We're So Board!
We're So Board!
Episode 25 - Splendor (Short & Sweet)
In this episode Rachel and Jake are collecting jewels and gems as traders in Splendor! This quick paced game has us building a collection and attracting nobles. This is the second episode in our new short and sweet series where games can be played in 45 minutes or less. Listen to find out Jake's patented strategy to almost always win!
Hello, and welcome. I'm Jake.
Rachel:I'm Rachel.
Jake:And we're so bored. The Podcast where each episode, we take a close look at a tabletop game and discuss our personal experiences with game to help answer the question. Will this cure boredom?
Rachel:That's right, we look at the mechanics complexity and replayability in a game to determine if it's the perfect alternative to say, oh, no, no, finally, going through that five gallon water jug of coins that you've been collecting for the last seven years and rolling the coins so that you can use them to buy new board games. That's a lot of coins. It is a lot of coins. And I don't know if anybody here actually remembers what that's like to roll coins. I mean, typically, these days everything is pointless anyway, right. But the hassle of rolling coins into like the little paper tubes. Yeah, fun times,
Jake:you can take it to like the grocery store the bank and dump it in that thing. But then they take like 5% off.
Rachel:Yeah, if you want to keep all the money, then you have to roll it yourself because the bank will not take it as a big pile of coins.
Jake:Before we get started. I've mentioned this a couple of times on the show, I've started streaming recently, you could check me out on Twitch at Naughty Doc 541. That's na ug ht YDOC 541. My schedule kind of changes week to week, but I do keep it up to date. So when this episode comes out, I will only be streaming the next day and then I work the rest of the week. So I'll be streaming next week, I keep that schedule up to date. In case you're not familiar with Twitch, you can look up my schedule on my Twitch page. So you can come find me there, I'd really appreciate it. Alright,
Rachel:so today we are talking about splendor. This is the second game in our new mini series that we've called short and sweet. The criteria for a game to be in this miniseries is that it is playable in under 45 minutes. Splendor definitely fits that with probably an average play time of about 30 minutes. Yeah,
Jake:this is a quick little game to play. I really enjoy this game. We'll talk about that later. The splendor was published in 2014 by Space Cowboys and Asmodee, which I think is a subsidiary of Asmodee. From what I understand. It was designed by Marc Andre and the art designer is Pascal quidel. I think that's how that said I could be butchering that name, I'm sorry.
Rachel:So we've talked a little bit about Asmodee. In the past, as they were kind of above Days of Wonder or like the next branch up from Days of Wonder which they made five tribes. And we've talked about in the past, however, they don't like publishing the five tribes expansions anymore. I don't know if that's just kind of a general like stance on Asmodee. They have done some very critical analysis on which games are beneficial to print and which ones aren't. But we're glad that splendor has still made it onto that list.
Jake:Yes, as of right now, I'm still not seeing any of the five tribes expansions being produced. So I don't know what's going on with that we did reach out to them when we did our five tribes episode. And we have not heard anything definitive back yet.
Rachel:But anyway, splendor is a card drafting engine building game. Yes. And the theme of the game is that you are kind of this jeweler or Jewelcrafting kind of trader trading all these gems,
Jake:I prefer Tom Shane, but yes,
Rachel:I don't know if that joke is gonna extend out to very many people. But we'll see
Jake:from Shinko Shane co.com.
Rachel:Mm hmm. So the point of the game is to get 15 prestige points, you do that by gathering these cards that contain victory points or prestige points, and also attracting nobles that grant a certain number of prestige points. So to
Jake:set up the game, there are three decks of cards, you have green, which is level one, yellow, which is level two, and blue, which is level three. And you take four of those cards from each of those decks and turn them face up next to the deck. So you have these rows. So you have a green row, a yellow and a blue row, the cards are worth prestige points as denoted by a white number in the upper left corner, they are worth one gem of a particular color to permanently add to your collection. So this is where the engine building comes in. You need to pay specific costs to get them but once you have them, they go towards any future costs of that genotype.
