Splendor

Today (on the 11th) Kage and I played Splendor for our 12^th game in our 31 Days of Yuletide Gaming. Splendor is a game that I’ve always loved, from it’s beautiful artwork to its easy and fast play dynamic.

In Splendor you are searching to have the most beautiful jewels. The goal is simple: to get 15 points before anyone else. The game starts out with a bank of gems, which are a relatively heavy plastic chips with pretty artwork. The colours used are red, black, green, blue, and white, with gold being a “wild”/”bonus”. You pull nobles out (which are on cardboard, and pretty nice looking) depending on how many players there are, three for a two player game. The nobles will have certain cards listed and a number, for example, Henry the Eighth is four black gem cards and four red gem cards. At the start of your turn you can choose one of three actions: take gems (you can take two of one colour depending on how many are in the pile, or one of three colours), buy a card (which has a gem colour cost listed on it), or take a card from the table into your hand which gives you a gold wild gem.

However you get the 15 points is up to you, but generally you try to achieve the end result by a mixture of picking cards that score points on them, trying to race to get more of the nobles, worth three points each, and trying to prevent your opponent from getting any high scoring cards or enough gem cards to snag nobles away from you.

It’s not cutthroat competitive but it is a fun and somewhat simple game that we have personally found to be enjoyable to play even with people that might not be regular gamers. They have also made a Marvel version since we purchased this, so if you have new gamers that are big Marvel fans, perhaps that will help you break them into the fabulous world of board gaming.

Kage’s Notes: Splendor was one of those games that I played a great deal when it came out, it was the new hotness for a while and I had managed to snag a copy on release. I do quite like this game but would also be happy to never play it again, not because of an issue of quality in the game, but because I have several hundred plays at this stage.

Splendor distils engine building down to it’s purest form, and allows you to maximize efficiency in a compact package, the only other game I’ve found which dwells in this sphere is Century: Spice Road. Overall this is a great game to play with anyone except your friends who are prone to AP. If all works well, hopefully this is posted on the 12th as we will be unable to get a 2 player game in tomorrow, we played an extra today and will schedule this for automatic posting.

The Teal Dear

Game: Splendor
Designer: Marc Andre
Price: $45
Players: 2-4
2 player Scaling: Decent
Playtime: 30-40 minutes for two players
Estimated Lifespan: 10+ games
Average Play Frequency: Every Odd Month
Complexity: 3.5
Components: 4.5
Bang for Buck: 5
Value for Time: 4.5
Fun Factor: 4.5
Overall: 4.5