The crown jewel in any collection
Splendor is a simple and very popular tableau building game that revolves around cost reduction and limited resources. You play as a gem merchant. On your turn, you can take gem chips or buy cards that give you a small discount on future cards. Some of the cards award prestige points — your goal is to score 15 of them. Maths: I got around the "engine building" issue by just putting "tableau" instead. I also wanted the introduction to talk more about what the game actually is.
The game has received a retheme in Splendor: Marvel, which also changes the color structure, endgame trigger and victory conditions.
The Expansion Pack Cities of Splendor features four mini-expansions that can be added to the main game, but not combined with each other.note
There's also a dedicated 2-player version in Splendor Duel, which changes the gem drafting to use a 5x5 board and adds two victory conditions. It has more emphasis on engine-building than the original.
Splendor and Cities of Splendor provide examples of:
- Anti-Hoarding: You can only hold ten tokens at once, which prevents you from hoarding too many. Similarly, you can only reserve three cards at once, limiting your ability to hog cards.
- Colorblind Mode: A built-in version, each color of gem has a different shape, making them distinguishable without color vision.
- Drafting Mechanic:
- Gems are drafted from a shared supply and don't go back until you spend them. You can always take three different ones. Alternatively, if there are at least 4 tokens of the same color left, you may take two of the same color.
- Players can buy cards from a shared tableau of 15 available ones. They can also reserve cards to hate draft or protect them from hate drafting.
- Digital Tabletop Game Adaptation: A dedicated Splendor application is available on PC and can be played with AI opponents or other humans. There's also a single-player mission mode filled with puzzles to optimize resource generation. There's also an official adaptation of Board Game Arena, though that one only features the basic game (no mission mode or AI players).
- First-Player Advantage Mitigation: The end of a game is triggered once someone reaches 15 points, but the game finishes the round to make sure that every player gets the same number of turns, giving them a chance to surpass whoever was the first to reach the 15-point mark.
- Nona: Would Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels apply to the dedicated app? Instead of easy-hard, it gives different AI behaviors, such as balanced and opportunistic.
- Maths: I guess so?
- Literal Wild Card:
- Each development card has a cost in gems (diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and/or onyx), each of which has a limited quantity in circulation. Players also have a more limited ability to get gold tokens, which can substitute for any of them.
- "The Orient", a module of Splendor Cities, introduces a type of wild cards that can be put into any pile of a color you already have. From then on, it'll count as a card of that color for the purpose of cost reductions.
- One-Word Title: Named to evoke the beauty of the gems your merchant guild deals with, as well as the grandeur of the nobles you can attract.
- Reduced Resource Cost: A core gameplay mechanic. Each development card costs gems to play (rubies, diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, and/or onyx) but reduces all of the player's subsequent purchase costs by one gem of a specific type. The exception is some The Orient cards, which have special effects.
- Themed Stock Board Game: Splendor: Marvel, which also changes the color structure, endgame trigger and victory conditions.
Splendor Duel provides examples of:
- Anti-Hoarding:
- Like in the original game, you can only hold ten tokens at once, which prevents you from hoarding too many. Similarly, you can only reserve three cards at once, limiting your ability to hog cards.
- There are only three Privileges in the game. This discourages you from hoarding them in two ways: The first is that if you have all three and would gain another, you don't. In particular, this means that your opponent is free to perform actions that normally have the downside of giving you a Privilege. The other is that whenever all three Privileges are in use and a player would gain one, they steal one from the opponent, meaning that they lose it for no benefit (and would have been better off using it for even a minor benefit earlier on).
- Drafting Mechanic:
- Gems are drafted from a shared 5x5 board. You can take up to three non-gold ones in a row, though if you take three of a kind, or two pearls, your opponent gets a Privilege.
- Players can buy cards from a shared tableau. They can also reserve cards to hate draft or protect them from hate drafting.
- Extra Turn: Several cards let you take an extra turn when you purchase them. Also, one of the 2-point nobles lets you take an extra turn when you get it.
- First-Player Advantage Mitigation: You automatically win if you fulfil a victory condition at the end of your turn. As this gives the second player a disadvantage in the race for these conditions, they're compensated by starting the game with a Privilege, a currency that lets them take one Gem or Pearl on their turn as a free action.
- Literal Wild Card:
- Like in the original game, gold tokens can substitute for any resource in a card's resource cost. This is particularly useful for paying costs involving the new, scarce Pearl resource (which can't be reduced).
- The wild cards from "The Orient", a module of Splendor Cities, made it into this game and work similarly: you can put them into any pile of a color you already have, and from then on, it'll count as a card of that color for the purpose of cost reductions and the "10 or more Prestige points on cards of the same color" win condition.
- Reduced Resource Cost: A core gameplay mechanic. Most development cards reduce all of the player's subsequent purchase costs by one gem of a specific type. There are also wildcards that can be designated as any type you already have when you buy them, and a few cards that don't offer any discounts (but are worth more points to compensate).
- Vanilla Unit:
- Most cards give subsequent cards a Reduced Resource Cost, and may have an additional ability. A few don't, but offer higher point values to compensate.
- Out of the four nobles, three of them have an ability and are worth 2 points. The last one has no ability, but is worth 3 points instead.
YMMV
- Gateway Series: The simple rules make Splendor a popular introduction to hobby games.
Trivia
- One-Hit Wonder: While Splendor is a very popular game, nothing else Marc André has designed has caught on.
