Dale Yu: Review of Splendor Duel and The Counterfeiters expansion

Posted on July 24, 2026 by Dale Yu

 

 

Splendor Duel and the Counterfeiters expansion 

Confront your rival guild in a race for victory. Take Gem and Pearl tokens from the common board, then purchase cards, gather bonuses, royal favors, and prestige. Discover new twists and strategic opportunities derived from Splendor, the original best-selling game. Acquire cards with impressive powers, take advantage of special Privileges, and fight over scarce access to Pearls.

Splendor Duel is a two-player only standalone game based on Splendor that retains some of the main gameplay mechanisms of that design, while being a bit more complex, dynamic, interactive, rich, tense, and mean. The game features a main board shared by both opponents, card powers, and three victory conditions.

 

The Counterfeiters expansion add 8 new Royal cards and a daring new twist: the Counterfeiters — 4 paste gem tokens and 15 cards that bring deeper asymmetry and reshape all strategies. This tiny expansion fits seamlessly into the base game box — because once you’ve played it, there’s no going back. Are you ready to play by your own rules?

 

I will first review the base game of Splendor Duel, and then afterwards talk about the expansion.

To set up, place the board between the players and place all of the jewel tokens into the bag.  Draw out the jewels at random and fill the board, starting in the center and then following the spiral of arrows outward. The three decks of cards are shuffled and a display is made with five face up cards from level 1, four face up cards from level 2 and three face up cards from level 3.  The three privilege scrolls are placed on the table.  The four Royal cards are placed face up near the board as well.  A starting player is chosen and the second player takes a privilege scroll as compensation.

On a turn, a player can first take any optional actions:

  • Use a Privilege scroll – discard a scroll to take any non-gold token from the board.
  • Replenish the board – starting at the center of the board and following the spiral path of arrows, place a random jewel token from the bag until all are placed (or the board is full).  The opponent gets a Privilege scroll.

 

Then, the player takes one of the three mandatory options for their turn:

  • Take tokens – take up to three contiguous tokens in a straight line (horizontal, vertical or diagonal).  You cannot take a Gold token.  If you take 3 tokens of the same color OR 2 Pearls, your opponent takes a Privilege scroll
  • Take a Gold token from the board AND reserve a card by taking it out of the display and keeping it face down in your area.  You have a limit of 3 reserve cards.    You must be able to do both parts of this action to take it.
  • Purchase a Jewel card – this can come from either the board or your reserved cards.  Use Jewel tokens to pay for the card cost and return them to the bag.  You can also use jewel bonuses provided on previously purchased cards.  Add the card to your display; it will be helpful to group your cards by color.  If the card has a special action on it, resolve it now (take another turn, gain a Privilege scroll, take a token of matching color from the board, steal a token from your opponent, choose the color of this card’s bonus).

 

At the end of the turn, check to see if you get a Crown bonus.  Some of the cards have gold crowns at the top.  When you gain your 3rd Crown, you may take any available Royal card (and resolve its bonus action if it has one).  When you gain your 6th Crown, you may take a second Royal card. 

 

Also at the end of your turn, you must discard down to 10 tokens should you have more.  Return any excess tokens to the bag.

 

The game ends immediately if a player has met any of the three win conditions:

  • 20 or more points total on all cards
  • 10 or more points of a single color
  • 10 or more Crowns on all cards

 

Splendor Duel is a nice tight two-player game that both feels familiar (as it uses many concepts from Splendor) while including enough new features to allow the game to stand alone.  For me, the largest departure from the base game is the addition of the spatial element to the chip collection.  

 

This adds a bit of time pressure to game as there is definitely an added element of competition for the best selection of chips.  The pearls are the least prevalent chip type, and they are often selected whenever available.  There is a huge advantage to refilling the board – as you now have the best selection possible, but the game nicely balances this out by giving the other player a scroll – essentially a free chip of their choice.

 

The addition of the crowns gives not only a new win condition but also some useful extra abilities as you gain the Royal cards.  This is the other major change for me.

