Monumental!

‘7 Wonders’ review

By Ed Appleby, Illustrator

With most games, the more you play the better you get. With 7 Wonders, even the uninitiated have a fighting chance.

7 Wonders is a dedicated deck card game based on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and designed for two to seven players. The goal is to advance your civilization by building structures that provide resources, military, technology, civil services, and trade power to become the most dominant in the land.

The game lasts for three “ages.” Cards for that age are dealt evenly to all the players who then choose one card to play. The rest of the cards are then passed to the next player. The strategy of the game is in how you play your cards because some cards allow you to place other cards in later ages without paying resources. If you find yourself short of resources you can buy some from the player next to you.

Since you pass your card to your neighbours and can only trade and attack players on either side of you, this is great for less experienced players in a larger group because you only have to worry about two other players rather than the whole table.

Even though the game is a competition, it doesn’t feel competitive. The play progresses in such a way that even though you may experience some minor setbacks, you always feel you are doing well enough and no one is ever really sure who is winning. It’s not until the end of the third age when the points are tallied that you know who won.

I recommend this game because it has all of the strategy and psychology of Monopoly without the table flipping.