7 Wonders

You are the leader of one of the 7 great cities of the Ancient World. Gather resources, develop commercial routes, and affirm your military supremacy. Build your city and erect an architectural wonder which will transcend future times.

7 Wonders, or as it is affectionately referred to by many of my "Magic: the Gathering" friends: "Drafting, the game!" is an easy to pick up game with good depth that rewards paying attention to what your neighbours are up to!

Each round you receive 7 cards, then each turn you will pick one of those cards, then pass the remainder to one of your adjacent players. As you acquire more cards and pay their costs to build them (filling out the tableau in front of you), they will generate even more resources or points for you, and some will unlock "free" upgrade paths to even better buildings. At the end of the 3 Ages (rounds) you tally up everyones scores and see who's done the best! There's also a minor military subtheme where at the end of each round you get to bully your nieghbours if you have more military might than them (getting points, and costing them VP) but you only need to be a single military strength greater than them, which gives a delicious tension to this part of the game.

My favourite element of 7 Wonders is the fact that adding players to the game doesn't fundamentally change the length of time taken to play. Often when you step up from 3 to 4 (or 5!) players you're adding significant downtime as you wait for the other players to take their turns - in 7 Wonders you're all drafting simultaneously, so the only added time is right at the end when you're working out scores and thats minimal!

Complexity: 2.31/5

If you like this, try: Dominion