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Topic	thirty-one tabletop games, ranked
SeabassDebeste 03/19/18 2:39:15 PM #113:	18. Splendor https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/148228/splendor Genre/mechanics: Engine-building, tableau-building, resource management, set collection Rules complexity: 3/10 Game length: 20-40 minutes Player count: 2-4 Experience: 20+ games with 2-4 players First played: 2015 In Splendor, you collect differently colored gems (either three or two at a time) and then use those to purchase a card from a tiered marketplace. The cards provide victory points and a future discount of one gem of the tile's color on future card purchases. The game ends at 15 victory points. Enjoyment - Like so many of the games on this list, I first played Splendor early and it was a slog. I couldn't believe how much fire I'd feel in my belly as I stared at the board and my opponents' stacks of chips, hoping they wouldn't take/reserve the one card I really badly needed. And that experience wasn't entirely atypical. Reddit calls Splendor one of the quietest games ever - you wind up staring at the board and thinking a lot to figure out what the optimal move is, and on opponents' turns you mainly try to be quiet so they don't pick up on your plan. These aren't exactly cutthroat moves, either. They're, 'I'm going to buy the card that fits the resources I have.' But the game is so streamlined that the quietness can happen. I wound up playing Splendor again about a year later with my entire group more experienced and slightly different blood in the mix. It was delightfully airy and quick, and we trash-talked each other throughout it, and wow it was better. When it came onto the used meetup marketplace in German, I deliberated hard and finally snapped it up. Since then, I've played it dozens of times and it is the go-to lightweight strategy game for me. I've never had an epic game of Splendor, but it's accessible and mentally satisfying. It also helps to have gotten a bit better at viewing the game through its decision space and be able to come up with natural contingency plans as opposed to be devastated when a card I need is snatched up. Design - The strategy to Splendor is fairly simple. You can choose to focus on building an engine and getting free points via Nobles or cheap points via other cards, or you can choose to focus on a few of the high-point-value cards, since the game is short. Splendor has a particular rhythm to it, which you start to feel with experience. The marketplace consists of four cards in each tier at all times, giving you plenty of choices but not an overwhelming amount. You can usually purchase a level-one card after two turns of collecting gems, but if someone takes it, odds are that your gems might not be able to purchase anything. You may want to collect sets of certain colors of cards to achieve the Noble goals, but there's absolutely zero guarantee that those cards will surface, or that you'll find high-valued cards to purchase. Then there's the buyer's dilemma, where sometimes buying a card will reveal an identical card - except that it's cheaper or more expensive. All these idiosyncracies are basically to say, it's surprising when you find something you'd clearly call luck in such an otherwise luckless game. Okay, but real talk - the biggest allure to Splendor is its beautiful, weighty chips. Had to make sure to get the German version because of it, as Asmodee North America's version now is watered down. I played recently with the shitty American chips and it just felt really bad in comparison. The original chips are heavy and handling them is the absolute greatest. They're nearly as essential to the Splendor experience as the airship is to Celestia. Future - I own it, and it is my easiest-to-teach strategy game, and it can play in half an hour, and it doesn't depend on novelty. It'll get played again. Bonus question - Do you have any games that you really enjoy despite never giving you an incredible high while playing it? Hint for #17 - a game that's nearly unplayable out of the box without the official app --- 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 <cite>SeabassDebeste posted [p:898094113] in thirty-one... [t:76412082]...</cite> <quote>18. Splendor https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/148228/splendor Genre/mechanics: Engine-building, tableau-building, resource management, set collection Rules complexity: 3/10 Game length: 20-40 minutes Player count: 2-4 Experience: 20+ games with 2-4 players First played: 2015 In Splendor, you collect differently colored gems (either three or two at a time) and then use those to purchase a card from a tiered marketplace. The cards provide victory points and a future discount of one gem of the tile's color on future card purchases. The game ends at 15 victory points. Enjoyment - Like so many of the games on this list, I first played Splendor early and it was a slog. I couldn't believe how much fire I'd feel in my belly as I stared at the board and my opponents' stacks of chips, hoping they wouldn't take/reserve the one card I really badly needed. And that experience wasn't entirely atypical. Reddit calls Splendor one of the quietest games ever - you wind up staring at the board and thinking a lot to figure out what the optimal move is, and on opponents' turns you mainly try to be quiet so they don't pick up on your plan. These aren't exactly cutthroat moves, either. They're, 'I'm going to buy the card that fits the resources I have.' But the game is so streamlined that the quietness can happen. I wound up playing Splendor again about a year later with my entire group more experienced and slightly different blood in the mix. It was delightfully airy and quick, and we trash-talked each other throughout it, and wow it was better. When it came onto the used meetup marketplace in German, I deliberated hard and finally snapped it up. Since then, I've played it dozens of times and it is the go-to lightweight strategy game for me. I've never had an epic game of Splendor, but it's accessible and mentally satisfying. It also helps to have gotten a bit better at viewing the game through its decision space and be able to come up with natural contingency plans as opposed to be devastated when a card I need is snatched up. Design - The strategy to Splendor is fairly simple. You can choose to focus on building an engine and getting free points via Nobles or cheap points via other cards, or you can choose to focus on a few of the high-point-value cards, since the game is short. Splendor has a particular rhythm to it, which you start to feel with experience. The marketplace consists of four cards in each tier at all times, giving you plenty of choices but not an overwhelming amount. You can usually purchase a level-one card after two turns of collecting gems, but if someone takes it, odds are that your gems might not be able to purchase anything. You may want to collect sets of certain colors of cards to achieve the Noble goals, but there's absolutely zero guarantee that those cards will surface, or that you'll find high-valued cards to purchase. Then there's the buyer's dilemma, where sometimes buying a card will reveal an identical card - except that it's cheaper or more expensive. All these idiosyncracies are basically to say, it's surprising when you find something you'd clearly call luck in such an otherwise luckless game. Okay, but real talk - the biggest allure to Splendor is its beautiful, weighty chips. Had to make sure to get the German version because of it, as Asmodee North America's version now is watered down. I played recently with the shitty American chips and it just felt really bad in comparison. The original chips are heavy and handling them is the absolute greatest. They're nearly as essential to the Splendor experience as the airship is to Celestia. Future - I own it, and it is my easiest-to-teach strategy game, and it can play in half an hour, and it doesn't depend on novelty. It'll get played again. Bonus question - Do you have any games that you really enjoy despite never giving you an incredible high while playing it? Hint for #17 - a game that's nearly unplayable out of the box without the official app --- 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</quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
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