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. Having been producing news, features, previews and opinion pieces for Dicebreaker for the past three years, Alex has had plenty of opportunity to indulge in her love of meaty strategy board games and gothic RPGS.

The vicious nature of Splendor Duel is a marker for its success however, with the two-player game embodying everything that makes a head-to-head experience so unique and enjoyable. Jewels are selected randomly from a felt bag, before being placed along the spiral until the board is completely full. Points, as the name suggests, add to the player’s score, bringing that player closer to claiming victory. 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. In many instances, these technologies are reliant on cookies to function properly, and so declining cookies will impair their functioning.There’s also a victory tile that reminds you of the 3 ways in which you can claim victory, so best keep that in eyeline. Splendor Duel’ maintains the high standard of artwork and pieces seen in the original, and many of the popular mechanisms seen in ‘Splendor’ have been caried through well. There are quite a few differences between Splendor and Splendor Duel, but that’s where you come in and find that out all for yourselves! I explained the game to my primary 7 Wonders Duel sparring partner, we chit chatted, and then we played three games of it all within 90 minutes.

There are new twists and tricks for you to discover in the Splendor world, will you be the one who discovers them first. Whilst the original restricts the number of jewels players can take depending on whether they match – you can take either two of the same or three of different types – Splendor Duel enforces restrictions in other, more challenging ways. As intended, Splendor Duel mirrors the feeling of the original game, such as the slow early game in which you are finding your footing and figuring out which of the high-level cards to target, or the desire to reserve a card an opponent is eyeing only to see something even better be revealed.The onlything I and my playing partners could think of is that 7 Wonders Duelis a bit meatier and might feel worthier of a full game night, while this comes across as a filler. Take Gem and Pearl tokens from the common board, then purchase cards, gather bonuses, royal favours, and prestige. When someone doesn't like the choices on the board — which can happen quickly since both empty spaces and gold break up adjacency — you can decide to refill the board before choosing tokens for your turn. Luckily for them, the addition of privilege tokens allows players to take a token of their choice from the board as an optional action.