Rachel:Yep, you're also going to randomly select a certain number of Noble's depending on how many players you have. It's basically the number of players plus one that will be kind of sitting up above where the cards are laid out. And they have two or three specific gym colors that they're interested in. Those will be denoted along the left side with a number and the color. So that says, you know, this noble is interested in seeing a collection that contains three greens, three blues, and three whites, for example. So the first person to have a collection that matches all of those requirements on a single noble tile will actually have attracted that noble and gain the prestige points that come along with that. And then lastly, you're going to set out the gem tokens. So these feel like poker chips, and they just have different color gems on them. And these represent a more liquid currency that gets spent on cards. And so I say liquid, because these are the ones that are constantly traded, and you gain them and you spend them versus the cards that you gain that Jake just talked about, which are permanently added to your collection, and offer a permanent discount towards costs.
Jake:Yes. So they do look like poker chips, they are colored based on the gem that they represent. So like you have the blue sapphire chips, you've got the green emerald chips, you've got the red ruby chips, and then there's also one represents gold, which is a wild chip, it's not a specific gem itself, but they feel very heavy, they feel very nice.
Rachel:Yes, that's one of my favorite things about this game is that like, it really makes a very nice kind of clacking sound, when you put the chips down, actually, let's see if I can capture this on microphone, I have the box right here. So but they're a little heavier duty than you would initially expect. And it really, to me makes me feel like you're actually holding something of value, and you're trading something of value, it gives a little bit more of a, I don't know a weight behind what you're doing. And it makes it feel more important, in my opinion,
Jake:it definitely adds to the feel of the game. So during your turn, you complete one action, there are very limited actions you can take, you can take three gem chips of all different colors, you can only hold a maximum of 10 in your pool, you can take two gem chips of the same color, you can only do this if there are four or more chips of the same color remaining. So in a two player game, you can actually only do this if the other person doesn't have any of them, you can reserve a card and take a gold, which is that wild token. So you take a card that you can't pay for immediately. And you can have a wild chip to use later. And you keep it into your hand and can be purchased, it doesn't count for prestige points or your engine until it's actually purchased. The last action is purchase a card from the face up available or your previously reserved ones. You do this by spending chips and using existing purchased cards to cover the costs.
Rachel:And that's basically the game I mean, it moves very quickly, with each person only being able to take one of these actions per turn. So typically, the game starts out with each player either grabbing three different colored gems or two of the same color gem, if that's possible. And then from there, you can go on continuing to either grab gems or pay for some of the cards. And you know, like how Jake was describing earlier how there's three different levels of cards, they get progressively more expensive, the higher level you go up. So it's pretty unrealistic to get a level three card right out the gate that typically costs more gems than you're capable of holding in terms of chips, because you've got that maximum of 10. And so really, it's designed so that you can only afford those once you've started to build up your engine and get those discounts from having other cards that grant you certain gems true, you could start out buying level one or maybe level two cards. And those will start to grant you some of those discounts and make it easier to purchase more and more expensive cards. And thus more and more point value cards as you go
Jake:are going to want to play this game now.
Rachel:So our experience is playing this game. I mean, I think this is one of Jake's favorite games.
Jake:It is and not just because I win a lot. I like it for a lot of reasons. One, the chips themselves, like I mentioned are awesome. They look nice, they feel nice. They are good quality, like they just are. Secondly, I really like this game because it can be played quickly or you can sit and take your time and really, really plan and think and strategize. I typically like to play kind of fast because I'm already thinking like three or four moves. ahead of what I'm doing. But I think there's a lot of viable strategy to this game as well. It's very quick to learn, very easy to learn and pick up. But there is strategy involved. And I really like that.
Rachel:Yeah. And I mean, even if you do sit there and take your time and think about it, I still think it's playable in under 45 minutes, if you play with the innate rules of getting to 15 prestige points, because I mean, that may sound like a decent amount, but it adds up pretty quickly once you start building up that engine.
Jake:Yeah. And that's what my strategy is for this game is I typically buy a bunch of stuff in the first and second row, mostly first row, until I have just so many resources available, where I could just buy cards for free, that are now worth points. So I'm not even using my turns anymore to get the chips themselves, the chips are all useless at that point, because I'm just picking up cards and paying for them for free. That's how I like to build my engine.
