Was £26.99, Now £21.00 The Greatest Gemstone Merchants of the Renaissance
As the leader of a merchant guild, you invest in mines, send your ships to the new world, and recruit the most renowned artisans. Build a commercial empire and receive the visit of wise monarchs, patrons with infinite resources, to acquire glory and prestige.
Choose your tokens with care to acquire developments which will increase your prestige and grant you bonuses which will allow you in turn to buy increasingly more prestigious developments until a noble patron visits you and contributes to your prestige as only prestige can determine the winner.
Collect chips, buy cards, develop your hand. Splendid!
First impressions:
Really easy to pick up and understand, components are of a good quality and you get a real feel of "doing" something each turn.
First Play:
15 points, a simple goal? At first, no, but once your economy gets going it will be hard to stop you.
More than one way to reach your target and more than one strategy to vex your opponents made this a great game to play.
Later plays:
Still just as good as the first time. It's an excellent game that can be played with anyone, from beginner to the experienced gamer.
Buy this!
By
SplendorFan
From
Burton in
Review
One word - Awesome. Everybody could and should have this game in their collection! I bought this game a few weeks ago and haven't stopped playing, in fact it inspired my username on this site...
Great to play as a 2 player with the wife, and I also play it solo and it works great, although I haven't played it with 3 or 4 yet. The 2 player game plays out in about 20-30 minutes, so you can generally play best of 3 of an evening. I reckon children from about 5 up could get this as well, so I reckon my oldest could start to try this one out!
Very easy to explain and teach, and the game is bound to appeal to wide gaming tastes as it is very well produced with top quality components and beautiful colourful artwork. Those poker chip style tokens are fantastic as well!
This game is so simple, collect gem tokens to buy gem cards, which build up allowing you to buy more valuable cards which offer more victory points. Strategies can vary, you can either collect the right cards to enable you to buy some of the big hitting gem cards that may give up to 5 victory points (game is to 15 points) or you can do what I do, look at the 3 noble cards you can collect and work to gain the relevant cards and swoop for the nobles!
The game is easy to play, very accessible, addictive, satisfying, strategic and so 'playable'. Get it and I'm sure you won't be disappointed! All I can think about is "I wonder if you could produce expansions for this?" :0)
Spirit Games (Est. 1984, Lefglow Ltd) - Supplying role playing games (RPG),
wargames rules, miniatures
and
scenery, new and traditional board and card games for the last 40 years