EPTWhat is it?
Seven Wonders is a multiplayer strategy card game involving empire building using playing cards. It is themed so that each player is a particular civilization (Rome, Greece, etc.) which is decided randomly – and the chosen civilization has a number of special abilities which can be used in ways similar to playing cards.
Why would I want to play this over other strategy games?
My personal favorite part of Seven Wonders is that the games tend to be short (30-45 minutes). Unlike many strategy games which can take about that long to learn and hours to actually play all the way through, Seven Wonders is a game where you can only have half a clue what’s going on and the game can still be done in an hour (of course, if you’re too meticulous, it can take longer). I have a job, a wife and a son, and though I’m a big fan of strategy games – I don’t have the time most days (even on weekends) to sit through a game of some of the longer strategy games like Risk, Twilight Imperium or Battlestar Galatica.
But aside from the length, the gameplay is quite fun. For those who have played magic, it plays a lot like drafting does. Each person starts with a hand full of cards, picks one that they can play (or one they’d like to trash for money), and then passes it to the player next to them. There’s card-counting, building your civilization, burying cards your opponents (er… I mean allies) would like to play, and resource trading. It sounds like a lot, but after a couple of games, it’s a pretty intuitive system.
The strategy, too, is easy to learn (ok, so I’m going science and that’s a science card – I guess I’ll take it) but difficult to master. There is no one strategy that beats everything else. If you’re going pure science, people can pick up or bury a few cards and make it ridiculously inefficient. If you’re going pure military, other people can back off and focus on everything else. If you’re going purely for resources, people can pick cards which chain (and therefore take few resources) and just trade for yours when you need them. Or alternatively, if you’re getting a bunch of trade cards, people can just keep the amount of resources around you fairly low and rely on chaining (something you won’t be able to do if you went trading in first age). And of course, anything you can do someone else can do, too. And if two people both want the same cards – you can imagine how well that goes.
And there’s luck, too – so if you don’t want to think too hard, you can always rely on just getting dealt the cards you want.
Strategy
Here are some of the things I’ve noticed and strategy tips that have done well for me.
Civilizations
Generally, you want a civilization that has the potential to be flexible. You pick a civilization long before you see the leaders which are available to you or the cards you’re dealt, so it can be difficult to pick a specialized civilization and have it pay off. Of course, if you do that, it’s optimal – but specialized civilizations that are clearly suited to doing only one thing well and can be denied the ability to do it at all (by other people’s strategies). When you build everything with one clear purpose in mind especially, other people will find you easy to thwart. Those do not make for fun games. If you’re thinking you want some science regardless, you probably should hope for a finished good. I’ve found Rome and Alexandria to be quite strong, personally, and I’ve seen someone do amazingly with Giza.
Leaders (Expansion)
The leader cards can really add depth to some strategies, and they inject something else that the game before the expansion was lacking: hidden information – something to make your choices a bit less mathematical and a bit more crafty. How much science does the player to your left really have? You might only see two cards, and feel it’s safe to pass him a third – but he might also have the third age leader which would give him a fourth. Generally, you want one good first age leader and one good third age leader – this means you want one leader who’s going to allow you to access more of what you want later (to play in first age e.g. Archimedes/Leonidas which make cards cheaper to play, or a leader whose name I can’t remember who gives you one resource of any type for 1 gold), and one leader who’s going to allow you to grab a bunch of victory points late game (Cleopatra, or one of the leaders with a science symbol if you’re intending to go science). By the time you are done picking leaders and getting your civilization, you should have an idea of what cards you want and how to play them – and more importantly, you should have a good idea of what cards you *don’t* need. My personal favorite leader is one whose name (sadly) I do not remember. He grants 3 additional victory points for each set of red, blue and green cards you have. I love this guy for no real reason other than he’s decided a couple of games for me – one in which he was worth an astounding 15 points. Now, we proceed to play.
General Play Notes
Winning scores I’ve seen range from 70-ish points to 90 or even 100 (which is really, really rare). This gives us a means of gauging how much a card should be worth. We get 6 cards per age, with cards being weighted so that third age cards award more points than first age cards (by a ratio of 1:2:3 between first, second and third age respectively). This means that if we ignore weighting, each card of a winning hand should be somewhere between 3.8 points and 5.5 points. But if we apply weighting, each first age card should be worth 1.9 and 2.7 points – each second age card should be worth 3.8 and 5.5 points, and each third age card should be worth 5.7 and 8.2 points.
I’ve ignored a couple of key points above. The first is leaders. These can generate points which inflate our point totals and aren’t counted towards cards per age – adjust your totals appropriately. The second is probably the most noteworthy, which is chaining. Chaining means that, for some cards, if you’ve built their predecessor, you can build it regardless of whether you have the needed materials or not. This is particularly useful for green (science) and blue (civilian) cards, because a number of them chain with cards which are otherwise very expensive, and difficult to play in the third phase without chaining.
Also, keep in mind while you’re playing that this game is much more like chess or civilization than it is like SimCity. You can see almost everything your opponent is up to, and they can see almost everything you’re up to. Sometimes, it may be better to bury a card an opponent desperately needs rather than pick up a card that works pretty well for you.
Lastly, somewhere between picking heros and age one, I decide the type of cards I will not be going for. I tend to have a fairly hybrid approach throughout the game (and my favorite types of games are those where I can get one leg under science and the other under military – and have a complete wonder, those go very well), with an eye towards being flexible to grab up some category no one wants or to shut down a category one person seems to be getting a lot of.