Rachel:Yeah, but it's really interesting, because I feel like I started out playing this game with a similar strategy. But I would always lose for the longest time, I was not able to beat Jake at this game. And I actually posted a picture of my hand once on social media, and I got a bunch of feedback that I'm spending too much time on the zero point level one cards, yes, those grant you a gym to count towards your engine, but they're not getting you points fast enough. And it's causing you to fall behind. And so I actually changed up my strategy a little bit, I really tried to focus on the level two cards in the middle. And those are always worth at least one point, sometimes more, they're a little bit more expensive. But I try to focus on getting those instead of just the zero point level one cards. And that has allowed me to be Jake occasionally, although he still wins very frequently. Yes, I think also part of my problem is that I tend to get caught up focusing on the nobles like, I see that they have these different combinations of cards that they want you to have. And I focus on getting whatever they are asking for, rather than focusing on what's going to give me the most points, or what can I buy for free or whatever is most beneficial to me. I'm like, oh, no, but they're worth like four points each. So I should really try and get one of those. But I think I waste some turns getting cards that are not necessarily the most helpful to me, when I tried to focus on that.
Jake:Yeah, I focused, like I said, on the level ones, especially if they are worth a point, especially if they're worth a point. So sometimes the level ones are worth one point, not very often. And a lot of times you have to spend three or four of the same gem to get it. So I do spend a lot of time accumulating these no point cards in the first row. But that's so then I can spend nothing to get points in the second row.
Rachel:Mm hmm. So yeah, I don't know, I think there's a lot of like different ways of going about it. And that's one of the things that I think makes it such an attractive game is that it actually does have strategy, while being this fairly simple, quick game that you can play. I agree. So one of the other things that I wanted to talk about, which also gets brought up fairly frequently on social media is the size of the box, the box is basically only the size that it is so that it can fit the rulebook that's inside, there's no reason for it to be that big otherwise. So you can take out all of the components and put it in a box that's like one quarter of the size that it currently is. So a lot of people talk about how that ends up being wasted space on your shelf, or like, you know, if you put it into like a Ziploc bag or something, you know, that makes it much more portable to take on a camping trip or something like that. And so there's kind of just this desire in the community, I think for it to have been put into a smaller box to begin with, which I don't know if we'll ever see something like that. I think the rulebook could be shrunk down and made into a few more pages. Because it literally right now there's no actual pages inside. Like it's just a pamphlet that opens, it's got, you know, the one side and then the other side, and then there's like half a page maybe on the back. So if you cut that rulebook down into half or a quarter, you could make the box much smaller, and then it would be very friendly and portable to carry with you on trips where you're traveling somewhere on an airplane or on a camping trip, a long car ride, whatever, that would make it much more friendly. Although I think nothing is really stopping people from just putting the components in a different container and doing that.
Jake:I have not really seen anything about the box size. That being said, I'm not on social media nearly as much as Rachel for this podcast because I just am not, but I can understand that I can definitely see that. There's so much wasted space in that box. So the expansions for this game, I could only find one expansion pack, but it has four expansions in it. From what I understand you cannot play them all together, you have to add things individually. So the expansion itself, the box is called cities of splendor. The first expansion or addition is city tiles, the cities, this will replace the noble tiles, earning one of them is actually now part of the wind condition when you play this mode, so you have to earn a city to win. And in order to get a city, you have to have X number of victory points and X number of specific gems. The second one is trading posts, trading posts give you special bonuses that activate when you take specific action, and they have their own bonuses for each. So they have quite a range of different bonuses. Some of them are you'll get more prestige points if you take the first Noble tile, or you get an extra token when you take the two gem tokens at the same color action, so you can end up getting three. So those are some of the bonuses that the trading posts offer you, the Orient adds three new decks of cards, one for each level of gems, and then two from each deck are placed next to their corresponding level. They also have special effects, the description wasn't clear on how you they are purchased, or how you get those, I would assume it would be by using the chips that you're getting or the gems that you're getting.
