F$@& 7 Wonders

7 Wonders

Plot:   You control an Ancient society, Rhodes, Ghaza, Alexandria and so on.  Build the bestest country in the world!

Goal:  It's a game about victory points.  You get victory points with a multitude of cards, more on that in the mechanics phase.

 Mechanics:  The game starts with each player drawing a civilization.  These civilizations each supply a resource and have a 'Wonders' track.  These wonders cost resources and grant a benefit upon completion.  Most of the time, victory points, but quite often some other benefit.  A round starts with each player getting a hand of 7 cards, selecting one to play and then passing the remainder to your neighbor.  The direction of the pass changes from round to round (three rounds total).  Keep doing this with the hand passed to you until there is one card left, and that gets discarded into the center.  Many of these cards cost resources, which you need to have previously played or purchase from an adjacent neighbor.   Oh yeah, this is important.  Only one specific card can be played in your tableau.  For example if you already have one Glass Works, you can not play the second.  Also, some cards by themselves unlock follow up cards.  Which means that the resource cost is ignored as long as unlocking card was previously paid.

Cards are color coded for easy recognition.

Brown cards are 'basic' resources.  These may require money to purchase but will never require resources to purchase.   These are also only available in the first two rounds.  After playing them, you now have that resource type available for further purchases.

Gray cards are 'manufactured' resources.  These never require resources or gold to play and now supply the manufactured resource type.  Like brown cards, no gray card will appear in the 3rd round, plan accordingly.


Red cards are military.  At the end of a round, compare your military with your adjacent neighbors.  A tie gets you no points, losing gets you -1 VP and winning gets you 1 VP in round 1, 3 VP in round 2 and 5 VP in round 3.  So losing the battle isn't a big deal, but winning battles all 3 rounds can be really good.  Some, but not many red cards are unlocked by previous plays.

 Green cards are science.  Each science card has one of three symbols and scores in 2 different ways.   I can describe the symbols but don't have names for them so substituting $, %, and & for the examples.  Deal with it.  Duplicates of the same symbols score at N^2, or 1$ gets you 1 VP and 3$ gets you 9.  A set of all 3 symbols, one each of  $, % and & gets 7 points.  Therefore, green cards can be awesome or they completely suck, there's not too much middle ground.    Quite a few green cards are unlocked by previous plays.

Blue cards are solely victory points, usually themed as arena's or courthouses or something.  The prerequisite-unlock system really comes into play with these blue cards.  All but one card in the first two rounds (never play the lowly pawn shop...) unlocks a follow up card.  While not quite as all or nothing as green cards, to really get going on a blue card strategy requires early plays.

Gold cards are economically themed cards.  They either earn you money, provide resources for free, or make trading with your neighbors cheaper.  A few gold cards are unlocked by previous buys.

Purple cards are guild cards and are only available in the 3rd round.   These are pure VP cards and are never unlocked with previous buys.   There worth is variable, like count up your neighbors blue cards and get that many VPs.

In addition to these cards, two generic plays occur.  You can play a card face down under your starting civilization tablet representing a wonder build.  This is usually a really really good play late in the round; you get trash for cards passed to you and there is nothing, absolutely nothing better to do with them.  The other generic play is to discard to the middle and get 3 money.  This play should be avoided, if you are forced to do this, things are not going well for you.

Tactics:  The really great thing about this game is that winning tactics are often contradictory.  Sure, playing lots of resource cards is desirable in the first 2 rounds, but I have won games with playing hardly any resources and lost games while playing a ton.  Likewise, when to build your wonder is a HUGE decision.  On the one hand, building it early lets you play  the higher scoring 3rd round cards, but building it late lets you bury a 3rd round card that might be even more advantageous to someone else.  Also, generally speaking getting into an arms race is bad, but letting your neighbor get cheap military point is also bad.  The best advice I can give is pay attention to what the entire table, and especially what your adjacent neighbors are doing and pass and build based on that.

One unalterable tenant is to pay attention to your Wonder track.  It's a bad idea to pass resources that you need to build the various Wonder tiers.

Review:  The first night we played this game, we knew, absolutely knew, that this was a winner and that's the only thing we were going to play the entire session.   It plays well with a small group or a large one (I prefer large groups) and its one of those rare games that you can sculpt tactics around the personality of the players (this player ALWAYS goes for science, that player ALWAYS goes for military).  The 'leaders' expansion was just ok.  I didn't think leaders changed the game too much, but it didn't really add much to game play either, so I am of a mind of why bother.  Original game 9/10, expansion 5/10

Tips:
*Pawn Shop is easily the worst card in the game because it is only 3 VP and unlocks nothing.  If the last 2 cards passed to me were both pawn shops, I would probably trade in one for cash

*Pay attention to your Wonders' special abilities.  Good use of these really helps.

*The first 2 rounds I like building Wonder tiers late when you are constantly getting passed lame cards, in the 3rd round I like building a Wonder anytime I can bury a card that would score lots for the neighbor I am passing it too.