Looking for help reviewing games

[tonyzetigre]

Splendor and Faraway are similar games in different forms. The issue with your play is that it is very aimless. With a board as efficient as that, you should be essentially planning backwards. Visualize where your 15 points will come from and plan it backwards. No turn should be wasted and the amount of cards that you are actually buying should be VERY LOW. I'm talking about 4-6 cards TOTAL. To buy a level 1 card may cost anywhere from 3-5coins. To buy a 4 point card is 7 coins. You have no reason to buy a level 1 card unless you can outright see thaf you'll be using it atleast 3 times.

[Ceaseless]

Splendor and Faraway are similar games in different forms. The issue with your play is that it is very aimless. With a board as efficient as that, you should be essentially planning backwards. Visualize where your 15 points will come from and plan it backwards. No turn should be wasted and the amount of cards that you are actually buying should be VERY LOW. I'm talking about 4-6 cards TOTAL. To buy a level 1 card may cost anywhere from 3-5coins. To buy a 4 point card is 7 coins. You have no reason to buy a level 1 card unless you can outright see thaf you'll be using it atleast 3 times.

A level 4 card costs anywhere from 7-12 coins. And some of those may be gold (which costs 2 coins to acquire when compared to a standard 3 coin grab). Buying cards costs turns and flips more cards for an opponent to immediately view, offering clear drawbacks in buying high quantities beyond just losing the tiebreaker, but the racking of bonuses is useful both for token warfare and acquisition of nobles (which might emerge in particularly brutal token warfare.) If you don't buy much your targets become clear and can be hated out, repeatedly forcing a player into token or reservation maximums that costs them further efficiency. It's really hard to play for high value cards when the tokens you're looking for come up on the table in minimal amounts or when you'd have to burn the 10 token maximum. It takes a careful eye at times to see whether you can actually go for that brutally linear attack approach or if you'll end up overextending and getting punished as your opponent's defenses lock your attack to a crawl.

[relaxed-llama112]

absolutely. If you can buy 4-6 cards and win, it means your opponent is really weak. Refer to the higher-ranked and most intense matches, they will definitely buy LV1 cards, the reason is that each other knows how to play defense (including how to keep the cards and how to take the gems).

Splendor and Faraway are similar games in different forms. The issue with your play is that it is very aimless. With a board as efficient as that, you should be essentially planning backwards. Visualize where your 15 points will come from and plan it backwards. No turn should be wasted and the amount of cards that you are actually buying should be VERY LOW. I'm talking about 4-6 cards TOTAL. To buy a level 1 card may cost anywhere from 3-5coins. To buy a 4 point card is 7 coins. You have no reason to buy a level 1 card unless you can outright see thaf you'll be using it atleast 3 times.

A level 4 card costs anywhere from 7-12 coins. And some of those may be gold (which costs 2 coins to acquire when compared to a standard 3 coin grab). Buying cards costs turns and flips more cards for an opponent to immediately view, offering clear drawbacks in buying high quantities beyond just losing the tiebreaker, but the racking of bonuses is useful both for token warfare and acquisition of nobles (which might emerge in particularly brutal token warfare.) If you don't buy much your targets become clear and can be hated out, repeatedly forcing a player into token or reservation maximums that costs them further efficiency. It's really hard to play for high value cards when the tokens you're looking for come up on the table in minimal amounts or when you'd have to burn the 10 token maximum. It takes a careful eye at times to see whether you can actually go for that brutally linear attack approach or if you'll end up overextending and getting punished as your opponent's defenses lock your attack to a crawl.

[relaxed-llama112]

To learn how to defend against a high-value hand where your opponent has quickly completed a HOLD, watch this game. I suppressed him from taking the white gem, preventing my opponent from completing the opening HOLD while continuing to buy the cards he needed.

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=705321706

[Ceaseless]

To learn how to defend against a high-value hand where your opponent has quickly completed a HOLD, watch this game. I suppressed him from taking the white gem, preventing my opponent from completing the opening HOLD while continuing to buy the cards he needed.

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=705321706

On your second turn, why not grab a second black token, letting you go for the blue token or 3 black, instead of a red token? The black is slightly better for starving their 1 point white and as a buy option won't cost you any white tokens. Then on turn 3 you can pick up a third black alongside a white and blue so that you have both the 3 token red and 3 token blue available so they can't try any counter-reservations that stop you from buying something without white. Without interference you spend 5 tokens on 2 cards, no white costs up.

[Ceaseless]

https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=635197022

Felt a bit weird to have examples with high rating gaps. Sure, they were grabbed for being recent games where someone overreserved, but I thought I'd look back for some fighting examples. Higher rated players don't tend to do the same extreme reservation tricks, but many still go for efficiency. I commonly had such fights with this opponent. They got more efficient cards, but thanks to token warfare I could slow down their attacks, making them burn tokens and struggle to find the right colors just long enough for me to close the deal. As the game draws out I'd get better flips overall because I have more bonuses, meaning more cards that will be easy for me to buy than them. This made them easier to slow down than me, so a lot of the dragging out went in my favor, as it was easier for me to start other lanes of attack as the game progressed.

https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=579007029

They reserved early and we fought over red. Despite them going first, their reservation gave me the momentum on colors that they had to pay for to hold off. There were a lot of color struggles and they even pulled ahead in the fight for nobles that popped up, but I kept enough pressure on them that my overall advantages let me pull ahead in points for the tiebreaker.

