Spicy review— Fascinated by this shiny BS

After falling in love with Kutnà Hora and now developing a deep appreciation for Spicy, it has come to my attention that I am, in fact, a corvid of some kind and am absolutely fascinated by shiny things. At first I was unimpressed by a $15 deck of cards that is awkwardly oversized and only plays BS, but it quickly won me over.

Getting the bad thing out of the way first, yeah, this is just bullshit in a too-big box. Your standard deck has been altered-trimmed from 4 suits to 3, with face cards eliminated, an additional 2 copies of each card added to make monopolization more difficult, and finally number and suit wilds added to make calling bullshit always a smidge dangerous. But after I overcame that negative, I saw how brilliant every aspect of Spicy is. The gorgeous card art combined with the foiling on the card back makes the game feel luxurious even though it’s still dirt cheap. The end game trigger card has you stand it up and then put it in the deck around where its player count arrow was, which lets anyone who for whatever reason doesn’t know bullshit know to anticipate something that’s relatively unserious. The rules slightly tweak classic BS, but instead of trying to make it “gamier”, the change here is a lubricant, making the game a smoother experience for everyone. Looping back around to the deck, the changes Fare appreciated after a play: eliminating a suit and just over a quarter of the numbers while adding wilds means you’re that much more likely to be able to play accurately on one of the two, but having to stay within suits while a pile is going makes the choice of what to play and when to call bullshit always interesting. I love the core game here. It’s worth mentioning that the box also comes with variable rules that also have deluxe feeling reminder cards because of course it does. I’m not particularly fond of any of them, but I’m happy they’re in here for anyone that does like them. Now that I’ve got my review copy in my collection, I’ll not just be using it as a filler, but to kick off any day of games that include suspicion, like Battlestar or Game of Thrones, just to break the seal on everyone screaming “bullshit!” at each other.

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