Split Decision

In my experience, one of the toughest "needles to thread" in board game design is to accommodate a large number of players without being a "party game." I have nothing against a good party game for a group of 6 or more, but sometimes I'm looking for something with a little more strategic meat on the bone -- and I don't want to be playing it for hours and hours (or be waiting for what feels like "hours and hours" between each of my turns).

I've occasionally found games that fit that specific set of criteria, and now I've found another: The Great Split. This is collection game built around one of the first game mechanics many people are exposed to as a child: "I cut the pie, you choose which slice you want."

In the game, players track their progress on a personal board as they amass rare books, artwork, precious jewels, gold, and "certificates" (of authenticity?). Alright... let me say right out of the gate that strong theme is not a virtue of this game. This is what's known by gamers (often pejoratively) as a "point salad" in which points come this way, that way, or the other... but all sort of nebulously add up into a competitive score in the end. If you need a strong thematic element in a board game, you're probably going to bounce hard off of this one.

Still, if you can accept a threadbare game "story," there's just enough nuance in the point salad of The Great Split to make it interesting. Books, artwork, and jewels all have different methods of scoring. Gold is essentially a track for helping you boost your other collection goals. And certificates are a kind of endgame scoring that keeps you from chasing just one goal too much to the exclusion of everything else -- you have to at least juggle a couple of considerations.

The game is played over 6 rounds, and the process of each round is quite straightforward. You're looking at a hand of cards with different icons corresponding to the different collection tracks. You divide this hand into two (equal or unequal in card count -- that's your choice), then insert a "splitter" card to separate your groups. You pass that to the player on your left, and they choose which group to keep, leaving you with the other. Meanwhile, you'll choose from the split offered by the player on your right, ultimately collecting two different "half hands" to make the full hand you'll play that round. You move up on various scoring tracks for each of the icons on the cards you end up with.

The challenge is in forming your own split offer. Do you try to make both groups as equal in appeal as you can? How much do you try to account for what it looks like the player on your left is collecting? Do you try to put a thumb on the scales and create an offer too irresistible for your opponent to refuse (leaving you with the other offer that you truly want)? What if you get that analysis wrong; will you truly be able to make progress of your own no matter which half-hand your opponent gives back? The mechanic is simple enough, but the ramifications are satisfyingly deep.

Here again, the fact that it's a theme-light "point salad" game might drag on your experience a little. There are several viable routes to victory here. The first game of The Great Split I ever played saw 5 players finish all within a 7-point spread of each other (ranging from 134 to 127 points), and I admit that this left me wondering if any of the choices we had made actually mattered that much. (Did all roads just lead to a respectable score?) Subsequent replays have relaxed that concern for me, as I've seen things like a wider spread of scores, interesting "gluts" of one icon type in one area of the table, and the randomized order of scoring all subtly affecting the arc of the game.

And oh yes, there have been subsequent plays. This game has gone over great in my extended gaming group -- who like me longs for options when we all gather once a month. The Great Split takes up to 7, and the simultaneous play ensures that it doesn't take that much longer to play even at the maximum player count. And in the 45 minutes it takes, you get to make a pretty satisfying number of sometimes difficult choices.

I'd give The Great Split a B+. I could wish for it to have a little more thematic resonance, a few more strategic options, and so forth... but I'm pretty sure that any such tweaks to its design would compromise the things about it that make it perfectly fit its niche: a quick non-party game for a large group. If that sounds like something your gaming group needs, you should check it out.