Splendor fans, watch out!

💎 Splendor Duel is the 2-player version of the classic game Splendor. The core of the game is the same: gather gem tokens of different color to buy cards for yourself. Cards added to your tableau provide ongoing discounts for future card purchases, so you have a strong engine building aspect. There are cards of 3 levels, each of them getting more expensive but also better. Gather enough points from cards to trigger the end and win. 🏆

So what is new?

🗺️ The main feature is a new spatial puzzle element of picking the gem chips from a board. It adds a lot to the game. You can pick 3 chips in a line (except gold) and take all of them. Empty spaces and gold chips will make the choice more difficult, as they break up the lines. As more and more chips get taken, it will be harder to pick a decent line. You can fill up the board with new chips from the bag, but it will give a privilege token to the opponent.

📜 Privilege tokens are quite clever. Using them allows you to take a chip from the board. It is a balancing mechanic - if a player does something advantageous (picking 3 chips of the same color, picking 2 pearl chips, or refilling the board), their opponent gets a privilege token. They also look awesome. 😅

🃏 Another new feature are card abilities: some cards do something when you buy them, like getting to go again, taking a chip from the board or stealing one from your opponent. So it not just about picking cards with high point values.

🏆 The game also has 3 different victory conditions now - either get 20 points from cards in your tableau, or 10 from a single row of cards or get 10 crown icons. This makes the race to the finish line more interesting.

💬 While I think the original Splendor is not a bad game, I didn’t enjoy it too much. It was too pure of an engine-builder for me, just getting better and better cards.
However Splendor Duel elevates the gameplay immensely for me . All of these new elements that were added make it a remarkable game. 😁 Of course the downside is that you can not play it with more than 2 players now.

I really like the new anime-esque aesthetics too! 🖌️