without disclosing actual numbers) or if they tied. They play until player use up all their tiles. Player with the most points wins deathmatch.
Tiles with odd numbers on them are black and whites have even numbers. This allows players to make assumptions about their opponent's tiles.
Yoyoung and Junghyun use largely the same strategy of being cautious at the beginning and saving tiles with bigger values for the last. They tie because of it and have to play second round. In the second round Junghyun wins and eliminates Yoyoung.
Tropes:
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: when Junghyun, goofy "bumbling dad" of the group starts dancing recreating somewhat risque dance he saw on TV
, Kyungran has to stop him to save him and everyone the embarrassment. - Divided We Fall: just like with herbivores in "Food Chain", if remaining survivors among 4 regular employees (everyone bar intern and people who got their jobs through nepotism) are banded together in one department — they can't be fired.
- Fragile Speedster: intern has absolutely no defense (not even herbivore survivor invincibility clause like other regular employees). To counter-balance this, intern is granted with power to peek at 2 people and has no designated department meaning the best mobility and can move freely across all three departments to avoid executives.
- Hard Mode Filler: Layoff is a more complicated version of Food Chain.
- Nepotism: "Prince" Kim, president's son, has the highest salary among regular employees and can't be fired. Also Shim's niece — Shimchung.
- No Name Given: lowly intern isn't even given a name
- King Incognito: president and "prince" Kim are motivated to hide or obscure their identities. They can't fire anyone by themselves but they can lure executives with firing power to try to fire them which will backfire and will lead to immediate sacking of the poor soul who tried to fire The President or his son.
- Loads and Loads of Rules: due to big number of roles, rulebook for this is quite big. To date it is the only game in The Genius that demanded it's own online cheatsheet.
- Office Romance: Mongryong and Choonhyang.
- Self-Sacrifice Scheme: just like with Food Chain, many win conditions don't require employee to survive. One can get themselves fired for the good of their alliance and still win at the end.
- The Starscream: Park's deputy Shim's goal is to get his boss fired.
