Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
I grew up playing board and card games with family and friends (heavy emphasis on the board game part), but I didn’t have any experience with trick-taking games until I was much older. And so when I was exposed to trick-taking games in my 30s and 40s, I was somewhat confused. Call the number of tricks you want to take? Sloughing cards? Must follow? These were terms and mechanisms I wasn’t familiar with. I’m still not as big a fan as our biggest trick-taker fan Andrew Lynch, who penned our guide to trick-taking games, but I’m solidly in the “deal me in” camp. That’s why I’m really excited to tell you about Jalape-NO! from 25th Century Games.
A Game From the 1900s?
My kids like to joke that I’m so old I’m from the 1900s (which definitely makes me feel ancient). And while Jalape-NO! is also from the 1900s, it’s only just barely—being released in 1998 by the legendary game design duo of Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling.
Overview
Jalape-NO! is a must follow trick-taking game in which players attempt to have the lowest score over a number of rounds. Depending on player count, there will be between 4 and 6 suits, which have card numbers ranging from 1 all the way up to 18.
Each player is dealt 12 cards at the beginning of each round (all the cards for their specific player count). Should a player be dealt a 1 (the eponymous jalapeno), they place it on the table in front of them. At the end of each round, if you have a jalapeno in front of you, then you’ll receive points for that card (plus any cards which match that jalapeno’s suit you might have in your trick pile).
Whomever leads will play any card they like (from their hand or “their jalapenos”, and each player after that must play the same suit: either from their hand or from their jalapenos. This means that if someone leads a red, you can either play the red 7 from your hand or the red 1 on the table in front of you. If you don’t have the suit, then you can play off-suit, either from your hand or your jalapenos. The round ends when one player plays the last card from their hand.
Any players with jalapenos in front of them receive 2 points for the jalapenos, and 1 point for each card which matches the suit of any of their jalapenos. All other players receive 0 points.
And that’s it. The game is dead simple, especially for players with trick-taking experience.
Final thoughts and a hearty recommendation to buy this game
Straight talk—Jalape-NO! is a blast. Because of its age, it doesn’t fall victim to including elaborate rules or gimmicks like more modern games. But even though it’s a simple game, it does have some subtlety and depth. Playing high cards off suit makes it less likely you’ll take a trick later in the round. Clearing out an entire suit as quickly as possible means you’ll be more likely to offload one of your jalapenos to another player. And paying attention to how many cards of a suit have been played gives you the chance to decide whether to try and play a jalapeno or decide to hang on to it and foist it off on another victim later.
Jalape-NO! is also fairly unique in that it plays up to 9 by clever inclusion of additional suits and higher numbered cards. Each card has a number sequence at the bottom which makes it very easy to determine whether any given card should be included in the deck. If your player count is listed, then that card gets included. I haven’t played it with 9, but I’ve played with most of the other player counts and it has scaled very well at all of them.
The only reason Jalape-NO! isn’t a perfect 5/5 stars is because of some unfortunate graphic design mishaps. I absolutely love the artwork and color palette, but there are two points that have been raised by every group I’ve played with.
The font choice, while unique and interesting, makes it hard to distinguish between some numbers (5s and 8s in particular), and while there is unique artwork for each number (all 18s have a stalk of broccoli for example), that doesn’t help when you’re at the opposite end of the table from the person who laid it down. The other issue is that while most cards have artwork only in the middle of the card (allowing the numbers to be displayed against a solid color), some of the cards show their numbers on top of the artwork which makes it difficult to read those corners.
While these are definitely concerns, they’re very easy to overcome by simply announcing the card you played. My groups all called their card if they played a higher card on-suit, otherwise we said nothing. That made it easy for subsequent players in the hand to know what they had to come in under. Hopefully Jalape-NO! will get another printing and the publisher takes the chance to fix these small issues.
But if you’re looking for a light card game that’s fun, easy to play, and allows for a high number of players, then look no further than Jalape-NO!
Jalape-NO! details
- Designer: Michael Kiesling, Wolfgang Kramer
- Artists: Danny Aldana, Götz Wiedenroth
- Publishers: 25th Century Games, F.X. Schmid, Playte, テンデイズゲームズ(TendaysGames)
- Release Date: 1998
- Player count : 3 - 9
- Age range : 10+
- Time range : 45 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Trick-taking
- BGG Geek Rating: 6.19542 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.0.
- More articles about Jalape-NO!.
Add Comment