Rachel:So okay, adds three new decks of cards, one for each level of gems, does that mean it's just new cards to add to each level?
Jake:No, you actually add three new decks out one for each level, and two cards from each deck come out. So two for level one, two for level two, two for level three, those all have special effects. So you have your level one gems, and then you have your level one oriented cards, you have your level two gems and your level two oriented cards, level three gems and level three oriented cards.
Rachel:Okay, so you would have like your normal, like four cards for level one gems and then to level one orient cards.
Jake:Correct. So you have six cards in each row now instead of four.
Rachel:Right? Okay, so but what did they do? Like there are additional things that you can purchase to do what?
Jake:Yes, the new cards have special powers like double bonus cards, or Joker cards when you take the color of one of the developments you already own. Okay, so
Rachel:for example, if I already have a blue card, this could be another like addition to blue cards that doubles the amount of blue cards that I have.
Jake:I don't know if it doubles, or if it just adds one. Okay, and then the strongholds This is even more confusing from the description adds three towers for each player. So when you acquire a new card, you must put a stronghold or face up card on the table, you are now the only player able to purchase or reserve it, you may also move one of your strongholds from one card to another to remove another player stronghold. So it doesn't seem like you're the only player able to purchase it at that point. When your three strongholds are on the same card. You can buy it after your regular action, allowing you to make two acquisitions in the same turn or buying that card after taking your tokens.
Rachel:Okay, so I mean, that sounds like you're adding it to like the market, right? You're adding it to cars on the market. And it makes it harder for other people to purchase. It looks like if someone else was stronghold on it, or, you know, other people could have to kind of come in and fight for power over that card dominance over that card in order to be able to purchase it. Yeah, I'm
Jake:not sure. Like I said, this is kind of confusing the way that it's written. Hmm.
Rachel:Okay. I mean, that seems like an interesting concept. That would definitely add some new technique, some new strategy to the game. But how much does it cost to get the cities of splendor expansion thing for one expansion?
Jake:$25 It's marked down on Amazon to 25. It's, it's normally 40.
Rachel:Okay, I mean, that seems like a really good deal to get like for new game modes, or, you know, different variations of the game, especially if it comes with like physical assets, like these towers, or, you know, new cards, when $5 Seems like a pretty good deal, even if it is normally 40. That doesn't seem bad.
Jake:No, that's not bad. Okay, interesting. There is also a redesigned edition of this game. It's a Marvel edition that has been released. Basically, the mechanics, the core mechanics of the game are the same. There is a different end game trigger that I was not able to find online. And instead of purchasing the minds of the gems themselves, you're recruiting Marvel characters, those are the cards that you are getting, and they're worth victory points at the end, basically, that's pretty cool.
Rachel:So it's not the infinity stones that you're playing with.
Jake:I mean, yes, they are the Infinity Stones themselves. They are but you're using them to recruit carriers vectors? Oh, I don't know if it represents victory points or what what one of them is the shield symbol. It's a great chip with the shield symbol. So I'm not sure,
Rachel:huh? Okay. But the actual cards themselves are Marvel characters. Yes. And they're awesome. Okay. All right, that sounds interesting. As for BoardGameGeek, ratings, the base game is at a 7.4 with 65,000 Reviews, I feel like it deserves a little bit of a higher rating, I think. And the reason that it probably isn't higher is just because it's one of those fast games that has, it has some strategy, but it is limited. And that's fair. And we mentioned what the cost of the expansion pack was, you know,$25, currently on Amazon, the regular base game is $35 on Amazon, which is a really good deal. And that's its normal price. And we've actually, we were able to get this game for free through Amazon occasionally has these sales that it's like, buy two get one free or something like that. And so we were able to get like, I think we picked up to $50 games and then splendor being the cheaper version, we managed to get that for free. It's usually in like the various sales that Amazon puts on occasionally for whatever Prime Day, whatever day they're celebrating at the moment.
Jake:Yeah, whatever excuse to make a sale, which is fine. You know, it's a business.
Rachel:Yeah. So you can usually pick up splendor for a good price.
