How to Play Splendor Duel

Read the Duel table

Two players share a 5×5 board holding colored gems, pearls, and gold. The card market has five level-1 cards, four level-2 cards, and three level-3 cards. Four royals and three privilege scrolls sit nearby.

The second player begins with one privilege. Your online Duel room prepares the board and shows whose turn it is. Choose Duel explicitly; a two-player Classic room uses a different game.

Before your main action

• Use any privileges first. Each spent privilege takes one gem or pearl from the board, never gold.
• You may then refill empty board spaces from the bag. Refilling gives your opponent a privilege and cannot be done when the bag is empty.

If you have no legal main action, you must refill the board before choosing one. Privileges are limited: when the supply is empty, a gained privilege comes from your opponent if possible.

Take one main action

• Take one to three non-gold tokens in an unbroken horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line. Empty spaces and gold cannot be crossed. Taking three of one color or both pearls gives your opponent a privilege.
• Take one gold from the board and reserve a card, either from the market or unseen from a deck. You need available gold and fewer than three reserved cards.
• Buy a market card or a reserved card. Apply permanent bonuses, pay the remaining cost, and put spent tokens in the bag. Gold can replace gems or pearls; there is no permanent pearl discount.

Unlike Classic, Duel lets you choose fewer than three tokens from an available line. Reserving in Duel also requires a gold token to be present.

Resolve cards and royal rewards

A purchased card may grant a token, a privilege, an extra turn, or another printed ability. Follow the table’s prompts to complete every required choice. Some cards copy a bonus color already in your collection.

Reaching three crowns earns a royal; reaching six earns another. Choose an available royal and resolve its effect. Keep the royal’s prestige in your total, but separate it from points on colored jewelry cards.

Watch all three ways to win

After completing your action and its effects, return excess tokens to the bag so you hold no more than ten, including pearls and gold. Then check victory. Meeting any one target ends the game at the end of that turn; there is no equal-turn final round.

Watch all three totals on both sides. A player can win through crowns or one card color while still being short of 20 total prestige.

Open a Duel room

Choose Splendor Duel, create the two-player room, then invite a friend or add one bot. The host starts when both seats are filled.

For your first game, pay attention to what a token selection leaves on the board. Before collecting both pearls or three matching gems, consider what your opponent might do with the privilege you give them. The Counterfeiters is a separate expansion choice with additional rules.

Read a line without jumping a gap

Consider three neighbouring board spaces in a horizontal row, holding blue, red, and green. If all three are eligible non-gold tokens, they can form one straight collection. Now imagine the middle space is empty. The blue and green are no longer an adjacent two-token sequence. You cannot jump the empty space just because both tokens lie on the same horizontal line.

The same principle applies vertically and diagonally. Read the spaces in order rather than selecting any three tokens that seem useful. Removing tokens leaves holes; it does not compress the remaining board. For an online move, check the selection preview before confirming so you learn to distinguish a useful pattern from a legal one.

Work through a payment including a pearl

Suppose a card requires two red tokens and one pearl, and you own one red bonus. The red part of the cost falls to one, while the pearl still has to be paid. A red token plus a pearl completes the payment. A red token plus gold can also cover the missing pearl; a second red bonus would not by itself remove the pearl requirement.

This is a hypothetical cost example, not an assertion about a particular named card. It demonstrates why the purchase preview separates permanent bonuses, held coloured tokens, pearls, and gold. If you have a choice of payment, preserve the resources that matter for your next purchase rather than assuming every wildcard must be spent first.

Finish all required choices in order

A purchase can trigger effects as well as change your score. Depending on the card, you may need to choose a bonus colour, take a token, select a steal target, or handle another ability. Reaching the relevant crown thresholds can also ask you to choose a royal. The game is not waiting for a new main action while one of these choices is unresolved.

After resolving the relevant effects, deal with any required token return and check the winning thresholds. Read the prompt carefully when a button seems unavailable. It may be asking for a mandatory choice, not rejecting the purchase. In Gem Merchant, the state shown by the server determines which step is currently legal; repeatedly sending the original action does not skip a pending decision.

A focused first Duel game

For your first session, keep three small reminders visible: no jumping gaps, watch pearls, and inspect all three winning thresholds. Do not try to master every card combination at once. Start by stating what the next purchase needs, then find a legal line or another action that supplies it. Read the opponent’s immediate threat before investing in a distant engine.

After a few turns, discuss one privilege transfer. Identify which action caused it and what extra token the recipient could take before a main action. This connects the rule to a tangible consequence. Later, practise a replenishment turn while explicitly naming which optional actions occur before it and which opportunities disappear afterward.

Duel is not shortened Classic. There is no shared Classic-style final round after a player satisfies a winning condition. That difference should be taught before the finish approaches, because it changes whether there is time to recover from an opponent’s scoring move. Keep the Counterfeiters expansion for a separate lesson once ordinary Duel is familiar.