[relaxed-llama112]

The reason for this is that I purposely lured my opponent into trying to hold lv2 black, which seemed to work in its favor, but since the lv1 board didn't have any value cards that required a white stone to buy, and didn't have any white cards, this would make it 1 or 2 steps slower than I was, which would add to my advantage in the opening hand.

Other than that, I'd probably prefer a lv2 green with 4 white, 2 blue and a black to easily build up my advantage in buying lv3 cards or noble card in the future. So I'm more of a wait-and-see kind of guy.


Of course, if I buy the lv1 card and then send out a white card, it will be a bit unfavorable for me, but when I see him hold a second card, I can be completely at ease.

To learn how to defend against a high-value hand where your opponent has quickly completed a HOLD, watch this game. I suppressed him from taking the white gem, preventing my opponent from completing the opening HOLD while continuing to buy the cards he needed.

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=705321706

On your second turn, why not grab a second black token, letting you go for the blue token or 3 black, instead of a red token? The black is slightly better for starving their 1 point white and as a buy option won't cost you any white tokens. Then on turn 3 you can pick up a third black alongside a white and blue so that you have both the 3 token red and 3 token blue available so they can't try any counter-reservations that stop you from buying something without white. Without interference you spend 5 tokens on 2 cards, no white costs up.

[relaxed-llama112]

I pretty much agree that the best way to beat this kind of opponent who keeps switching gems in pursuit of higher value cards is to focus on buying lv1 cards of different colors quickly and eventually beat them with opening up a multi-card advantage and nobles. This is how I usually win against such opponents. I call it the “Low Score Play”.

Of course, you need to pay attention to the amount of gems you take to see if you can stall your opponent to a certain extent in the midgame, and then the rest depends on your luck, especially if you start buying lv2 cards, then your opponent can easily buy next.

I've always thought of splender as a game where when the strengths (judgment and experience) of the opponents are similar, luck is a big factor in deciding whether they win or lose, not to mention the fact that even if the strengths of the opponents are significantly different, luck can still make a decisive difference.

It's not a chess game (chess, go, etc.) after all. just enjoy it!

https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=635197022

Felt a bit weird to have examples with high rating gaps. Sure, they were grabbed for being recent games where someone overreserved, but I thought I'd look back for some fighting examples. Higher rated players don't tend to do the same extreme reservation tricks, but many still go for efficiency. I commonly had such fights with this opponent. They got more efficient cards, but thanks to token warfare I could slow down their attacks, making them burn tokens and struggle to find the right colors just long enough for me to close the deal. As the game draws out I'd get better flips overall because I have more bonuses, meaning more cards that will be easy for me to buy than them. This made them easier to slow down than me, so a lot of the dragging out went in my favor, as it was easier for me to start other lanes of attack as the game progressed.

https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=579007029

They reserved early and we fought over red. Despite them going first, their reservation gave me the momentum on colors that they had to pay for to hold off. There were a lot of color struggles and they even pulled ahead in the fight for nobles that popped up, but I kept enough pressure on them that my overall advantages let me pull ahead in points for the tiebreaker.

[tonyzetigre]

Splendor and Faraway are similar games in different forms. The issue with your play is that it is very aimless. With a board as efficient as that, you should be essentially planning backwards. Visualize where your 15 points will come from and plan it backwards. No turn should be wasted and the amount of cards that you are actually buying should be VERY LOW. I'm talking about 4-6 cards TOTAL. To buy a level 1 card may cost anywhere from 3-5coins. To buy a 4 point card is 7 coins. You have no reason to buy a level 1 card unless you can outright see thaf you'll be using it atleast 3 times.

A level 4 card costs anywhere from 7-12 coins. And some of those may be gold (which costs 2 coins to acquire when compared to a standard 3 coin grab). Buying cards costs turns and flips more cards for an opponent to immediately view, offering clear drawbacks in buying high quantities beyond just losing the tiebreaker, but the racking of bonuses is useful both for token warfare and acquisition of nobles (which might emerge in particularly brutal token warfare.) If you don't buy much your targets become clear and can be hated out, repeatedly forcing a player into token or reservation maximums that costs them further efficiency. It's really hard to play for high value cards when the tokens you're looking for come up on the table in minimal amounts or when you'd have to burn the 10 token maximum. It takes a careful eye at times to see whether you can actually go for that brutally linear attack approach or if you'll end up overextending and getting punished as your opponent's defenses lock your attack to a crawl.

Brainfart. I watched a 2 player game and answered like it was a 4 player game. In my brain, Splendor is a 4 player game because I play Splendor Duel when I want a 2 player game, but yes, you all are right. The lower value cards are more crucial and hate drafting is expected obviously as the player count gets lower.