Designed by: Győri Zoltán Gábor
Spicy is a bluffing game where the aim is to get rid of your spice cards.
Each player begins with a hand of six, and the cards are made up of three suits – chilli, wasabi, pepper – and numbered 1-10, with three of each number in each suit. A round couldn’t be much simpler – the starting player plays a card face-down on the table and announces – maybe truthfully, maybe not – the suit and number. Going clockwise, each player has a choice – to pass (and take an extra card from the deck) or play, by adding a new card to the discards, face-down, and announcing – maybe truthfully, maybe not – what it is. But the suit cannot change in the current round, and each announced number must be higher than the last, until someone announces a 10 of that suit: now the next player can play a 1, 2 or 3 of the same suit instead.
But of course there’s a third option, which is to challenge. You can claim the previous player is lying about their cards, but your challenge is either that the number is wrong, or the suit is wrong, but not both – meaning they can get away with a half-lie! If played a 7 wasabi, for instance, calling it a 10 wasabi, then challenging the number is successful, but challenging the suit is not.
The winner of the challenge takes the entire discard pile as points. The loser takes two new cards into their hand and begins a new round. Mixed into the deck are two types of wild cards – wild suit and wild number. A spice wild always passes a suit challenge but fails a number challenge, and with the number wild the reverse is true.
If a player gets rid of all their cards they take one of the trophy cards (+10 points) as reward, then redraws up to six before the game recommences. The game ends in one of three ways: if anyone takes two trophy cards they win instantly. Otherwise when the third and final trophy card is claimed or the world’s end card is revealed from the draw deck, players count up their claimed cards to discover who is top cat.
Great little fast-paced bluffing game. I've only played it with two, and it's great at that number - I'd be interested to see if it retains the tension with more players. The artwork is really a cut above too - I love the shiny gold card backs with flat colour (screen?)printed on them. Gorgeous.
Nothing too arbitrary. The only thing to bear in mind is that the lower you run on spice cards, the more likely you are to be targeted by a challenge.
Low!
The rules are easy-peasy. The key to winning is more an extravagant confidence and zero hesitation than a poised optimizing of choices.
Spicy is one of those games where the players have a huge amount of input. As you play you'll realise there are ways to exert a little control over proceedings; in a given round at least if not consistently over the game. So it remains predictable always. But you can also add one or two Spice it Up! cards that tweak the basic rules and add in a sprinkling of strategy.
2-6
Players
8+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
A cracking game for bluff, bluster and brinkmanship that takes the fibbery of Perudo, the table-reading of Cockroach Poker and adds a slight sense of time pressure, as the pause to look at your peppery and wasabi cards during a round of chilli will give you away. - Or will it? Bluff also means double, triple, and however-many-layers bluff too, and good actors will be able to haul in a bunch of points simply by virtue of looking slightly panicked. The challenge rule of challenging the suit or the number is genius - you can very literally play your cards half-right to win. Great fun.