7 Wonders Duel (2015)

How To Play 7 Wonder Duel

Setup

Place the board between the two players. Make room for your wonders and building cards you will be drafting. Place the four military tokens on top of the five and 10 VP spaces and put the pawn right in the middle of the board. You should also randomly choose five progress tokens and place them on the board.

Next, place the first set of four Wonders in front of you. The first player chooses one Wonder, followed by a choice of two Wonders by the second player. Whatever is left goes to the first player. Do this a second time changing who picks first. Once you’re done, place Wonders next to your capital on the board.

If this is your first game, forget about that rule and make sure one player will get: Pyramids, Great Lighthouse, Temple of Artemis, and Statue of Zeus, whilst the other should get Circus Maximus, Piraeus, Appian Way, and Colossus.

To organise your cards, get the Age I deck. There are iconographic depictions of how you should set up the pool of cards for each age. Always discard three cards before starting to build your pool. This will add an element of chance and enhance the game’s replayability.

As you advance through the ages (when cards run out) you will repeat this by following the different settings for the pool of cards, depicted on the manual and quick reference guides. On Age III, add three guild cards to your deck after discarding and before assembling your pool.

Game Turns

In each turn you’ll be able to perform one out of three actions: constructing buildings, discarding cards to obtain coins, and constructing wonders.

Constructing Buildings – Some cards have no cost and you will be able to place them for free. Those are resource cards. Some cards will have resource costs that can be paid through buildings that grant you resources. Alternatively, you may buy resources from the bank. Some cards will have cost in coins or a cost in both coins and resources. You may also build for free through linking (more on this below).

Buying Resources – Resources can be bought for two coins, plus one coin for each of the same resource your opponent has from brown or grey cards. Resources produced by the opponent’s yellow and Wonder cards will not count for costing purposes.

Linking – Some buildings come with linking symbols like masks, books, and suns. Once you have a building with one of those symbols you may have the option of building a structure for free instead of paying its resource/coin cost.

Discarding – If you’re out of coins you may choose to draw a card and discard it for two coins, plus one coin for every yellow building you possess.

Wonders – To construct a Wonder you will have to draw any card out of the pool and put it face down under your Wonder, on top of paying its cost. Remember, although each player has four wonder cards, this game is called 7 Wonders for a reason. Players can only build seven Wonders throughout the course of the game, so you’ll be in a race to build that fourth Wonder before your opponent does it in front of you.

How To Win In 7 Wonders Duel

There are three ways of winning the game: military, science, or civilian victories. The first two options will grant you an instantaneous victory stopping the game on spot. In case duelling players don’t manage to do that, you’ll be counting victory points (VPs) collected throughout the game. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Military Victory – The player that manages to push the conflict pawn on the board all the way into its adversary’s capital wins. To do this you build military structures. Every red card comes with one to three shields, and when you play these cards you advance your pawn toward the enemy capital.

Science Victory – To achieve a science victory a player should collect six different scientific symbols out of the seven available. Each green card comes with a single scientific symbol.

Civilian Victory – A civilian victory is a points victory when all the cards have been drafted. There are seven ways you can gather points. Blue and green cards will win you VPs, and some yellow and Wonder cards, as well as progress tokens, will do the same. All guilds have conditional VPs. You will also get points for your position on the military power board, and finally by exchanging every set of three coins for one VP once the game is over.

7 Wonders Duel Review

“I’ve found that 7 Wonders Duel, being a crunchier experience, suffers a bit for straddling the line between euro and abstract. It contains too much pure randomness to capture the best sort of brain-burn intensity you see in the best abstracts, but it’s not nearly as relaxing as its gentler predecessor. Still, it’s a smart design that unabashedly flaunts its 2-player-ness. This is no cash-in; it’s a serious heavyweight in the 2-player euro space.”

thethoughtfulgamer.com

“Although the rules are complicated, 7 Wonders: Duel is fairly easy to play once you get the hang of it—but that could take a while. Although it wasn’t a big hit with our family, we realize the enjoyment of a board game all comes down to personal taste. We prefer to play board games that are quick to learn and provide more lighthearted fun. Personal preferences aside, there are some great elements to this game. Players are challenged to develop strategies, predict outcomes, and use their critical thinking skills.”

Sage Mchugh, thespruce.com

“After a game of 7 Wonders Duel, I feel compelled to play it again, and again. Throughout each game, there is a palpable competition and conflict far more than one would expect from such a small and compact box. Some iconography feels obtuse, and the cards are a little too small for me to be able to comfortably shuffle, but really these are the only bad points about the game… in fact, I wish I could play more multiplayer versions of Duel.”

Rory Somers, board-game.co.uk

The content of this article is originally from Board Game Geek and board-game.co.uk. For more information and a better understanding of the game, you can watch the videos below.