7 Wonders is an approachable, mid- to light-weight card-drafting game. What does this mean? Read on!
Rules
The game is played over the course of three “ages”. In each age, players are dealt a hand of 7 cards. The players then simultaneously choose a card from their hand, reveals the selected card at the same time as everyone else, pays the costs (if any), and plays the card on their personal tableau in front of them. Players then pass their hand of cards to a neighbor and repeat the process until there are no more cards.
Many cards have resource requirements a player must meet in order to play them. These resources can be generated from the player’s civilization (consisting of cards he has already played in front of him), or players can buy resources from their immediate neighbors (players to the left and right) – provided those neighbors actually produced the desired resources. Some cards, thematically represented as trading posts, reduce the cost of buying such resources from neighbors.
Some cards can be played for free if the player has already played the necessary prerequisite card in a previous age. (For example, playing an Altar in the first age would let you play the Temple in the second age for free instead of paying its resource cost, and the Temple in turn would let you play the Pantheon in the third age for free – each of these being worth progressively more points.) In this way, the game rewards players for following a long-term strategy.
There are also cards which provide military strength. At the end of each age, players compare their military strength with that of their immediate neighbors. The winner gains a number of points (1 point in the first age, 3 in the second, and 5 in the third), whereas the loser loses just 1 point regardless of the age.
Instead of playing a card face-up for its benefits, players can also choose to draft a card and play it face-down as a stage of their wonder. In doing so, the player ignores the cost on the card and instead pays the cost shown on his player board. Each civilization’s board is different, and each stage of a wonder provides some benefit to the player. Most offer victory points at the end of the game, but many also provide other benefits during the game, such as resources, military strength, the ability to play a card for free, and so on.
Opinion: The Positives
There are a number of things we like about 7 Wonders:
- The game is easily taught to new players yet also has strategic depth for experienced players. This is a game that even “non-gamers” can pick up and enjoy on the first playthrough.
- There are a good number of decisions for the short playtime. Typical games in our group take 30-45 minutes, and while this is by no means a brain-burner, there are a lot of opportunities for meaningful decisions. To excel at 7 Wonders requires both tactical thinking (reacting to which cards are available in your hand to draft) as well as strategic direction, because certain paths to victory reward long-term commitment. For instance, science cards (of which there are three types) are scored in two ways: the number of science cards of the same type squared (so 4 “gear icon” science cards gets you 16 points) as well as 7 points for each set of all three science icons you have. This can add up to the bulk of your score, so it pays to be thinking and planning ahead even from the beginning of the game.
- Player interaction is balanced. The three main ways to interact with other players in 7 Wonders are buying resources, fighting militarily, and of course the card drafting itself. The nice twist to this game is that the negative side effects of interaction are minimized. In the case of trading, buying a resource from another player does not prevent him from using that same resource in the same turn. (Thematically, this makes no sense, but it works very well in the game.) For military defeats, the losing player does lose a point but that’s usually a fairly minor setback over the course of the game. This is by no means a “take-that” kind of game, but it’s also very important to pay attention to your neighbors and which cards you’re passing along for them to draft.
- The game is friendly to parents of young kids. That is to say, 7 Wonders is easy to momentarily pause and resume if a child needs attention, because the game state is always clear and it doesn’t require a lot of mental immersion.
- Most games end up fairly close, and it’s not always obvious who will win. Ocassionally we do see a runaway victory with one player winning by 20 points, but that is rare. On more than one occasion, our 4 players have had a total point spread of only 5 or less.
- The game scales well to multiple player counts. I don’t recommend it as a 2-player game (though a variant exists), but for all other players it scales well – you add or remove cards from the age decks based on the number of players.
Opinion: The Negatives
- A few of the wonders’ special ability icons are obtuse. There are two or three icons on certain wonders which we virtually always have to look up in the rulebook. Once we look up the rule to find out what the ability is, we can look at the icon and say “oh, yeah…I see why they came up with that picture”, but it’s not intuitive. (I’m looking at you, play-from-the-discard-pile and play-a-card-for-free abilities!) However, most of the iconography is excellent and this is a minor flaw.
I have a hard time coming up with negatives for 7 Wonders based on what it is. If you don’t enjoy card drafting, you won’t like this game. If you want direct take-that player interaction, this isn’t the game for you. If you want a heavy, meaty, strategic game, look elsewhere.
Conclusion
This game neatly fills a niche of having a game that’s teachable in a single play yet has enough depth to keep strategic gamers interested and involved. Thanks to the short playtime, it’s also rare this one gets only a single play once we pull it out of the closet.
7 Wonders gets a solid thumbs-up from the Winckler household!