RogerBW's Blog

Today I'll introduce Splendor. Anything in square brackets is to be thought about rather than read aloud.

This is an engine-building game of collecting tokens, also known as gems, to get cards, and collecting cards to get points and more cards.

Each card has a cost in one or more colours, shown down the left side [example]; those are the tokens you need to spend to buy it. Once you've got it, it gives you a bonus, at the top right: that counts as one token of that colour every turn, so you'll get a discount on cards you buy. Also it may have a point value; you're aiming for 15 points to win the game. When you buy a card, you turn up another one from the stack to replace it, until the stack runs out.

On your turn, you can do one thing: take three different gem tokens; take two the same, as long as you leave two more behind; buy a card; or reserve a card, either one of the face-up ones or blindly from a draw pile, which also gets you a gold token if there are any left. That's a wildcard and counts as any colour when you spend it. You can only have three reserved cards, and you can't have more than ten tokens of any sort.

You don't buy the nobles with tokens; rather, you can claim them when you have enough cards of the right colours to satisfy their requirements. You can only claim one per turn, but it doesn't take up your action to do it.

When someone's got fifteen points, finish the round; the highest score wins, and you break ties by who has fewest cards.