You are a Renaissance merchant in the gem trade. Take Diamonds, Sapphires, Emeralds, Rubies and Onyx; buy mines, caravans and shops whose bonuses make every later card cheaper; win the visits of the Nobles who admire them; and be the most prestigious when someone reaches 15. Two to four players, peer-to-peer: no accounts, no server, just a room code. Bots fill any empty seat. The host may add the expansions’ modules — the Cities, the Trading Posts, the Orient and the Strongholds.
The table. Development cards in three decks by level, with four of each level face up; one more Noble than there are players; and the supply of tokens — Diamond (white), Sapphire (blue), Emerald (green), Ruby (red) and Onyx (black), seven of each at four players, five at three, four at two — and five Gold, always.
Your turn: exactly one action.Take three gems of different colours (if fewer than three colours are left, two or even one);
or take two gems of one colour — only from a pile of four or more;
or reserve a card — a face-up one, or the top of a deck unseen — and take a Gold, if any is left. You may hold three reserved cards; only you can buy them;
or buy a card, face up or from your reserve. Gold is never taken any other way.
Paying. Pay the card’s cost in tokens; they go back to the supply. Gold stands in for any gem. The table is refilled from the deck of that level.
Bonuses. Every card you buy shows a gem in its corner: it is a bonus for good, one gem of that colour off every card you buy after it. With enough bonuses, a card costs nothing at all.
Ten tokens. At the end of your turn you may hold no more than ten, Gold included; give back any beyond that, as you choose.
Nobles. At the end of your turn, a Noble visits if you have the bonuses on the tile — cards, not tokens — and brings 3 Prestige points. That is not an action. Only one comes each turn; if two would, you choose.
The end. When someone has 15 or more Prestige points at the end of their turn, the round is played out so everyone has had as many turns. The most Prestige points wins; on a tie, whoever bought fewer Development cards; if that ties too, they share the victory.
At this table. Tap gems in the supply to pick them, then take them; tap a card or a deck to buy or reserve it. Cards you can afford are lit in gold. Point at or tap anything to see what it means.
The expansions
The host chooses them in the lobby, alone or together. Each box has two modules.
The Cities(The Silk Road). Three City tiles, each with a random side up, take the Nobles’ place. A City asks for Prestige points and cards; a grey square with a number asks for that many cards of one colour the tile names nowhere else. At the end of your turn, if you have the points and the cards a City asks for, the round is played out — 15 points alone no longer end the game. Then whoever meets a City wins; if several do, the most Prestige points among them, then the fewest cards.
The Trading Posts(The Silk Road). Five powers, one tile of each for every player. At the end of your turn, after the Nobles, you take a Trading Post whose cards you have — one a turn — and keep its power to the end. Its five powers: after you buy a card, take a gem of any colour; after you take two gems of one colour, take one of another; each Gold you spend buying is worth two gems of one colour; reserving from a deck, draw two and keep one, the other to the bottom; and 1 Prestige point for every Trading Post you have.
The Orient(The Sun Never Sets). A deck of Orient cards for each level, two of them face up at the end of each row, bought and reserved as any card. Their powers act when you buy them. Gold cards have no colour: discard one while buying, and it pays 2 Gold for that card. Copy cards take the colour and bonus of a card you have — you need one to buy them — and the level-2 ones also take a face-up level-1 card for free. Double cards bring two bonuses of their colour but count as one card for Nobles, Trading Posts and Cities. Some level-3 cards take a face-up level-2 card for free; that card is not a purchase. Others are bought not with gems but by discarding two cards of the colour shown — copy cards of that colour first.
The Strongholds(The Sun Never Sets). Three Strongholds each. Every time you buy a card, before the table is refilled, you must place or move one of yours onto a face-up card no rival holds, or knock a lone rival Stronghold off its card. Only the player whose Strongholds are on a card may buy or reserve it. With all three of yours on one card, you may buy it at the end of your action, before the ten-token limit and the Nobles.
Their two Nobles. Each box adds a Noble tile to the ten: Rani Chennabhairadevi and Hino Tomiko.
Splendor is by Marc André, published by Space Cowboys. This is an unofficial fan implementation. The 90 Development cards were read one by one off photographs of the printed cards and agree card for card with two independent transcriptions; the 10 Noble tiles agree across four transcriptions and with a photograph of the tiles; the rules follow Space Cowboys’ rulebook. The expansions follow the two expansion rulebooks; their 30 Orient cards, 7 City tiles and 2 Nobles are taken from Board Game Arena’s licensed edition and agree with every one the publisher’s product photographs show. One City side, Madrid’s second, is provisional: no photograph shows it, and that edition lists it twice, differently — the one used is the entry whose text and cost agree.