With a four year old, sometimes they look at what of your tabletop games on the shelf and say “Let’s play this!” This is kind of impossible when the game has strategy involved and is meant for kids over the age of ten.
But Dad, it looks fun! Let’s play it!!
I realized that with the power of creativity we could create a brand new game using whatever pieces are available to us.
These instructions are for a 2 player game but I’m sure you can use creativity to adapt to a multiplayer game.
What do you need to play this?
1 Splendor game
1 child who wants to play the game with you
What is the objective?
To have the most chips of each colour (minus the gold, we don’t play with them) at the end of the game.
Look at all those chips!
How to set up
Take out all the chips from the box except for the gold ones and put them on the table somewhere. It’s like a money for Monopoly, it’s off to the side somewhere.
Now take all the playing cards and separate them into the green, yellow and blue cards. Put the green back in the box.
Deal all the yellow cards between the two players. You should end up with an equal amount of cards.
Two piles. They are pretty neat.
How to play
Each player takes a card from the top of their deck and flips it.
Whoever has the largest number on the card wins the round. In this game, we are looking at the number which appears in the top left corner. Ignore all other numbers.
The winner of the round picks up a chip which corresponds with the gem that appears in the top right corner of the card.
In the picture above, the player that has the 3 wins the round against the 2. The player gets to pick up a green gem chip for their collection.
In the picture above, the 3 card wins the round against the 2 card. The winner gets to pick up a white gem (aka the diamond) chip.
Go onto the next round by flipping cards and battling it out to try and win the most gems!
What happens when there is a tie?
In our house, a tie breaker is battled out using rock-paper-scissors!
Only rock-paper-scissors shall determine the winner of this round!
What happens when we run out of yellow cards?
This depends on your kid. Some days the kid is really tired of playing and you can move onto figuring out who won the game. But sometimes they want to continue on so that’s where you can deal out the blue deck.
Ok, we’re done playing, who wins?
Now it’s time to put your gems against the other player’s gems and see who wins!
Each player moves their stack of gems against the other players, according to colour. Whoever has the larger stack wins one point.
In this example, I had a lot more white gems compared to Sierra’s one gem. Therefore I win one point.
What happens if there is a tie when counting the gems?
Rock-paper-scissors of course!
Who wins?
In the example above, you can see that we have battled it out. Sierra had the most brown gems (1 point), and the most blue gems (1 point). I had the most red, white and green gems (1 point each for 3 points total).
I win!
What skills does this game teach my kid?
- Dealing cards
- Understanding numbers and how they relate to each other. “What number do I have? A three. What number do you have? A two. Which is the higher of the two numbers? Then who wins this round?”
- Counting gems
- How to revel in the happiness of winning a game
- How to deal with the feeling of utter defeat when you lose a game and Dad dances around the room
Why do we put the green cards back in the box at the setup stage?
The green cards don’t seem to have numbers appear a whole lot so it was getting tedious to always have a tie. If you want to play with them, go for it, but you’ll end up with a lot more rock-paper-scissor challenges!
Is it fun?
I think so! I’m sure others may come up with variations they enjoy more. As long as you’re having fun with your kid inventing a game, that’s what counts!