Scoville Review

Have you ever had that thought, where you were sitting, wondering, has there ever been a board game based on “x” theme?  Something really obscure, that you were for sure no one has ever thought of before. I think those of us that are avid collectors have this thought often, and it can be quite amusing at times.  Sometimes the thought enters our head as this grand world domination scheme where you are going to be the first person to invent this new abstract and ludicrous board game that everyone is going to buy, making you filthy rich!  And other times, the thought is just one of those that exists at the very far back stretches of your brain, jusssst to see how comical a title/theme you can come up with. Well, let me welcome everyone to “Scoville” – the board game I bet you never thought existed…..well, until now that is.

“Scoville” is exactly what you are thinking.  Well, if you are a pepper fan or afficionado anyway.  You see, Scoville, a term specifically made up by a fellow pepper enthusiast, is a test that measures the “hotness” of a pepper.  The test was first used by Wilbur Scoville in 1912, whose namesake became the prodigious word used across the world to catalogue the finest and hottest peppers.  The test has become so popular, that each year, farmers across the world make attempts to cross-breed peppers to make even hotter ones, just so they can stake a claim at the highest level of the Scoville scale.

Now that you have an idea of what our theme is all about, let’s talk gameplay.  In Scoville, you play a pepper farmer. Your goal is to plant, sell, and breed the hottest peppers in all of town, suitably named, “Scoville.”  There are 5 phases in each round of the game. Players complete these 5 phases in order until afternoon occurs in the game. This happens when a set amount of peppers have been sold by the farmers in the “marketplace” based on player count.  These 5 phases: Auction, Plant, Harvest, Fulfillment, and Time Check, are described in the rulebook in a short, but thorough way. Each “morning” in the game, farmers take turns selling their peppers for victory points, planting new peppers in the open field plots, harvesting and breeding new peppers to sell later, and completing orders.  It sounds like a lot, but the gameplay is one of the smoothest I have experienced in a worker placement style game. It’s unique in that it isn’t truly worker placement where you fill a space and another player is then blocked. The field in this case is wide open and provides ample direction for multiple strategies to get the best peppers on your turn.  Once enough peppers have been sold based on the rulebook’s conditions, players enter the “afternoon” phase where they will sell peppers and fulfill any remaining orders they can. Once all players have completed this last trek through the 5 phases, victory points are added up. You’ll get varying points for all orders fulfilled throughout gameplay, points for special award plaques such as the hottest pepper award, points for unused Bonus tiles you are provided at the start (essentially little bumps in the game so no one person can run away with the scoring), and finally points for all money you have left from selling peppers in increments of $3.

While I have only scratched the surface of the breadth of gameplay this game offers, it is by far one of the simplest, yet most strategic, worker placement board games I have come across.  The theme is in a very specific niche, yet is so whimsical and fun because of how the game is organized and crafted. It is very accessible for the whole family, and I say even usable as a first gateway game into the worker placement genre.  The designer has done great not to let the theme weigh down the game to the point of that typical analysis paralysis that sometimes becomes the crux of most worker placement games. To clarify, actions such as “watering” or “fertilizing” the peppers could have been added to amplify the theme further, but are not included I believe because it truly doesn’t take away from the gameplay and imaginative idea that we are true pepper farmers.  Just because we are “farmers” doesn’t mean we have to complete every task a farmer might do. We just have to feel like we are growing some really cool looking peppers (which the unique pepper meeples do the trick!)

While the theme is quite specific to a certain niche of gamer/pepper afficionado, it certainly makes up in fun gameplay that really anyone can enjoy, even us light-weight pepper eaters.  It actually gives us light-weights a place to feel inclusive in this world of burn-your-face-off exhilarance that is so apparent on the faces of those that can tackle the likes of the dreaded Ghost pepper or Carolina Reaper.  Purple Phoenix Games gives this one a hot 10 / 12. I hope you consider picking up a copy of this at your local game store and give it a try. You won’t regret it. And hey, good luck discovering all sorts of new and exciting types of those hot hot little death pickles!