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Announced earlier this year, Splendor Duel is one of several two-player variants of popular board games that are set to arrive in the near future. Alongside the recently revealed Wingspan Asia– an expansion that doubles as a board game for two players, that Dicebreaker also managed to play at the Essen Spiel 2022 tabletop gaming convention – Splendor Duel looks to adapt the gameplay of a fairly straightforward title to fit a head-to-head format. Whilst both Wingspan and Splendor support smaller player-counts, their two-player variants provide an experience tailored to the more intimate nature that a one-on-one playthrough provides. Splendor Duel relies on entirely new rules and game contents: a common board, Privilege figurines, and Royal Favor cards, three unique win conditions, and a brand-new resource – the Pearl. Another new addition to the title is cards with multiple characteristic and varied abilities that will trigger additional rounds, bonus tokens, and more. Fulfilling these requirements is made even harder by the presence of pearls. Pearls, the queen of gems, are a rare find in ‘Splendor Duel’. Whilst there are only two pearl tokens in the entire box, pearls are needed to fulfil the requirements of many of the item cards! To make matters worse, none of the item cards depicting gems can be used in lieu of a pearl token. The other big change is that there are now three ways to win. Players win by earning 20 victory points, 10 points within a single color’s column, or by getting 10 “crowns.” Crowns are bonuses on cards (similar to Marvel Splendor‘s tags), and they are now the way to earn the favor of Nobles, which provide victory cards and/or bonus actions. Likewise, many cards now provide bonus actions like taking an extra turn or gaining an extra gem. Most (perhaps all) of these require the precious new pearl resource, but gold tokens (gained only by reserving a card) can be used as pearls, preventing the game state from clogging when pearls are scarce, and likewise increasing the value of reserving cards. The two games I enjoyed most (that I can talk about at this time) are Splendor Duel and Sea Salt & Paper. The former game is from Bruno Cathala, Marc André, and Space Cowboys, and the latter from Cathala, Théo Rivière, and Bombyx. Given that I'm also excited about Sobek: 2 Players, a Cathala and Sébastien Pauchon design that Pandasaurus Games had at the show, not to mention Cathala and Rivière's Oh My Brain, now out from 25th Century Games, this event was pretty much a "Cathala Con" for me. For this post, I'll focus solely on the former game.
The tile obtained is placed face-up in front of the player, and give that player prestige points equal to the number in the top-right corner of the tile.
A player can never have more than 10 tokens at the end of their turn (including jokers). If this happens, they must return tokens until they only have 10 left. A player can return all or some of those they’ve just drawn
Splendor Duel is a two-player only standalone game based on Splendor that retains some of the main gameplay mechanisms of that design, while being a bit more complex, dynamic, interactive, rich, tense, and mean. Splendor Duel is intended for a wide range of players: Splendor fans who want to discover the game’s new rules and have a go at new tactics, and the 2-player game fans who will experience a fierce duel in less than 30 minutes.Buying Jewel cards is great because they grant permanent gems (did I hear someone say engine builder?! Aha!), and some have extra bonus actions on them too: Croc from Space Cowboys told me that Cathala had reached out to Splendor designer Marc André with an idea for a two-player-only version of the game — which might seem odd given that Splendor already plays fine with two players — but André, perhaps considering the success of 7 Wonders Duel, said sure, let's collaborate. Space Cowboys didn't even know about the project until the designers were mostly done, but I'm sure the publisher didn't object to being delivered a spinoff title to the best-selling game in its catalog.
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