7 Wonders Duel Review

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, but whatever it was, it was the tale of two civilisations. 7 Wonders Duel squeezes all the antagonism you might expect into a simple card based game. There are resources to collect, science to research, wars to fight and of course, that most well known element of negotiations between civilisations: hate drafting! Shall we?

7 wonders duel

 

 

Players: 2

Time: 30 min

Age: 10+

 

 

 

7 Wonders Duel is a game with history! A re-implementation of 2012’s somewhat classic 7 Wonders, the game that really introduced drafting to the masses (of hobby gamers who weren’t already big CCG players back in the day). Much like Dominion, 7 Wonders put an element of deck construction (drafting) into a single package. The idea of a draft is that you have an array of options (in 7 Wonders it is cards) and choose one of them. Your opponents will then get a choice of the remainder. While this is a lot of fun at most player counts, the 2 player implementation left a lot to be desired. 7 Wonders Duel sets out to create an exciting draft experience for 2 players, and at the same time irons out a lot of the creases in 7 Wonders now tired looking toga. What’s new? Behold the pyramids!

7 Wonders Duel 1st Age

This wond- no! Stop it, Matt, it’s too obvious a pun! This impressive structure is what you’ll be battling over, the cards you’ll be collecting. Once all the cards are gone you’ll create a new structure from the blue level II cards, and after that a third from the purple level III cards. In what is 7 Wonders Duel’s biggest gimmick…

7 Wonders Duel 2nd Age

Those new structures are different shapes! Look! The pyramid is upside down!!

mindblown

Fortunately, the rest of the game is by no means a gimmick. Let’s take a look at…

 

The 7 Wonders of 7 Wonders Duel

 

1) Simple, elegant gameplay

You choose a card to take, it must be fully exposed (hey, hey) and then decide what to do with it. Most often you’ll add it to the tableau of cards representing your civilisation, where it will do whatever it does. Of course, to do this you must be able to afford it, either by having the resources indicated on the side already in your civilisation or forking over coins to buy the ones you’re missing. Inevitably, cash runs out but you can get more by discarding the card you choose. Finally you can use that card to build one of your Wonders. Such a simple choice in theory, but of course the implications of your decisions will literally reverberate down through the ages…

7 Wonders Duel Wonders

2) 8 Wonders available, but only 7 will be built

Each player has 4 wonders dealt out to them at the start of the game. These nicely illustrated cards definitely look the part as centrepieces of your civilisations and offer some tasty (and unique) rewards for completing them. As mentioned above, you can always use the card you picked up to build them, but as you’d expect they aren’t cheap! Since you really want to build them if you can, these build requirements often direct how you collect resource cards during the early game. If you need 3 stone to build the pyramid, make sure you get some stone production! The rewards can also be used to drive an overall strategy. However, because this is 7 Wonders Duel, one of these cards cannot be built during the game. Thus you are in a race to get them all built, but chasing wonders means sacrificing a card’s addition to your civilisation and that might be punitive if done too early! Thus you are pushed in two mutually exclusive directions making for some agonising decisions.

 

3) Multiple ways to win

The Wonders are just one example of how 7 Wonders Duel tries to pull you in every direction at once. Unlike its predecessor, you can win Duel in two immediate ways: complete military conquest or a thorough sciencing. Each military card you gain pushes the plastic war token towards your opponent’s side of the board. If it ever reaches the end of the track your armies have conquered their civilisation and you win! Even only advancing into their half of the track you cause havoc and sap their money. Thus, every military card you pass up is a potentially serious or even fatal loss, ratcheting up the pressure later, especially as the effect of military cards increases as the ages go on.

7 Wonders Duel MilitaryScience, on the other hand, is more innocuous. Each science card features a scientific instrument of some kind; collect 6 of the 7 symbols and you immediately win. This is a subtler approach without the immediate benefits of military conquest and it can be much harder for your opponent to spot (good for you, but very disappointing for them). If they are on the ball and discarding the symbols you don’t yet have, you might instead pick up a second symbol of the same type and that lets you take one of the magical science discs that give you points, money or special bonuses.

The thing with both of these victory conditions is that neither are as effective as building your resources and chasing victory points… but if you only do that you will lose to the player collecting them! You’re constantly being pulled in different directions in this game and trying to walk the line better than your opponent is a tremendous and rewarding challenge!

7 Wonders Duel Resources

4) Resources are tight… but not too tight!

I suppose this is a bit like saying “the game is balanced”, but it’s also quite a bit more than that. How many and which resource cards to pick up is always a challenging decision. But you know you can always pay for things with coins. As a back up you can collect market cards, many of which will help you gain resources for cheap, and the more you have the more money you’ll earn when you trash a card. Get the balance wrong and you won’t be completely out of the game but you’ll be spending a lot more time trashing cards for money and correspondingly not do as well.

 

5) Making your opponent reveal cards

Many cards in the display start face down and unknown to both players, only being flipped when the cards from the next row down are removed. If you take the last one covering a facedown card, you give your opponent first bite at the revealed card: terrible if its something you want! This can be huge in the 3rd age where a single military or science card can mean the difference between victory or defeat. Thus the facedown cards add another little layer to your decision making.

7 Wonders Duel Choice6) Love the hate draft

This is a game of card drafting, so of course you can, and often must, take cards your opponent wants, even if its only to trash them for money or use them in building a wonder (twice as painful for them!) If you don’t like hate drafting, steer clear of 7 Wonders Duel.

7) Tells a story

I think the best thing about 7 Wonders Duel is that you get a story every game. There’s the time my enemies were almost banging down the gates of my capital, but my superior scientific knowledge helped me drive them back. Of course, there’s also the time I didn’t survive. In my last game I had almost no basic resource cards, instead I had a full set of market cards that let me buy resources for cheap. I was a great trading empire and obnoxiously rich!

Of course, not everything is perfect in paradise…

7 Wonders Duel Science

The dual problems with 7 Wonders Duel

 

1) The 3rd age isn’t as important

One of the issues with 7 Wonders persists with 7 Wonders Duel. In age I, the decisions you make are super important, likewise in age II, but by the time you get to age III your engine is built, your strategy is chosen and the age plays out more or less by the book. Now, if one player is close to scientific or military victory you’re in for a fantastically tense time but if neither of you has pursued them then it feels a little anti-climactic as you just try to grab whatever victory points you can.

2) Tic-tac-toe?

The military and scientific victories add a much needed edge of tension to the game and dramatically improve on their implementation in the original 7 Wonders. However, with competent players they will hardly ever happen. As soon as you see your opponent going for one of them you can, and most likely should, start hate drafting those cards. And then its just a case of blocking. Naturally this is just one element of the game and the resource management, wonders, and how to get a good score are still considerations far above the tic-tac-toe nature of the military/scientific elements. Fortunately, both strategies still have benefits regardless of the end result, just don’t expect to see these early victories so much if you play with a regular partner.

7 Wonders Duel Card

7 Wonders Duel isn’t perfect… and if I’m honest I disagree with it’s incredible position on the infamous Board Game Geek rankings (but then who does agree with that whole list?). Personally, I would rate Patchwork as a better 2 Player game, though I can understand why people might go the other way. Much like the ancient civilisations themselves, the wonders left behind completely overshadow its flaws. It leaves behind stories of your greatest victories and your sorest defeats. And that’s not something you can say for many games.

Rating: Wonderous (obviously)

 

Our copy of 7 Wonders Duel was sent to us for review by Esdevium Games. You can pick it up for £19.99 RRP at any of your local game stores.

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