Jake:The Marvel edition is rated at 7.7. On board game geeks, I think that that's probably just a little inflated, because everybody loves Marvel right now. It is normally $50. As of right now, it's marked down to 40, which is pretty good.
Rachel:So I'm curious about that. What are the different components inside the Marvel one that make it more expensive than the base game?
Jake:I don't think it's components. I think it's copyrights that they have to pay for.
Rachel:I guess that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.
Jake:I think that's what it is, honestly.
Rachel:Is it literally the same game otherwise? Right? Yeah, it sounds like a different wind condition at the end, but should contain the same components? Pretty much. Yeah. Okay. All right. And then that cities of splendor expansion pack is also rated at a 7.4 with 3600 Reviews. So that's sitting right at the same spot as the base game, that tells me that there's a solid following for this game, and that the quality has remained approximately the same from the base game to the expansions.
Jake:Next, we want to talk about our personal rating system, we have three ratings that we like to read games on first is easy versus difficult. This is how easy is it for someone to understand the rules and mechanics? How easy is it for somebody just pick up the game and play? How, how easy is it for you to take your turn,
Rachel:I'm going to say that this is an extremely easy game. You know, I mentioned it already. The rulebook is two pages, or two and a half pages, maybe there's not a whole lot to it, there's not a lot to remember, maybe the only thing that they could do is provide you with a little cheat sheet on what actions you can take per turn. But there's so like limited options in terms of what you can do. I don't know if that's even really necessary. It's not like it's hard to remember what you can do every turn. I mean, I'm gonna give this like a two I think on easy versus difficult.
Jake:Yeah, I was gonna say there are literally only four options for actions on your turn. And you can only do one of them. Yeah, that's it. There's nothing else you could do. So I'm gonna agree. I think it's a two. Yeah. Easy, easy.
Rachel:Yeah, I agree. Which is what attributes to it being a short and sweet game, I think, easy to pick up, easy to learn, and easy to just kind of get into at any point in time in between, I don't know you're painting a room, and then you decide to sit down and play a game of splendor while the paint is drying before you go back for a second coat.
Jake:We did that. And I lost.
Rachel:Our next rating system is simple versus complex. That's confusing when compared to easy versus difficult. This is more talking about the strategy that is involved. So think about chess, chess is an easy game in terms of the number of rules that there are, you know, there's only so many moves and so many pieces that each person can make, right? But there is an immense amount of strategy that you can bring to that game for this game. It's not very complex. I think there definitely is different strategies that you can go with, but not a ton. I'm gonna call it a three, I think on this scale.
Jake:I disagree. I'm gonna give it a five. Okay. I mean, as we've seen, there are definitely different strategies that are viable for this game. You know, people were telling you online that you had to ignore some of the first row cards and while you started doing that, It's kind of eliminated my win streak. I'm still winning a lot of the time, and I haven't changed my strategy at all. Mm hmm. So I know, I don't know. Yeah, I think there's more strategy to it.
Rachel:Yeah, I'm not saying that there's not any, I just I'm not seeing like major competitions where people are, you know, having Splinter tournaments. And so for that reason, Jake is now googling if splendor tournaments exist. That's the reason that I'm saying that it's a little bit lower, because we've got tournaments for like kuttan for villainous chess, obviously, because of the multitude of strategies that you can bring to these games. I think splendor has a couple but in essence, the limited mechanics makes it so that their limited
Jake:strength is because splendor tournaments here. Yeah, we got one that starts in February. On board game Marina details can be found here. I mean, it looks like there are some splendor tournaments, honestly. Okay. Looks like is one in Colorado Springs. Okay. So I mean, people are having splendor tournaments.
Rachel:Okay. All right, fine. I stand corrected, I will amend my rating to a four.
Jake:Okay. You can read it whatever you want. I'm just I'm just here to report fact. The wrote versus random is our final rating system that we like to use, what mechanics change in each gameplay to make a unique experience. And honestly, in this one, there's not anything other than the decks are shuffled. Literally. That's it. So this is a pretty rote game, in my opinion. Also, the nobles are shuffled. Okay, yeah, the nobles are shuffled. Okay, that just that just changed. What kind of cards I'm gonna get. That's pretty much
Rachel:it. Yeah. No, I completely agree. The whether or not you win this game is completely up to you. You're not going to be able to blame, like the shuffling of the cards or the nobles for not being able to win or pull
Jake:through. No, if you didn't win. You did it bad.