Military
The difference between going as much Military as possible and going no Military is the difference between -6 and 18 points. This is no small amount of points. Half of those points come in age three battles, while 33% of the point spread comes in age two battles and 16% of the point spread is in age one (note the 1:2:3 ratio referenced above). If you can get an advantage over your opponents for only a couple cards in age three, it’s generally worth it.
Sometimes getting a lot of military in ages one and two will make it so that you don’t even need to play additional military in age three to win out your 12 points. This is quite, quite good – because even if it takes 2 military cards each age, 4 early cards for a 24 point spread is amazingly good (note: at 6 points a card, that’s age three’s effective point range).
Science
If you get all the science cards, your point total can get really outlandish (i.e. you can get winning scores by only counting your science score) but in reality, these totals don’t really occur unless your opponents intentionally let you have it (which can happen sometimes, but usually if someone’s going heavily after science, there ends up being a lot of green making people’s wonders). My personal strategy is to aim to get all the cards I can of one type (gear, tablet or papyrus) or get none at all (only if my opponents are both into science). If you can get two of one symbol going into the third age, you’re usually sitting pretty unless someone has a lot of resources to spend hard-building the cards you can chain. Science looks weird on paper, because it’s scored so that each symbol is worth the number of that symbol that you have – so if you have 5 compass at the end of the game, each of those cards are worth 5 points (considering you got some of those in ages 1 and 2, this is actually really, really good).
Splitting yourself between two symbols is the worst possible result. If you have 2 compass and 2 gears, for instance, that’s only 4 points – while 4 papyrus would have been worth 16. Even one of each would be worth 10.
Another possibility is to chain together a set of 1 gear, 1 compass, and 1 tablet – that’s 10 points. If you can (somehow) get 2 sets, that’s 26 points (which is more than 4 points per card, and amazingly good if most can be attained in early ages. This tends to be harder to do because you need the additional resources to build each (or use the school).
Resources
These are best gotten early – and I find the best strategies are those which use them as little as they can get away with. These are worth nothing at the end of the game (and very seldomly, may make a couple of cards worth points). The purpose of getting them, then, is to get yourself the ability to make bigger things later. Of particular importance are the items you know you’ll want on your wonder, but also keep in mind cards you may want to build later in the game. Age three military cards contain 3 unfinished resources (brown), so if you don’t have access to that many wood or stone, for instance – and you know you want a military card, snagging up a double wood or a double stone in age two may be a strong move.
The other use for resources is that it creates trade between yourself and your opponents. When your opponents need a resource, they can pay you two gold to use any resource card you have. This is quite a bit of money. Yet, one of the biggest uses for money is also buying resources from your neighbors. To some extent, every time you buy resources – you’re buying them for yourself. But also, with every resource you buy, you create the opportunity for your opponents to use gold (something which is worth very little at the end of the game) to make cards (which are worth considerably more at the end of the game).
Trade
Trade cards and resources often fill the same goal – getting yourself the resources you need to buy the things you want. The main difference with trade is that really with only a couple of cards, you cut the cost of buying another player’s resources in half. Trade is best pursued if you need resources in the first and second ages, but intend to chain for most of the third age. Something else to note is that if you intend to trade on a large scale for most of the game (rather than building resources), you are 100% reliant on your opponents to also need the resources that you need – and in addition, you need to secure a method of continuing to pay them for it. With the right cards, it works pretty well – but it’s awfully hard to do, and if your opponent considers you his biggest threat, he may intentionally deny himself resources if he knows he’s doing you more damage – especially so if he can use the gold you’re feeding him to buy those resources from another player.
Just as in the real world, trade relies on strong cash flow into and out of your civilization and good relations between yourself and your opponents.
This probably is obvious, but you definitely do not want to go heavily into trade if you’re also heavy on resources. They both serve the same purpose and are both worth comparably little at the end of the game.
Guilds/Black
I really don’t have anything to say on these. They tend to be powerful cards, but not of the type I tend to value terribly much. Obviously, there are situations where you want each guild – but equally so there are situations where each guild is strictly inferior to the equivalent civilian (blue) card. Keep your eyes open and don’t forget to look for guilds/black which are worth a boatload of points for your opponents.
Gold Doesn't Make This World Go Round
Inexperienced Players may feel the need to get a large stock of gold. Gold is worth 1/3 of a point at the end of the game for each 1 gold you have. Keep a few things in mind when you’re using your gold.
1. Do I have a good method of converting gold into victory points? (via leaders, resource trades, etc.)
2. How much do I need?
3. Does it appear my opponents are going to need my resources anytime soon?
4. Does it seem like my opponents think I’m ahead (this can be best assessed by noting if the things you want start vanishing but not being played outright)?
If the answer to number 1 is “no”, you obviously want to make sure you don’t fall short of the amount you stated in number 2 – but keep in mind that the additional gold you’re getting from trade may indicate that you’ve gone overboard on resources. At two gold per resource, most cards can be bought outright (even if you have no resources at all) for about the same amount of gold as it should be worth in points – so unless you need a lot of cards that require a lot of resources (if you do, you’re not playing this game much like I do), there’s really no need to hoard your gold. It’s not worth very much. If you can spend the gold you have (especially in age three) in a way that gets you points – it is almost always worth it to do that.
Conclusion
Seven Wonders is an amazing game that I’m surprised I don’t hear about more often. It has earned its place amongst my favorite tabletop games, and I’m confident that even after playing it a ton, Seven Wonders will still be able to surprise and entertain players. There is a reason this game has won awards. The strategy is engaging, the interaction between players is dynamic, and many games end in the third age without having a real strong sense of who emerged the victor until the final points are tallied. If you haven’t played it before, maybe this makes a good add to your gift list for the holidays. After playing it as much as I have this previous year, it’s definitely going on mine.
