Splendor - How To Play

you hi everyone welcome to watch it played my name is Rodney Smith in this video we're going to learn the tuna four player game Splendor published by space cowboys and Asthma day here players will be taking on the roles of rich merchants working to turn raw gems into precious jewels earning the attention of wealthy Nobles so please join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set up divide the cards by their backs and shuffle them into three separate facedown decks arranging them like this with the single dot deck at the bottom and the three dot deck at the top then deal face-up four cards from each displaying them in rows these are known as developments these are the noble tiles shuffle and deal as many as the number of players plus one extra I'm going to set up for four players so I'll be putting out five nobles and returning the rest to the box finally place the various tokens in their own separate piles sorted by color there are five different types of gems and one pile of gold tokens if you have three players use only five of each gem type but all of the gold with two players again keep all of the gold but only four of each gem and that's the setup splendor is played over a series of rounds during which each player will get a turn on your turn you may choose to collect gems once you have enough gems you'll be able to purchase a development gain enough developments and you'll be able to afford some of the more expensive ones and those provide valuable prestige points you may even attract the attention of one of these wealthy Nobles providing you with even more prestige as soon as a player has 15 or more prestige points that triggers the last round of the game and at that point whoever has the most prestige is the winner the game starts with the youngest player and then goes clockwise around the table and on your turn you can choose one of four actions to take one option is to take three different colored gems and place them in front of you gold is not a gem so you cannot collect gold with this action and keep in mind the gems you have should always be clearly visible to the other players another option is to instead take two of the same color gem but you can only do this if there are at least four of that chosen color within the stack in a four player game there are seven gems in each of these piles so I know I'm okay to take two diamonds but let's say it comes back to my turn again and the other players were also collecting diamonds and now there's only three in this stack that means I could not take two diamonds in one action I'm going to have to wait until that pile gets replenished and we'll see how that works in just a moment again you can't take gold with this action it's important to note you can never have more than ten tokens in your personal collection at the end of your turn and that includes any gold tokens that you may have collected so if that happens then at the end of your turn simply choose some to return to the supply so that you're back down to ten and having tokens is important because that will give you the option on your turn to instead take the action to purchase a single face-up development card the cost to purchase a development is shown in its bottom left hand corner so if I wanted this one it's going to cost me two blue gems and one green gem otherwise known as two sapphire and one emerald let's say over the course of a few turns I had collected these gems but now it's my turn and instead I want to purchase this development to do that I would return to the supply to blue and one green token and when you collect a development you place it face up in front of you and immediately fill that development in with the top card of its corresponding draw deck one major benefit of buying a development is that it provides a bonus which is shown here in the top right hand corner this acts as a permanent gem of that type in this case a red Ruby that I can use for the rest of the game and it doesn't count against the limit of ten tokens that I'm allowed to have if we assume that these are the gems and developments I've purchased so far in the game then picking up this development is going to be easy first of all I need two white gems and I'm permanently gay one from this development that I already have so I don't need to trade in two tokens I only need to trade in one more for the single red gem I need I'm already getting it from this development and finally for the for black gems I have two here so I'll trade in two of these tokens for a total of four and now I don't only have another development but a permanent blue gem I'll be able to use for future purchases also some developments will show a value here these are prestige points and you're going to need at least fifteen if you want to win so the benefits of a development are probably pretty obvious at this point tokens when you spend them you'll lose them but developments you get to keep it's very important though that as you collect developments you stack them as I've done here so it's very clear to the players how many of each type you have and any prestige points you've collected so to summarize on your turn you can take one of four possible actions you could take three different colored gems and add them to your personal collection or you could take two of the same colored gem as long as there's at least four of that color in the stack or you can purchase a single face-up development and that brings us to the final action you can take reserving a development let's say there's a development you'd like to purchase but you can't quite afford it yet and you're afraid someone else will take it or maybe you see a development that if someone else collects it's just going to give them too many points so what you can do is reserve the development by simply collecting it and then replacing it with the top card of the appropriate deck developments you reserve you keep in your hand if you're feeling lucky you could instead choose to reserve one of the top developments from its face down deck either way after reserving you then take a gold token if there are no gold tokens left you can still reserve a development but you don't get the gold Gold is special because it's wild anytime you buy a development you can trade a gold token in in place of any other gem keep in mind you can never have more than three developments in your hand at a time and you can't discard them however on a turn where you take the action to purchase a development instead of purchasing one of these face up ones you can pick one from your hand pay its cost and put it face up in front of you after taking one of the four available actions you then check to see if you've attracted the attention of any of the nobles each noble shows a number of developments is looking for based on the different bonus types this Noble wants to see three black three blue and three white developments controlled by a player I'm close here but you don't include gem tokens I still need one more blue development so on a later turn if I did collect one then at the end of that turn I would collect this Noble you cannot refuse a noble and you wouldn't want to but if you would attract more than one at the end of a turn choose one to take leaving any others hopefully it will still be there for you to collect at the end of your next turn when you take a noble it is not replaced and Nobles are valuable because they provide prestige points after taking a single action and checking to see if you've attracted a noble your turn is over and then the next player goes and so it continues until a player has 15 or more prestige points in front of them then any players who have not yet taken a turn that round they complete their turns and then the game is over and the player with the most prestige wins if there's a tie then the tied player with the fewest developments purchased is the winner and that's how you play splendor you're collecting gems in order to acquire developments so that you can acquire better developments and more efficiently collect the prestige points that are required to win if you have any questions at all don't hesitate to put them in the comments below and I'll gladly answer them as soon as I get a chance but until the next episode thanks for watching

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 404,971

Keywords: Rules, Splendor, Learn, Watch It Played, tabletop, Learn How To Play, Space Cowboys, Learn To Play, Instructions, Asmodee, Card Games, Board Games, Game Rules

Id: rue8-jvbc9I

Length: 9min 3sec (543 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 15 2015