Rachel:Yeah. And so I'm going to call this a two on the wrote versus random.
Jake:Yeah. Best to Yeah,
Rachel:it could qualify for a one. I'm trying to think of what a one would be something that literally has nothing shuffled. I don't know what game that would be. Yeah. T Gotse. Is dice rolling. That's very random. That's true. But that's not shuffled. Okay. Randomization elements are dice rolling randomized cards chances to trigger different scenarios. Oh, no. No, also has shuffled cards.
Jake:But that's it. That's all it is.
Rachel:So yeah, I don't know what a one would be. I'm giving this a two, but very rote game. And it's not that that makes it non replayable. Right. I think there's a lot of replayability to this game in it all comes from that strategy and kind of basing off of those shuffled items, and how you're going to go about executing your strategy this time versus last time.
Jake:Yeah, I agree. So we have now reached the time to ask the question, Rachel, would you rather play this game over going through your five gallon water jug of coins that you've been collecting for seven years, so you can roll them and use them to buy new board games?
Rachel:So I like the idea of having this sudden extra cash to buy board games with but the act of going through and organizing the coins and rolling them? No, I would definitely rather play splendor that feels like you're accomplishing more. It's just a better overall like feeling of how I'm using my time almost you think we have in our water jug? Well, considering it's not full? I don't know. Maybe $10? I think it's more okay. Well, I guess you can go through and count it since you're so into that. No, I'm good. All right. Well, there you have it. That is splendor. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. As usual. You can hit us up on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at so bored podcast. That's S O Bo AR D podcast. We love hearing from you. We'd love hearing any like house rules or experiences that you have playing this game. You'll also be able to find pictures and short stories on those social media outlets about what we've been playing recently and interact with us everything tabletop gaming.
Jake:You can also email us at We are so bored@gmail.com That's W E ar e s Oh Bo ar d@gmail.com. And make sure you subscribe so you can receive notifications when our new episodes are available. Also leave us a rating that helps us out a lot. It also helps other people who may be interested in board games, find our podcast, which you can also now rate us on Spotify. So that would help us as well. Yep.
Rachel:We also want to give a shout out to the people who knew that we were going to be reviewing splendor based on the picture that we posted last week. So congrats to Kirk Humphrey's Chris play. I hope I pronounced that correctly. Dylan Kirk, Matthias Lankford, Sharon Baro, princesses accoya and Ser thickos Awesome job, guys.
Jake:We also want to thank Mitchell Mims, the designer of art, he's accepting commissions. So check them out at m IMSCO Sa ra on Instagram, or at his website, Mitchell men's that's m IC, h e l m i m s.ca, rr d.co. Once again, I'm streaming on a semi regular basis, you could check out my Twitch page at Naughty Doc 541 at NAU GH, t y, d. O C 541. And check my streaming schedule on that page to see what I'll be on.
Rachel:What kind of things are you streaming?
Jake:Oh, well, right now, I'm actually I'm torn. I kind of want to do this game called unpacking where you're literally just unpacking your room. It seems really just kind of Zen and relaxed. And you're finding out about the character that you're playing is by unpacking their stuff. But last time I was streaming, I was playing inscription. And I'm also probably going to do that too. So I'll be streaming one of those.
Rachel:Oh, I've actually issued you a challenge in regards to inscription have an eye.
Jake:Yeah, you have talent accepted. I was
Rachel:really interested in this game. And so I went and I looked up kinda all the secrets of it, because it's more than just a video game. There's lots of puzzles and like secrets, and it's more of an ARG than anything. And I told Jake um, I don't think you have what it takes to solve this. And he says Challenge accepted. He's gonna figure it out.
Jake:Yeah, I am. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna try. Well,
Rachel:anyway, thank you guys again for listening and we will see you next time. Bye bye.