LogFAQs > #934495572

will respond to some, but realized i never posted this one!

30. Splendor (2014)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Set collection, drafting, tableau-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 25-40 minutes
Experience: 25+ plays over 20+ sessions (2015-2020) with 2-4 players, including one with Orient module
Previous ranks: 13/100 (2016), 22/80 (2018)

Summary - Three tiers of market cards, five different suits of gems. On your turn, you collect gems, reserve a card to yourself, or buy one of the cards from the market. Cards all have the same ability: they are worth a number of victory points and they offer a future discount of one on all purchases in a specific suit. The player who gets the most victory points from cards wins once a points threshold is reached.

Design - The cards in Splendor are mostly functional, depicting art no one needs but effectively communicating cost and benefit. The real physical component of Splendor that's awesome is its heavy poker-chip resources.

The game design in Splendor is as minimal as its components. On your turn you take one action, and that's it. No round structure; no intricate combos. But the few actions available to you actually have tons of different options - which three gems should you get? Should you angle for a double-dip, and will that tip your hand? Can you hoard gems effectively to deny an opponent? Is it sensible to reserve? Should you build your engine or go for the steadier points?

While it varies depending on player-count (again, hate-drafting more powerful in a two-player game than in a four-player game, while you can go really deep in resources but the market may churn faster in four), it winds up being that the best strategy in Splendor tends to be racing by going for high-value cards. In my experience, the Nobles (associated more with a Tier 1 strategy) don't tend to happen if someone pushes for the Tier 3s fast.

This runs slightly counter to what I feel is fun for most players, which is getting your engine to a point where you can pick up basically any card for free. It's said that the Cities expansion addresses this, though apparently it introduces its own issues.

Experience - Splendor has been described as an incredibly silent game. Indeed, it's math-driven and features no real reason to talk to one another. And my first game was played agonizingly, with me staring at cards and chips, hoping that no one stole what I was angling for. That was pretty painful, even though I've had fun in silent tension too. A year or two later, it was available used, and I heard that Asmodee was phasing out the original awesome heavy components. I snapped up the copy despite not having loved it the first time, and it's become a major go-to.

A nice thing about Splendor is that it's simple enough that you can actually chat over it. Additionally, it's one of the fastest games to teach, and possibly the single fastest-to-teach eurogame I know. To me, that has tremendous value. It's the game that games like Azul aspire to beat.

Future - The only thing preventing Splendor from making more appearances is that on the home front it's not loved as much. I suspect its abstractness is a bit much; slightly more thematic or "build-stuff"-y games tend to be more appreciated. That said, I got it played with some old non-gamer friends just last week, and it was a huge hit. Vindication!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness