7 Wonders Duel: Pantheon

Pantheon is an expansion for 7 Wonders Duel. Allen came across this at Cash Converters in Singapore, and it was a fantastic deal, SGD3.00! That's less than MYR10.00. As a game buyer I’m thrilled about these great deals. At the same time as an indie publisher it’s a little sad to see slightly older games get the stock clearance treatment. I guess to view it positively it is a good thing that a game gets sold and it gets played. 

Pantheon brings gods to 7 Wonders Duel. There are three gods for each of the five ancient civilisations, and every game up to six may come into play. Each civilisation has a different strength, and their gods have powers in that specialty. For example Egyptian gods help you with wonders of the world. 

In Age 1, players have opportunities to choose which gods to bring into the game and where to place them at the pantheon. Where a god is placed on the board determines how expensive it is to summon them. The nearer they are to you, the cheaper they will be to you, which also means they will be more expensive for your opponent. Each god can only be summoned once per game, and they give powerful one-time abilities. 

When you pick up a brown-backed token, you get to choose a god to introduce to the game.

Five stacks of gods, and one gate.

Mesopotamian gods (green) help with science.

The original game board gets extended, adding a pantheon above it where five gods and one gate can be placed. 

There are new wonders and technologies related to gods. You also get some game components which are for specific gods. Guilds are replaced by grand temples. This aspect has become simpler than the base game. Guilds used to offer various ways to score bonus points. Grand temples are associated with gods of specific civilisations. If you have collected tokens of the corresponding civilisations earlier in the game, their grand temples are free to build. Otherwise you can still build them using your resources. There are at most three grand temples in a game. The more you build, the more points each will be worth. 

Grand temples

The red pawn is Minerva's shield. It prevents one military attack. 

Nisaba's snake copies an opponent's science icon. Copyright laws were not yet invented.

Pantheon adds some gameplay elements and offers more options. When you summon a god, you don’t take a card from the card structure. This can be important when you want to avoid letting your opponent take a certain card. The god powers are potent. They can give you a critical advantage. If you play the base game a lot, this is a nice expansion to give you some new content. It is not just more of the same. It brings in new elements. 

7 Wonders Dice

7 Wonders, first published in 2010, has now become a juggernaut of a franchise. The series has multiple expansions and spin offs. Some of the spin offs have different core mechanisms. They are different games, but they use the same theme and art style. The 2 player version of 7 Wonders has now been turned into a Lord of the Rings game. For the dice game version to get released only in 2025, 15 years after the original, is a little surprising. For many other successful franchises, the dice game version or the card game version would have been out much earlier. 

7 Wonders Dice is a roll-and-write game. Multiple dice are rolled every round, and you pick one to use. Everyone does this at the same time. Your choice does not affect other players. The same die can be used by multiple players. You normally use a die to tick one box on your player sheet, which represents constructing one section of a building. The game ends after any one player completes three buildings. The player sheets are the same, with two exceptions, your wonder of the world, and your university. Your wonder is in the top left corner, and it can be completed in only three steps. It is actually pretty easy to complete. You are not relying very much on other buildings to help you complete your wonder. Instead, it is your wonder which will help you complete other buildings or gain specific benefits. 

You roll the dice in a flat and wide box with a cover on, and you shake that box in a circular motion. This is because the box is divided into four sections, and depending on where a die is, the cost to use the die differs. The cost can be between 0 to 3 gold. If you can't afford any die, or if you are not willing to spend the money on what you can afford, you can choose to not use any die and collect 3 gold instead. 

The green building is the university. All the spaces on your sheet has a number below it. This number means how many resource types your nation needs to produce for you to be able to tick the space. If your nation does not produce enough, you can make up for the shortage by paying gold. This is why you need gold. At this particular university, the first spaces of the three rows mean (from top to bottom) the blue die becomes free for you, you earn 2 gold whenever you use the red die, and you get to tick your yellow building. Every player's university is different, and this nudges players in different directions. When you reach the third spaces at the three rows, they unlock an additional die - black, purple or white. The black die has faces for multiple buildings, so it gives you more flexibility. The purple and white dice are for two specific advanced buildings. 

You have two red buildings - garrisons - on the two sides of your sheet. You tick boxes representing offence and defence. Your garrisons are compared against those of your neighbours. If you tick offence boxes before your neighbours have any defences, you score more points. So here you have some player interaction. There isn't a lot in this game. You don't steal points from your opponents. It's just that they will be letting you score more if they don't put up defences. 

I played on BGA, and the convenience of doing so is a problem. It's not the website's fault. It's mine. Every turn the system highlights all the valid spots I can tick and indicates the cost. As a result I don't think much and just click. This is not a good thing. In the first game I played, I decided to be thrifty. I mostly chose to use dice which were free. Sometimes I chose to increase resource production even when it wasn't free, because having more resource types would help reduce costs in future. I later realised that this wasn't a good policy. I was reactive and I didn't really have a clear strategy. I wasn't building up any strong advantage. 

Those coin icons along the bottom of the player sheet are for recording your gold. When you earn gold, you circle coins. When you spend gold, you fill in the circles. A game starts with 7 coins circled, which means you start with 7 gold. If you look at the screenshot above (I'm at the top), I rarely earn or spend gold, much less than all my opponents. 

Being insistent on saving money greatly constrained me. I had little consistency when constructing buildings. I had no coherent strategy. Well, other than being thrifty, which I later realised was not a good strategy. I should have been more deliberate in planning which buildings and which strengths to leverage. I needed to focus on specific areas. Only with focus you can gain a stronger advantage. 

In my second game, I chose to focus first on completing my wonder. My wonder helped me with resource production, and when I completed my wonder (which was also considered a building), I gained the bonus for a completed building. I realise that there is a sense of urgency in this game. You really should not waste any turn. You want to watch your opponents' progress so that you don't get caught unprepared when the game ends. Or look at it this way, if you are quicker in completing buildings, you have the advantage of being able to end the game when the time best fits you. That's a powerful thing. The decision you make every turn looks simple, but you actually need to put some thought into it if you want to play well and play more strategically. 

Player interaction is low in 7 Wonders Dice. It almost feels like a solo game. Among roll-and-write games, it's about mid-weight. Although the player sheets do differ, so far it doesn't seem to make a huge difference. Maybe I have not grasped this aspect well yet. For me the game is decent but not spectacular. However there is something instinctive that I enjoy about it which I can't fully explain. I think I enjoy the options I am given, and I enjoy the sense of progress. 

7 Wonders: Architects

The Game

7 Wonders is hugely successful. It has spawned multiple expansions and spin-offs, and has now grown into a large game series. I recently learned that one of the latest spin-offs, 7 Wonders: Architect was made available on boardgamearena.com, so I asked Allen and Han to try it out with me. When I read the rules, I found many familiar elements. It was almost like a simpler version of 7 Wonders. It also has a bit of 7 Wonders: Duel. 

At game setup, every player is assigned one wonder of the world to build. Each wonder is built in 5 stages. Once any player completes his wonder, the game ends. The players are meant to sit in a circle around a table. There is a stack of face-up cards between every pair of players, and a stack of face-down cards at the centre of the table. On boardgamearena.com this is presented as seen in the screenshot above. 

On your turn you do just one thing - pick a card. You pick from one of the face-up stacks next to you, or from the face-down stack at the centre of the table. There are five different types of cards in the game, and they do different things. The grey and yellow cards are resources which you use for building your wonder. Whenever you have enough resources to build one stage of your wonder, you must do so. Whenever you build a stage, you get points and sometimes some bonus. Blue cards let you immediately score points. Green cards come with science icons, which you collect to exchange for techs. Some techs give you special abilities, some score points. 

Some blue cards come with a cat icon. If you claim such a card, you take the cat statue as well. With control of the cat you get to peek at the top card of the central deck. You are no longer blind drawing from the deck. This is handy. 

There are many techs. Each time one is claimed, the pool is replenished. If you don't like any of the three turned face-up, you can blind draw from the face-down stack. 

Red cards are military cards. You claim them to increase your military prowess. Some red cards come with battle horn icons. Horns cause the war status markers at the top left to flip from white to red side.  When all status markers are red, war breaks out. You compare your military strength with both your neighbours, and score a battle victory marker for each neighbour your are stronger than. These victory markers are worth 3VP each. If you are stronger than both neighbours, that's 6VP, which is pretty attractive. 

What I find interesting in the military aspect is after every war all military cards with horns are discarded. This means warmongering players who trigger fighting will lose strength after the fight they start. This is clever. 

The Play

7 Wonders: Architects is a smooth and quick game. On your turn you just pick one card. Players are competing over cards. When there's a card which both players want, it's first come first served. It may seem that the player earlier in turn order has an advantage, but after this player claims a card that his neighbour also wants, the next card may be an even more attractive one. 

Generally there are two types of tricky situations. The first one is when you like both the cards next to you and don't know how to choose. When you pick one, the other may no longer be around by your next turn. If you know one of them is not attractive to your neighbour on that side, then maybe you can risk taking the other card. Hopefully the card you want will still be around next turn. The other tricky situation is when both the cards are lousy. Not that they are inherently bad cards. It's just that some cards don't fit your current needs. When both are bad, you probably want to blind draw from the central deck, trying your luck. However it is not good to be forever stuck with two cards you don't want. If neither neighbour takes those cards, you may have to suck it up and take one, and hope that the next cards in the stack are useful to you. 

When you draw from the central deck, sometimes you get pleasant surprises, which is nice. However you have to remember you are putting your fate in the hands of luck when you blind draw. It may not be a wise thing to do. The cat feels powerful. When you have complete information, you make better decisions. I suspect the cat feels more powerful than it actually is. I'm a little OCD so uncertainty when making decisions irks me. That is why the cat feels so important to me. 

You have to pay attention to what cards your neighbours want and do not want. By doing so you can assess the risk of them taking what you want. Sometimes you have to take cards which are not important to you but are crucial to them. Yes, you have to be a jerk and hurt them even when it doesn't bring you much benefit. 

In the game there are four aspects you are weighing - collecting resources to build your wonder, directly earning points, obtaining techs for the special abilities (and victory points), and warfare. Direct scoring is a little boring, but points are points. They are not bad, just not interesting. Building one stage of your wonder takes patience and preparation, but the benefit whenever you complete a stage is rewarding. I feel it is better to take techs early, especially those which give you bonus abilities. By taking them early you get to use them more. If you get a victory point tech early, it is also useful because you have more time to adjust your play to fulfil the scoring criterion better. The warfare aspect is of higher uncertainty and it is exciting. If war breaks out often, the regular winner can get a huge lead. If there aren't many wars, investing in your military seems wasteful. Whether there are many wars somewhat depends on whether players aggressively take military cards. It also depends on how the military cards are positioned in the decks. If many military cards are near the top of the decks, you can't really avoid multiple wars. 

This is an open information game. You can see what everyone is doing and you can guess what they intend to do. You can think deep if you want to. You generally only need to consider your two neighbours. Players sitting further away don't affect you a lot. You won't affect them much either. This is very much like the original 7 Wonders. It simplifies a 7-player game by allowing you to worry mostly about just your immediate neighbours. However 7 Wonders: Architects is a turn-by-turn game and not a simultaneous turn game like its predecessor. 

The wonders of the world have different characteristics and these affect how you play. On the left, Allen had built the left foot of the Colossus of Rhodes, which gave him a military strength of 2. This immediately gave him a huge advantage and encouraged him to pursue war. 

I was first to complete my wonder - the Lighthouse of Alexandria (centre), but completing your wonder does not guarantee winning the game. I only managed second place. Han's Hanging Gardens on the right gave him techs, so he focused on collecting techs. 

Since the game was quick, we immediately played another game. This time Han was first to complete his wonder - the Statue of Zeus. 

The Thoughts

When I first heard of 7 Wonders: Architects I wondered whether it was a totally unrelated game with the theme pasted on to help sell it. After all the 7 Wonders series is well known. Now that I have played it, I can confirm it is quite different from the original, but it fits the setting splendidly. It is simpler, but it is not a streamlined version of the original. It is its own game, with a different core. 

7 Wonders: Architects is a light game suitable for families and casual players. It is easy to learn but still has some strategy. It looks simple but it presents some interesting decisions. There is a fair bit of luck. You don't know what cards will turn up. For a short game like this luck is not a big issue. In fact I think it works well here because it creates excitement and surprises. 

7 Wonders: Armada

Plays: 7Px1.

The Game

7 Wonders is a successful game, having spawned many expansions, big and small. I have played some of the expansions but not all. Armada is one of the bigger expansions. It adds a naval aspect to the game, and increases player interaction in a few ways.

Everyone gets a dockyard board like this. You have four ships in four colours. Every time you construct a building or a stage of your wonder, you may also move a ship of the corresponding colour by paying extra resources. E.g. when you construct a red military building, you may move the red ship. The cost of moving the ship is printed on the dockyard board. Most of the time when you move a ship, you gain some benefit, as printed on the dockyard board too. E.g. the green ship lets you draw some island cards (see photo above) and claim one. Island cards come with various benefits.

The red ship increases your naval strength, which is a new game element. You now have not only army (military) strength but also naval strength. Unlike army strength, naval strength is compared among all players at the end of every era. The few who are strongest score points, and the weakest loses points. You are not just comparing with left and right neighbours.

The yellow ship increases your commerce level and also triggers taxation. Whenever taxation occurs, players with lower commerce levels than the player triggering taxation loses money. So this is a form of high commerce level players bullying low commerce level players. There is another side of the coin - piracy. Some cards trigger piracy, and piracy hurts players with high commerce levels.

The blue ship gives you points, just like the blue prestige buildings in the base game.

The Armada expansion comes with some new cards. You'll be playing 7 instead of 6 turns every round. Many of the new cards are related to the new naval element. Some cards let you interact with players other than your immediate left and right neighbours. You can buy resources cheaply from players who are sitting further away. You get to compare army strength with them too. Naturally you want to do the latter only when you are stronger or expect to be stronger than them.

One small change is the purple guild cards now score at most 10 points. I am guessing after introducing the new game elements some guilds can be overpowered, thus the need to set a limit.

The Play

I did a full 7-player game. If you have an 8th wonder from other expansions, you can play an 8-player game. The rulebook also comes with a team variant, where you can play in teams of two players sitting together. I have not tried this yet.

In the early game, I emphasised buildings which produced resources. I wanted to make sure I could build all three stages of my wonder. Investing in resource buildings early makes construction easier later. I noticed that no one spent much effort in constructing science buildings, so I decided I was going to be the science guy. See all those green science buildings I already had at this point. In this game the decision-making was fast and almost brainless for me. Most of the time, the moment I received the hand of cards from my neighbour, I already knew which card was best. Usually it was the science card. I didn't want to be distracted by blue prestige buildings or red military buildings. There was much thumb-twiddling for me waiting for others to decide.

I had two big problems. Firstly, I wasted many opportunities to sail my ships. Very often I was short of resources or money. This meant I missed out on many of the benefits on the dockyard board, or I got them later than I would have liked. The other problem was commerce level. I was behind most of the others, which meant I suffered much from taxation. I contributed much to the government and the pirates. I completely neglected military - both my army and my navy. I did have to lose points because of that, but it was not too painful.

My green science ship helped me discover this foggy island. Once I had this island, I was no longer affected by taxation or piracy. I just wished I had it earlier. I would have saved much money, which in turn probably meant I could afford to buy resources to sail my ships more often.

I fared poorly in sailing. My red and blue ships never moved. Green and yellow had only moved two steps each at this point. At the bottom of the yellow column you can see the pyramid icon. This means whenever I build one stage of my wonder, I get an opportunity to pay to sail my yellow ship. On different dockyard boards the pyramid icon appears in different columns.

This was my nation at the end of the game. My green ship had reached the end of the track, which was expected, since I was the science guy. Science gave me many points. The two purple guilds too. However my total score was mediocre compared to others. The penalties due to weak military was just one factor. I think the bigger problem was how I missed out on many opportunities to sail, and it had a cascading effect. I had played two yellow cards, and built all three stages of my wonder. If I had not missed any sailing opportunity for the yellow ship, it would be at at least the fifth step.

If you look at the top three green science cards, they have a new icon not seen in the base game. This new icon means it becomes the science icon which you already have the most of. It is not exactly a joker and you don't get to choose what science icon it becomes.

The Thoughts

The Armada expansion adds player interaction. You now need to compete in naval strength. You may interact with players sitting further away from you. Taxation and piracy affect everyone. In the base game, most of the player interaction is with your immediate neighbours. That was a basic design principle when the base game was designed - to make a 7 player game move briskly, don't overwhelm a player by requiring him to study closely what all the other six players are doing. Armada changes direction somewhat. The impact on player interaction is more obvious when you play with a high player count. If you only play with 3 or 4, these changes don't come into play or don't matter much. So I see Armada as mostly meant for playing with 5 to 7 players.

Armada adds complexity. It's not suitable for players new to the game. I think there will be too much to digest. I think 7 Wonders is a perfectly complete game and it plays fine without any expansion. Expansions do spice it up a bit and create same variability, but are not essential. You want expansions only if you play the base game heavily and want to get more life out of it.

7 Wonders: Duel

Plays: 2Px2.

7 Wonders: Duel was my birthday present this year. When it was first released, the reviews were generally positive. I had a rough idea how the game worked, but did not proactively seek it out to play. I would happily give it a try if I the opportunity arose. I don't often play 2-player-only games nowadays. My wife doesn't play boardgames much now, and when I go for boardgaming sessions, we usually play 3- to 5- player games. However as the award nominations and award wins started coming in for 7 Wonders: Duel, I became very curious and decided to buy a copy.

The Game

Game setup is done like this photo above. The photo was taken when this particular game was at the start of Age 2. A game consists of three Ages. Each Age has its own deck of cards. At the start of every Age, the cards are laid out in a specific pattern (see left side of photo). There is a mix of face-up and face-down cards, and most cards are partially covered by other cards. Cards which are not covered by others are available to be claimed by the players. When a card is claimed, others may become available. When a face-down card is freed up this way, it is turned face-up.

The small game board on the right serves two purposes. The green science tokens are placed here. During the game, whenever you manage to collect a pair of identical science symbols, you get to claim one of these science tokens. This means discovering a new technology. It gives you some benefit. The other purpose of the board is to track the relative military strengths of the players. Whenever you increase your military strength, you push the military marker towards your opponent's side of the board. If you manage to push the marker all the way to the end, you immediately win a military victory.

On the right side, each player has four large cards. These are wonders of the world they can build. Each of them requires certain resources to build, and when built, they give some benefits.

A closer look at some of the wonders of the world - required resources on the left, benefits on the right.

The premise of the game is you are building your own civilisation while competing with your opponent. A turn is very simple. You take a card from the card structure in the middle of the table. Each card is a building. You can choose to construct the card you take, adding it to the play area before you, as long as your nation produces the required resources, or you can afford to buy what you're short of. If you are unable to or choose not to construct the building, you have two other options. You can discard the card to make money. How much you make depends on how many commercial buildings you have in your civilisation. You can also discard the card to complete a wonder of the world. A wonder usually requires more resources to construct than regular buildings, but it also gives more benefits. One big difference with 7 Wonders is wonders only take one turn to complete, not three. However you get to build up to four wonders, not just one.

There are three possible ways for the game to end. The normal end condition is getting to the end of Age 3. You determine victory by scoring points, from your buildings, wonders, military strength and also for money left in hand. The two other game end conditions are both sudden death conditions. I've covered the military victory above. The other instant win condition is the science victory. If you collect 6 different science symbols, you win immediately. This is interesting because it is in conflict with scientific discovery. To make scientific discoveries you want to collect pairs of matching symbols; but for the science victory you are going for different symbols. This pulls you in opposite directions.

Cards from Age 3 are arranged this way. Each Age has a different layout. Face-up cards allow players to plan ahead, while face-down cards maintain some suspense and randomness. At the start of every game, some cards are removed from all three Age decks, so every game will be slightly different. You won't know which cards are missing initially because of the face-down cards.

It is best to arrange your buildings this way. Brown and grey buildings produce resources. Yellow buildings are commercial buildings. Some produce resources. Some provide benefits like buying certain resources at a fixed low price, as opposed to the price being determined by the production level of your opponent. Blue buildings are prestige buildings which give victory points. One building type which I don't have yet is the green ones, the science buildings. Some buildings allow you to build another for free. This is the same type of chaining as in 7 Wonders.

The Play

7 Wonders: Duel plays very briskly. Every turn is simple, and before you realise it the game is coming to an end. Yet you still have the satisfaction of building up your civilisation one step at a time. You try to collect buildings that complement and combine well with one another. This is very much a tableau game like Race for the Galaxy. There are many broad stroke strategies you can pursue, and you can pursue multiple strategies concurrently, with different levels of emphasis, and adjusting your emphasis depending on how the game situation changes. You can work on victory points. You can go military. You can threaten a science victory. You can go for scientific discoveries, which is a different thing from the science victory. You can be an industrious resource producer. You can be a great trader. There is no lack of goals to work towards. However you need to remember to pay attention to what your opponent is doing. This being a two-player-only game means it's a zero sum game.

Sometimes you do need to slow down and think a few turns ahead, especially when there is a card which you want badly. You want to work out a specific sequence of claiming cards to ensure that card is freed up on your turn. Some wonders give you an extra turn, and this can be crucial for securing a card you desperately want. The card drafting mechanism in 7 Wonders has been replaced with this card selection mechanism, and I must say it works well. It is simple and effective.

I have played two games against my wife Michelle. In both game she went for the science victory, while I focused on VP buildings. In the first game she misunderstood the resource and cost requirements for constructing buildings. She thought she couldn't afford to build, when she actually could. Needless to say, her tempo was severely impacted, and I cruised to a comfortable win by VP. In our second game, her science victory proved unstoppable. In hindsight, I should have competed with her from much earlier on. By the time I realised the danger, it was already too late. In that game one of the technologies available was a 7th science symbol. Even if I managed to stop her from collecting the 6th science symbol from buildings, I would not be able to stop her from collecting a pair of matching science symbols and then take the 7th special science symbol to win. I realised that seeing this 7th science symbol in play is already a warning sign - watch out for the science victory! It's also a cue to seriously consider going for a science victory yourself.

Michelle found the game quite enjoyable.

Among the three face-down cards in the second row, the colour of the card in the middle is slightly different. This is not a misprint. That card is a guild card, a special type of card which gives victory points depending on a specific criteria. In earlier versions of 7 Wonders, there was a problem with some Age 3 card backs, which are purple in colour. In the printing industry, purple is a difficult colour to get right.

The Thoughts

My one word review of 7 Wonders: Duel is: pleasant. It's not particularly amazing or groundbreaking, but playing it is soothing, like having a warm drink on a chilly day. It plays smoothly. You are taking baby steps to build something big. You don't have too much to think about on your turn, since there aren't all that many immediate choices. However you still keep in mind the general directions you are heading towards. That said, it is a head-to-head game. Your loss is my win. I am not surprised to read many comments that this game is more confrontational than its predecessor. It is not destructive though. You don't go about burning your opponent's buildings. I think only one or two wonders allow such a thing. Military actions allow you to rob your opponent, but you get to do this at most twice in the whole game. So generally this is still a game of building up, not of tearing down.

One player compiled some statistics, and found that about 50% of games are won by victory points, 25% by science, and 25% by military. That surprises me a little. I had expected both the instant victories to be rarer. I thought these two victory conditions would be mainly tools to distract and to force your opponent's hand, something like the temple connection victory condition in Attika. I am pleased that they are more than that.

7 Wonders 2-player game

Plays (2-player variant): 2.

One reason that I bought 7 Wonders was I read that it was good even as a 2-player game. The 2-player game is a variant, and the rulebook says that this should only be attempted by experienced players. There are additional rules. There is a dummy 3rd player that both players take turns to manage. It is a little different from the standard game, which I have written about here.

The 2-player game is set up like a 3-player game. The dummy player's cards form a draw deck. The human players take turns to play for the dummy player. If it is your turn to do so, you draw a card from the dummy player's draw deck (so that your hand size will be one more than normal), and you pick one card each for both yourself and the dummy player. Once a turn is completed, the human players swap their hands.

Controlling the dummy player is very handy. You can use it to build / discard / bury cards that your opponent wants. You can make it buy stuff from you and pay you lots of money. You can make it militarily stronger than your opponent to penalise him. Naturally, your opponent will try to do the same to you. With this variant, there is more to think about and to consider, and the game slows down a little because of it. The game becomes more complex. There are more things you can manipulate.

The rightmost card in my hand is the dummy player reminder card. Whoever is holding the card must pick two cards, one for himself and one for the dummy player. In the background you can see a card with the Great Wall of China on it. This is for remembering which player should start with the dummy player card in each Age.

I personally prefer to play with more players, because I enjoy playing 7 Wonders at a quicker pace, and I find that having to manage the dummy player's civilisations is a little distracting. So 7 Wonders probably won't be a game I'll pick when I play with my wife. The 2-player game adds another layer of strategy and the game does work. So it's worth a try if you like the game, but it will be easier if you have already played a 3+ player game. Michelle didn't want to bother with a 3+ player learning game and jumped straight in. She actually beat me in our first game. So the game is not hard, just not as brisk as the normal game.

