It's a Wonderful World

I have played the other game in the series, It’s a Wonderful Kingdom, which is also a card drafting and tableau building game. That is for two players only. It's a Wonderful World can support more than two. I find both to be rather generic games about constructing buildings to produce resources and then using those resources to construct more buildings. However, there is one aspect which I do enjoy and I find it quite clever.

In It's a Wonderful World, the drafting is simple. You get a hand of cards, and you must select one, then pass the rest to your neighbour. This repeats several times. Once the drafting is done, you’ll have a hand of cards and you need to decide what to do with them. You either place them as buildings to start construction work on, or discard them to gain a resource, which can then be used for constructing buildings. Buildings require different quantities and types of building materials to complete. Some may need as low as just two resources, some can require seven.

Buildings once completed usually produce resources for you every round. Some buildings also give you victory points. The interesting part of the game is how resources are produced. The are five resource types, and they are produced in five separate steps. When you produce the first resource type, you can immediately use these resources to construct buildings. If a building you complete produces the second resource type, then you are lucky. You are just in time to produce that in the current round. This is a fun puzzle to figure out. If you can get the right buildings completed just before the specific production steps, you can get a lot more done. 

There is competition to be the biggest producer in each of the five resource types. When you are the biggest producer, you gain a leader. In this game, a leader is just another resource type, which is worth one point each at the end of the game. No fancy powers. However, some buildings use these as building material, and some buildings give you more points based on your leaders. 

Everyone starts the game being able to produce some resources every round. From these humble beginnings, you need to plan how to grow your empire, and which kind of resources you want to produce more of. Some resources are harder to produce than others. You do need to deliberately plan how to expand your production and which resource types to prioritise. Different resource types will give you access to different types of buildings. The game involves a lot of planning ahead. You want to fully utilise the resources you can produce to construct buildings that either get you points or help you produce even more resources.

I prefer It's a Wonderful World to It's a Wonderful Kingdom. I like the simplicity. It captures the fun of planning your resource production. In It's a Wonderful Kingdom, I did not like the traps and needing to guess whether your opponent has set a trap. It felt rather arbitrary. It's a Wonderful World is a cleaner design.