Splendor – Quick Start, Review, & House Rules

In Splendor, merchants and traders seek to please the nobles with vast riches and gems. The opportunity for a Gem Trading empire is ripe, but who will seize the opportunity?

Splendor is a 2-4 player game. Your goal is to attract the favor of the nobles and build the leading gem trading company. This is done by grabbing what gems you can to re-invest them in production to scale up your venture.

I played this on a lazy weekend with my wife recently and decided to take some pictures along the way to review it! She beat me at it, as she does with many games, but it made for a great Saturday.

Splendor Setup

Splendor is a great starter game and a classic. Here’s how to play:

• Set out noble tiles (the square ones) for the amount of players +1
• Separate the piles of cards with green on the bottom, then yellow, then blue.
• Set out 4 cards of each pile and flip them up, make sure everyone can reach the gem tokens!

How to Play Splendor

Each turn, players will do one action:

• Grab 2 gems of the same color (if there is at least 4 in the pile)
• Grab 3 gems of all different colors
• Purchase a card
  • Each card has a corresponding gem color on it. For each card that you own, it permanently counts as 1 gem.
• Each card has Victory Points in the top left corner, but most of the Tier 1 (Green) cards do not give any.

Scoring:

• Cards have increasing value based on the tier (and costliness) of the card.
• The Nobles are each worth points as well, you receive a noble if you have the listed amount of Cards, they cannot be bought with gems. (This is not an action)

Game End

• Whoever makes it to 15 points immediately wins the game and is victorious.

Conclusion

Splendor is a classic, it’s right behind Catan at being close to a household name. It’s fantastic too! Really easy to learn, great starter game, incredible art style. I mean, the pieces even feel good in your hands!

Another game that has great pieces is Fire Tower, the gems are so mesmerizing! Check out my review on it!

I’ve never been too good at this one, but even then I have fun every time I lose. That speaks miles for board games.

Try Splendor a Different Way!

Now, I’m not a dummy, I realize that Splendor e is well-balanced. It’s part of the reason it’s as popular as it is! However, it is one of my goals to try to spice it up a bit and I did manage to come up with something…

• Cutthroat Business: When a player reaches 15 points, the rest of the players still get a turn. Continue this until one player remains at the top for a full round.

That’s all that I’ll take a jab at for this one. Go give it a shot!