Opportunity Costs, Opening Strategy - Splendor

Splendor is a easy to learn game that teaches players a lot about strategy which can be applied in multiple games.  That strategy is Opportunity Cost.  In the Business World, the Opportunity Cost of an Action or Item is the time/skill/cash lost by making a decision.  For example, you're at a Seminar and there are two classes you would like to see. Unfortunately these classes are at the same time and you can only be in one place.  The class you decide to see comes with the Opportunity Cost of not seeing the other class.  Hope that helps clarify rather than muddle for you.

In Splendor, you can take a limited amount of actions, each of which comes with an Opportunity Cost. Those actions are:

  1. Pick up a set of three different tokens
  2. Pick up two of the same token
  3. Pick a wild token and reserve a card
  4. Purchase a card with tokens
Just looking at the options may not show the best route to take, nor will it be obvious without a time frame to spread those options over.  Lets set 4 turns as the opening for your game.  The outcome of this game can be severely impacted by a poor opening strategy.

Here is the Math for the first three options if you were to take only that strategy for the first 4 turns:
(PP= Purchasing Power)
  1. 12 different tokens in a variety of colors, PP: approx 3-4 cards
  2. 8 tokens in four colors, PP: 2-3 cards
  3. 4 wild tokens, PP: 1 card
Just looking at those results it should start to become obvious which opening strategy would be best if you were only doing the same move for four turns.  Of course, action option number 4 is often mixed in there which changes results, however, mixing options 1x3 and 4x1 for your first 4 turns can give you the same PP moving forward if the first purchase is a cheap card.  

With all this in mind I would recommend collecting for the first 3 turns with Option 1 only, and then Purchasing for your fourth turn.  and your next 2-3 turns after that as your tokens allow.  Try to keep your spend to 3-4 tokens per card.  Any more than that and you're paying too much for the card and there are other options out there.  Be patient and continue to collect when cards out of your price range are not available.  Wasting tokens on expensive cards now is the quickest way to limit your options in Mid and End game phases.

Good Luck!

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