A Splendid New Year - Splendor Review

Over the New Year Tim introduced us to a new game, Splendor. With threes tiers of cards, half a dozen resources and a few 'Nobles' to offer patronage the game is a simple affair that offers plenty of things to think about and reasons to worry about what your opponents will be getting up to in their turns.      

"Splendor is a game of chip-collecting and card development. Players are merchants of the Renaissance trying to buy gem mines, means of transportation, shops—all in order to acquire the most prestige points. If you're wealthy enough, you might even receive a visit from a noble at some point, which of course will further increase your prestige."                                   - Back of Box

 

Tim picked up Splendor for us to try as an alternative to Dominion, we'd played that a number of times over the past few years and although we'd enjoyed it we always felt like it wasn't quite the game we wanted. I'm sure it was just us but games often boiled down to who picked up that little extra gold in the late mid-game, fun but not quite right. 

 

The main trick in Splendor is that you only get one action per turn, this means plenty of stress as whilst you feel you have so little effect on the board each round your opponents seem to have completely changed the state of affairs by the time it comes back round to you. Your choice of action each turn revolves around choosing to take resources (coloured chips representing gems and gold) or spend them on assets (cards representing trade routes, shops or mines, etc.). Each card provides one resource you can use each turn too, allowing you to pay for more and more expensive assets.

Eventually a player will win by having the most prestige at the end of the round where at least one player reaches 15 prestige. Prestige is collected from assets, the cards have values from 0-5 on, or patronage of nobles (a reward for having varied asset types in quantity). This building up of a buying engine makes for a slow and steady start followed by a scarily fast rush towards the finish as all players reach a point where the cheapest and even some of the better cards become free purchases and the board is in a state of constant flux. 

 

The simple design and clear colours make Splendor feel very in touch with its theme; something that we consider a big bonus to our games. It's of no surprise to me to see how many awards and nominations it received in the year of its launch (2014) and for only £25 or so it's great value in the money to hours ratio. Whilst there isn't a lot of content inside of the (way too big) box it all feels very nice quality and shouldn't get too easily destroyed. 

 

I'd be happy to recommend Splendor to anyone who thinks they may be interested, and if you're really on the fence there is also an app version that is apparently very good and accurate for only a couple of quid (£1.99). We were certainly very happy with our New Years Eve entertainment.