I was playing a 3-player game of Splendor this afternoon when it very quickly seemed to me that my two opponents were working together to reserve any card I had saved up gems to purchase. I checked their nationalities and they were both French. At first I thought, it's highly unlikely the same person running two accounts could join one of my games at the same time. Then I realized, unlike 99% of the games I play, I didn't host this one, I joined a game with two people already waiting for a third person to join :-O.
This strategy of reserving any card I could buy or that one might guess I would want continued apace, and I quickly decided: the only way to win this is to buy a ton of level 1 cards and build up so much purchasing power that 1) they can't guess what I'm going to get next and 2) I win a bunch of nobles.
This actually worked so well that I got 3 nobles and won fairly easily (17-11-10).
I checked the stats after the game: it was 28 rounds long and each of my "two" opponents reserved cards exactly 25% of their turns.
Now who reserves 7 cards in a game of Splendor? (The average for all players as shown in the game stats is reserving cards 15% of one's turns). Never seen anything like it, not once, much less two opponents in the same game doing that, c'mon.
I think "they" were so obsessed with that strategy that it enabled me to win because let's face it, one gold coin is great, but over the long haul you are better off drawing three random colors than one gold, and then they had to save up and buy all those 14 cards they reserved (and which had no strategic purpose for them other than to deny them to me).
Anyway, better luck next time.
This strategy of reserving any card I could buy or that one might guess I would want continued apace, and I quickly decided: the only way to win this is to buy a ton of level 1 cards and build up so much purchasing power that 1) they can't guess what I'm going to get next and 2) I win a bunch of nobles.
This actually worked so well that I got 3 nobles and won fairly easily (17-11-10).
I checked the stats after the game: it was 28 rounds long and each of my "two" opponents reserved cards exactly 25% of their turns.
Now who reserves 7 cards in a game of Splendor? (The average for all players as shown in the game stats is reserving cards 15% of one's turns). Never seen anything like it, not once, much less two opponents in the same game doing that, c'mon.
I think "they" were so obsessed with that strategy that it enabled me to win because let's face it, one gold coin is great, but over the long haul you are better off drawing three random colors than one gold, and then they had to save up and buy all those 14 cards they reserved (and which had no strategic purpose for them other than to deny them to me).
Anyway, better luck next time.
