7 Wonders is a card drafting game. It is intended for 2-7 players and takes about 30 minutes to play. The box claims it is for people age 10+ to play, but Maci has been playing since she was 6.
Basics of 7 Wonders Game Play
7 Wonders is played over a series of 3 rounds. In each round, players are dealt a hand of cards. Each player simultaneously chooses and reveals a card from their hand and then passes the remaining cards to the next player. The cards for each round have a little symbol to show in which direction the cards should be passed.
Chosen cards are kept in an active play area in front of each player. There are multiple types of cards that can be acquired.
- Resources (brown and grey) give players certain resources to be able to purchase future cards.
- Civilian Structures (blue) provide victory points.
- Scientific Structures (green) score victory points based on the sets you accumulate.
- Commercial Structures (yellow) earn coins, produce resources, provide discounts, and sometimes score victory points
- Military Structures (red) help during conflict
- Guilds (purple) score extra victory points.
As the game progresses, each player’s collection of cards grows, gathering more resources, military strength, scientific collections and victory points to be scored at the end of the game. In addition to building up a collection of cards, players also work to build levels of their “Wonder”, a board they have in front of them. Each level of a wonder provides different benefits.
Board Game Geek Rankings for 7 Wonders
These are the rankings for 7 Wonders on Board Game Geek at the time we wrote this Review.
- Family- 4
- Strategy-51
- Overall-49
The Dad Review
7 Wonders is a very popular card drafting game and it deserves a high family ranking in my opinion. This game is easy to teach and takes a couple of times playing to figure out strategies. Maci is very good at this game. In our last two sessions playing, she beat us. I hate losing, but not as much as when Maci beats me. She understands this game and loves to play.
The base game took less than half an hour to play, which is great for short attention spans. The war phase is pretty easy. It’s basically playing the card game war, whoever has the strongest army wins. So if I have three war symbols and you have two, I win. The only thing I will say that may be difficult to understand is the science scoring at the end, but once you have that figured out you’re good to go.
When it comes to replay-ability, this game is solid because the cards you receive will be a different combination each time. ‘Take that’ effects are not too bad, because if you do take a card someone needs, half the time they don’t realize it or you can use that card face down to build your wonder, which means no one sees it. This game is only 9 years old right now, which doesn’t seem like a classic but for modern board games I would say that it does fill the niche.
Overall, for a family ranking, I give it a 10/10. It is good to get new gamers into card drafting games. For my own ranking I rank the base game a 8/10.
The Kid Review – Age 9
7 Wonders is one of my favorite games. One reason is, I like the fighting and the blue victory points. I also like getting the things [resources] I need to build the buildings. Here are some of the resources: brick, cloth, stone, and glass. There are other resources too.
I also like the yellow cards because they give you victory points, money, and you can borrow resources from your opponents (like my mom and my dad) for less money.
In conclusion, I will give 7 Wonders a 10 out of 10. I just love 7 Wonders.
The Mom Review
I really enjoy playing 7 Wonders. I like that it is a quick and easy playthrough, and after mastering the rules once, I have never struggled to remember them again. When I can’t remember what an icon means, I just refer to the quick reference on the back of the rulebook, and that is super helpful.
Setting up 7 Wonders is not difficult at all. You simply sort the cards for each age by the number of players in your game, set out coins and scoring tokens, and pass out the wonder boards to each player. I like to “deal” out the cards for each age before we start and set the stacks aside. When I do that, we can move from one age to the next with minimal wait time.
Another great aspect of 7 wonders is that if you have a very young player in your group, or someone who struggles in understanding strategy in games, they can totally still play just fine. The game is based on pick a card, place it in front of you, pass the cards. You might need to keep an eye on these players to make sure they don’t break the few card choice rules, but they still get to participate and eventually will pick up on the strategies that can be used to do well.
Overall, I give 7 Wonders a 10/10.
Overall Impressions of 7 Wonders
- Family Game: 10/10
- Overall: 9/10
- Ease of Understanding the Rules: 9/10
- Ease of Setup: 9/10
Other Games to Try
Other family card drafting type games to try – Ticket To Ride, Sushi Go, and Everdell.
Wanting to increase the difficulty level in card drafting? We recommendTerraforming Mars, Architects of the West Kingdom and Raiders of The North Sea.