Joined in 2023 
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63 About this deal
As sure as the sun rises in the east, there will always be another efficiency Euro that I somehow end up playing and writing about. And like the many others that have come and gone, this one is… fine.
The main betting board is a decent size for up to eight people to scrabble around. It’s in a classic shade of British Racing green (yes, that’s an actual colour tone!). Once all the cards sit above and below the Show/Place/Win columns, it can look a tad busy. It’s a little too easy to forget/ignore the extra Prop Bets or Exotic Bets in the heat of the excitement. The exciting moments are few and far between. The app is serviceable but almost never is able to really capture the excitement when it does happen. And if you have a human rolling dice for you they have to be a special kind of person to enjoy that and really sell the rest of the table on the experience.Yet I’ve created a golden rule for myself when it comes to Knizia Games: Even if I don’t like it on the first play, it deserves a second chance. Nobody is better at hiding deeper layers under a simple premise than Reiner Knizia. Often it takes more than one play to uncover those layers. Splendor Duel follows a much more engaging arc by starting as a classic engine builder but finishing as a mad scramble to cross the closest finish line. By providing multiple paths to victory, the competition becomes 3-dimensional and bitey.
It’s certainly possible to sand down all the rough edges and sharp corners of a game only to be left with a dull experience. Qin flirts with that line enough to make me unsure of its staying power. Yet after spending more time with it, I’m realizing that I don’t dislike it. The lingering issue is that I haven’t yet found a reason for why I would play this over the dozens of other Knizias on my shelf. At first, when I heard that one player has to act as The House, it set off alarm bells. What? One player can’t even participate? Their task is to roll dice and move the horses? I’m delighted to announce, though, that I ate humble pie once I took on this role. On New Year’s Eve, I was The House for eight friends. I got them all to name the horses before I introduced the game. For my commentary, I used these horse’s names rather than bland numbers. “Oh no, Watch Me Neigh-Neigh has lost the lead!”What makes a great 2-player game? Obviously one must start with a solid foundation. If the core gameplay loop isn’t interesting, then there is no real point to any of it. Splendor Duel has no issue there, as it builds off the tried and true groundwork laid by the evergreen engine builder, Splendor. Finally, each player is dealt 2 VIP cards, choosing to keep one and discarding the other. The VIP cards are placed in front of each player, and they provide ongoing bonuses for the rest of the game – they may allow the player to place a bet in an occupied space or to bet after the NO MORE BETS announcement, etc. So let’s dive into how it plays and see if it’s worthy of a spot in your gaming collection. Gameplay Overview: In the best cases, you are rooting on a horse and hoping the dice roll your way. More often I found myself with bets all over the place and not entirely sure what outcome I really wanted to root for. Too often the fun, “stand up around the table” moments just failed to materialize. Final Thoughts: Besides the fact that each race plays out surprisingly differently (that’s how dice work…. go figure), the betting board is different every round as well. Along the top and bottom of the board, you’ll find Prop Bet Cards and Exotic Finish Cards. These feature bets such as “Horse 4 will finish ahead of horse 8” or “The top three horses will finish within a short distance of each other” and so on. Furthermore, players will gain a unique VIP card between each race that grants excitingly powerful benefits and abilities. There is just the right blend of board variety and asymmetric powers to satisfy our spoiled hobbyist appetites from one play to the next.
Just in the past year, I’ve enjoyed The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, Brian Boru, Ghosts of Christmas, Marshmallow Test, Cat in the Box, and now most recently 9 Lives. While 9 Lives is among the best looking games of this bunch, it saddens me to also admit that it might be among the weakest games of this lot. With higher player counts, participants only have four betting chits rather than five (for scaling). Ready Set Bet is, without a doubt, more manic the more players. Eight frantic hands all trying to bet at once is silly in the best possible way. Having played it with as few as three players, you will score more earnings with fewer people. I’d say in a heartbeat, though, that it was way more fun at a higher player count. A lot noisier, too… This isn’t one to play in a library, or if you have children sleeping upstairs! Watch Me Whip, Watch Me Clay-Clay But the best improvement of all is undoubtedly the three-pronged path to victory. No longer is the game simply about slapping together an engine and then seeing who can crank out the most points. The dynamics increase tremendously by offering players 3 possible ways to win: The combination of a fluid shared map of competitive area majorities and a rigid action restriction puzzle means that it’s hard to plan out your turn until it actually is your turn. And once it’s time to get planning, it may take a while to reconcile what you want to do with what you actually can do.
About Dale Yu
The VIP Cards are a brilliant mode, and I’d never play without these. At the end of each race, each player gains two VIP Cards, and gets to keep one for the rest of the game. There’s 32 VIP Cards, and they offer fantastic, fun variety. Each are personal boons that only apply to you for the rest of the races. Despite having decades of experience playing hundreds upon hundreds of different games—both digital and tabletop—I have never played a MOBA until very recently. I suppose I’ve gotten close with real-time strategy video games like Starcraft, Warcraft II, and Rise of Nations, but the difference is that MOBA games don’t feature things like building construction, resource collection, and army raising.
But we don’t all have Mr. Clair coming over to do the rolling for us. The app is serviceable if a little less exciting. If a player controls the horses and gets into the callouts and process it can be quite entertaining. The betting players each have 5 betting chips. At any time after the start of the race they can place one of their chips on the board on the horse they think will win. Each horse has slightly different odds to win and only one chip can be placed on each space, so payouts become worse as other players bet in front of you. Against all odds, Ready Set Bet manages to keep pace with the best racing horses of its genre and justify a place in my collection. I daresay it’s the top party game of 2022. But make no mistake, it truly requires a party to shine. At 3-5 players, I have no interest in playing this one over the much tighter Winner’s Circle. Meanwhile, Camel Up and Long Shot: The Dice Game maintain a much more consistent quality from their lowest to their highest player counts. Perhaps if Ready Set Bet had included a second side to its game board — one more condensed for 2-5 players — I’d feel much differently… It seems like a simple enough solution, and practically cost-free to create (aside from the extra development work). But at any rate, I’m plenty happy to save this one for when 6-9 players are gathered for a riotous time of gambling, groans, and glee. Where Marshmallow Test has a more satisfying arc, Cat in the Box and Ghosts of Christmas have more interesting twists, and The Crew provides a tighter experience, it seems that 9 Lives are too few to keep this one alive in my collection.
Repeat the process for 4 rounds. After the fourth and final race, players tabulate their winnings, and the player with the most money wins. As the race progresses, you’ll get a better sense of which bets might turn out good – but all of the spots might be gone! Thus, you’ll spend a lot of the game trying to divide your attention between watching the race while you try to watch the bet board as well as your opponents to see when they are thinking about trying to make a bet. It helps to have an animated race caller so that players might be able to follow the action by just listening, and then they can concentrate on other things to look at.
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