The bulk of the game is pure Splendor goodness.  Try to build the best engine possible through your purchased cards; aggregate enough bonuses to help you buy the more expensive cards.  This feels just like the original, and as Splendor is one of my all-time favorite games, I love this part of Splendor Duel.

 

The three different win conditions allow for a number of different strategies which I like.  You can choose to be widely diversified to give yourself the best discount distribution.  This works well for both the 20 point win as well as the Crowns win.  You can focus on a few colors to try to push one past ten points, though this can be more easily defended against as your opponent can try to reserve the high scoring cards in that color when they come up.

 

Though I love playing base Splendor as a 2-player game, Splendor Duel gives a new and interesting take on the Splendor system, and there is definitely room for both in my game collection.  Heck, the box it comes in is so small, you could actually store it within the base game box to keep them all together.  Or you can keep this tiny box on its own as a nice travel 2p game.

 

Splendor Duel: The Counterfeiters Expansion

This small expansion comes in a tuckbox, containing 4 purple glass tokens, a deck of Counterfeiter cards (all require the purple tokens) and 8 new Royal cards.  The overall game setup remains the same, with a few changes:

  • Add the purple tokens to the bag in setup, and now when you fill the board to start, there will be 4 tokens left over.
  • Shuffle the purple Counterfeiters deck and add a row of three cards to the display. Note that these are not considered Jewel cards and cannot be reserved when you take a Gold token
  • Shuffle the 8 new Royal cards with the original 4 and deal out 4 for the game.  Each has a unique power/ability.

The expanded game plays out similar to the base, but the Counterfeiter cards give players a chance to develop some asymmetric powers.  Each requires at least one glassware to buy the card, and they have varied abilities – some examples:

  • When buying a card, spend a glassware for two tokens of a specified color
  • When you use a scroll, you can take 2 tokens instead of just 1
  • Spend a glassware token to steal any non-gold token from your opponent
  • You may have up to 5 reserved cards, and each time you take a Gold Token, you can reserve up to two cards with that action

 

There is no change to the endgame conditions.

 

The Counterfeiter cards give players a whole slew of options as far as strategy goes, and as only one player can own a card, the game becomes asymmetric as a result.  For me, the question is always whether or not the advantages provided by the Counterfeiter card outweighs the stunting of my overall engine development – because it still costs you tokens and time to acquire them.  For the most part, the Counterfeiter cards do not provide any points towards winning (there is one card that provides 2 Crowns).

The expansion adds four tokens to the supply which has a number of effects. First, it does tend to keep the token display more full as there are four more tokens in the bag.  However, it does also dilute the overall array as there is now one more token type that will get included. The new Royal cards are a nice addition giving a bit more variation to the games with fairly balanced effects.  

All of the bits work well together, and if you’re looking for a slight increase in complexity, this is a good expansion to add on.  For me, I actually prefer the simplicity of the base Splendor Duel, and while I’d never say no to a game including Counterfeiters, I’m happy to stick to the base if I get to choose the mode of play.   But, to each their own – and it’s nice to have for that change of pace or for the opponent who wants something more.  It’s tiny, inexpensive, and can easily be stored in the main box for Splendor Duel.

 

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

 

Larry:  Splendor bores me.  It feels very straightforward and I don’t find it challenging at all.  But I like Splendor Duel a lot.  It’s much more multi-faceted and tightly designed and the gameplay is tense.  I haven’t had the chance to try the expansion, but I’m happy to play Splendor Duel at any time.

 


Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

  • I love it! Dale Y (base)
  • I like it. Dale Y (base + exp), Larry (base)
  • Neutral.
  • Not for me…

 

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4aSuCOg , https://amzn.to/4fAEBdF

 

 

 

About Dale Yu

Dale Yu is the Editor of the Opinionated Gamers. He can occasionally be found working as a volunteer administrator for BoardGameGeek, and he previously wrote for BoardGame News.
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