---

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

---

7 Wonders

Plays: 6Px1.

7 Wonders is one of the big hits of 2010, selling out its first printing quickly and rising to the top 20 at www.boardgamegeek.com like a rocket. The game is so popular that there isn't much about it that hasn't already been written somewhere else. So, I shall try to be brief.

The Game

7 Wonders is a card game with a civilisation theme. It is divided into 3 ages, and in each age everyone draws 7 cards, picks 1, and passes the rest to a neighbour. You pick 1 card from what you receive from your neighbour, and repeat the process until you have claimed 6 cards this age.

Cards can be buildings that you build, or they can be used to build 1 of the 3 stages of your wonder, or they can be discarded to earn money. Buildings give various benefits, e.g. producing resources, giving military strength, contributing to science, allowing you to build other buildings for free (some buildings require resources to be built). The many different buildings help you build your civilisation. They are your civilisation. Ultimately, they help you score points, some directly, some not.

The cards are beautifully illustrated. Mostly icons are used and not text.

In essence it's a game of choosing cards. You manage the direction of your civilisation as you make these choices. You manage money and resources.

One design objective of the game is to allow 7 people to play within a short time. This is achieved by having everyone pick cards simultaneously. Also you only directly interact with your neighbours, e.g. comparing military superiority, trading.

The Play

I played a 6-player game with mostly newbies at Old Town Kopitiam Cheras. It took 45 minutes including rules explanation. The game indeed moved very fast. Pick a card and pass the rest. How long can that take?

Military is a funny aspect. It's a game of neighbour-envy. Once someone starts developing military, his neighbours will feel the pressure to do the same. Once they too do that, their next neighbours will feel the pressure too. Domino effect. Jimmy sat between Jeff and I, and once Jeff started developing military, an arms race began.

Watching what others are doing is important. You should deny your opponents good cards, not just the immediate neighbours but also opponents further away.

My wonder was the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Each stage of the wonder required different resources to build and provided some benefits. When we played, everyone who had picked his card put it on his wonder board, and once everyone had done so, we turned over our selected cards simultaneously and built / used it.

Henry and Allen.

The game does take up quite a bit of space, but I think it is the right decision to make the cards big, because it will be easier to see what neighbours further away are doing.

Henry made an indecent amount of money, partly helped by Allen who bought a lot of stuff from him. Henry depleted the gold ($3) coins from the supply, and his stack of coins was as impressive as the Tower of Babel. He eventually won the game. I was happy to come second. I produced many resources which let me build some high-scoring buildings. Military also scored me some points.

I need to thank Kareem for bringing and teaching the game. I have been wanting to try 7 Wonders for a long time.

My civilisation at game end. I had completed my wonder (see those three Age I, II and II cards underneath). The red and grey numbered tokens on my board are military tokens. You earn 1, 3, 5pts for being stronger than your neighbours in Ages I to III, and lose -1pts for being weaker. I was stronger than one neighbour and tied with the other in Age I; stronger than both in Age II; and stronger than one but weaker than the other in Age III.

The Thoughts

I like it enough to pre-order it. I don't often have big groups, but the game is supposed to be best with 3 or 4 (and I often have 3-player sessions) and also I'm hoping the 2-player variant will work well with my wife and I.

7 Wonders has a constant flow of decisions. There is luck in how the cards come up, e.g. bad luck if two cards you want badly are in the same group because you can only pick one. However you have interesting decisions to make most of the time. You need to decide between picking a card good for yourself or picking a card for the sake of denying an opponent. You need to decide which strategy to pursue when two (or more!) are presented to you.

Despite the simplicity, I feel the game has strong theme - managing resources, the military arms race, the unique wonders, the tech tree aspect of some cards making other cards free. There are many different aspects to growing a civilisation, and many of them are represented in this game, despite some being in a fairly abstract way.

This is an adjustable-depth game. You can decide to play it with minimal thinking, just focusing on what cards you want to collect. You can do in-depth analysis, trying to guess each player's intentions, checking everyone's cards to count what are still in circulation. Also, this game satisfies the card combo itch. You try to collect cards that work well with your wonder and with your chosen strategy, or you switch strategy to make your cards work. It's all about collecting a set of coherent cards.