7 Wonders: Duel

## Overview

In many ways *7 Wonders: Duel* resembles its parent game *7 Wonders* as over three ages players acquire cards that provide resources or advance their military or scientific development in order to develop a civilization and complete wonders.

What's different about *7 Wonders: Duel* is that, as the title suggests, the game is solely for two players, with the players not drafting card simultaneously from hands of cards, but from a display of face-down and face-up cards arranged at the start of a round. A player can take a card only if it's not covered by any others, so timing comes into play as well as bonus moves that allow you to take a second card immediately. As in the original game, each card that you acquire can be built, discarded for coins, or used to construct a wonder.

Each player starts with four wonder cards, and the construction of a wonder provides its owner with a special ability. Only seven wonders can be built, though, so one player will end up short.

Players can purchase resources at any time from the bank, or they can gain cards during the game that provide them with resources for future building; as you acquire resources, the cost for those particular resources increases for your opponent, representing your dominance in this area.

A player can win *7 Wonders: Duel* in one of three ways. Each time that you acquire a military card, you advance the military marker toward your opponent's capital, giving you a bonus at certain positions. If you reach the opponent's capital, you win the game immediately. Similarly, if you acquire any six of seven different scientific symbols, you achieve scientific dominance and win immediately. If neither of these situations occurs, then the player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

## How to Play

### Game Setup

The picture on Page 6 of the rule book shows setup. Basically:

1. Place weird long board between two players (sit across from each other have the two ends pointing to each of you)
2. Put the 4 red rectangular military tokens on the spaces (the two in the middle are empty, then the 2 cracked coin, 5 cracked coins from inside out)
3. Put the red plastic conflict pawn in the middle of the board
4. Shuffle the Green progress tokens (circular green pieces) and place 5 of them in the spaces on the board face up (players get to pick a token when you have a pair of the same green symbols!)
5. Give each play 7 coins.

Now you’re ready to play. Well…almost.

### Wonder Selection

Each player gets the chance to build “wonders” on their side. This stage is critical to deciding who can build what. The help sheet that comes with the game will be useful for this to understand what the symbols on each wonder mean.

As per the rulebook instructions:

1. Shuffle the 12 Wonders
2. Place 4 of the Wonders face-up between the players
3. Player A picks a wonder
4. Player B picks the next 2 wonders
5. Player A gets the last wonder
6. This process goes again but Player B gets to go first

Now each player has 4 wonders each.

Important note: Only the first 7 wonders of the game that get built in the game have their effects, the 8th wonder will get put aside so keep that in mind when deciding which wonder(s) to build first! E.g. Player A and B both have built 3 wonders. Player A builds his/her 4th wonder. Player B must put his/her 4th wonder back in the box and cannot activate it.

Okay, so you’ve selected your wonders. That’s great and all but how do you activate them? There’s a cost on the bottom left side of the card. This is very important to pay attention to. You will need to have all of those materials to build/”activate” the card AND you’ll need to burn a card (which is place underneath the wonder (you’ll notice an outline on the right side that fits the card size).

Separate your Age I, II, III, and “G” (guild) cards.

The rules say to take three random cards from each age and put them back in the box. They then tell you to take three random Guild cards and add them to your Age III deck. Put the rest in the box. You should now have 3 stacks of cards (one for Age I, Age II and Age III).

On to Age 1.

This is in your rulebook (at the back) as well as on the cheat sheet that comes with the game. Set up your age one cards like this.

Ever play pyramid? It works the same way. You start a the bottom and Player A gets to pick a card first. Then Player B picks a card. And the Player A picks the next card and so on. When face down cards get revealed, flip the card over and it becomes an option to take. The Age ends when all the cards are gone. Then setup the next Age. But wait. How do you “pick/play a card?”

### On Your Turn

You can only do the following on your turn/card pick:

* Build a card (provided you have the requirements for it)
* If you do not have the requirements for a card and you don’t want your opponent to get it, I would recommend “burning/discarding” it. You can burn it one of two ways:
	+ Discard it for 2 coins + 1 extra coin for EACH yellow card you’ve built
	+ Burn it by building one of your wonders (provided you have the requirements to build your wonder)
* Or you can simply build a wonder with a card (once again, I would recommend doing this with a card that you think your opponent would want)

### Some Strategy and Gameplay Notes

* Age I and II are the only Ages with resources (there are 5 – wood, stone, brick, parchment and glass/water). This means you should grab what you need in the early stages. How do you know what to grab/stock up on? Your wonder cards are a good place to start. Remember the resource costs at the bottom? You’ll eventually need that many of whatever resource is listed. E.g. The Piraeus wonder requires 2 wood, 1 stone and 1 brick. You can buy your opponent’s resources though so also pay attention to what they buy.
* You can buy your opponents resources for 2 coin (paid to the bank aka your box/stack of coins on the side), PLUS the number of resources they have. E.g. you need a brick. Your opponent produces 2 brick. You must therefore pay 2 coin + 2 coins (for your opponents 2 brick) to the bank. Resources from yellow cards don’t count in this calculation.
* Green cards will likely require Parchment and/or Glass. If you plan on scoring victory points through this route, you should pick these up.
* If you build an army (red card), you get to move the combat icon (red plastic thingy) towards your opponent. The number of red cross/shield symbols determines how many. When it gets to certain thresholds, your OPPONENT pays that many coin (represented by the broken coin symbols). Once your opponent has paid, the symbols remain off the board. Yes, the icon gets moved back and forth a lot.
* When collecting Green cards, remember the following:
	+ If you collect a pair of the SAME symbol, you’ll get to select one of the green coins on the board. There are some really good advantages!
	+ If you collect 6 different symbols, you automatically win the game (very difficult to do – there are only 7 different symbols)
	+ There are duplicates of green cards. You can only have one of each building. E.g. you can’t have two Dispensary.
* Purple cards (guild cards) are usually expensive. But they usually give you A LOT of points. Note about cards with money icons: Money is given at the time of activation, NOT at the end of the game. (We used to play the latter.)
* If you build a card with a symbol early on, you can likely build something later in the game that has the same symbol (you wouldn’t have to pay the resource cost). E.g. If you have the Stable, you can build the Horse Breeders later in game without paying any resources.
* The Triangle/Pyramid symbol refers to the Wonders. E.g. Arena card gives 2 Gold and 3 Victory points PER wonder that you have.

### End of Game and Score Tabulation

So if the game hasn’t ended because one of you completely dominated in military (the icon has reached the end of one side of the board), or scientific (no one has collected 6 out of the 7 symbols), victory points are counted.

Victory Points to Count:

* Military
	+ Look at the combat pawn on the board. If it’s on your side, your opponent gets that many victory points. If it’s on your opponent’s side, you get that many victory points (whichever zone it’s in).
* Victory points (number with green wreath)
	+ Blue cards
	+ Green cards
	+ Yellow cards
	+ Purple cards
	+ Wonders that you’ve built
	+ Points from Green tokens (Progress tokens)
	+ Coins – every 3 coins = 1 victory point

In the case of a tie (has never happened but you never know), the person with the most VP from their BLUE cards wins the game.

And that’s it!

## For 7 Wonders Veterans

Rules are generally the same to the original 7 Wonders so I’ll only cover the differences.

How to Win: Get the most victory points OR collect 6 different (out of the 7) scientific symbols OR dominate by moving the army pawn to the end of the board (closest to your opponent).

There are still 3 Ages. Coins are the same (except there is no 5 coin and there is a 6 coin instead). There are no wonder boards. Instead, there are 12 Wonder cards.  Each player will end up with 4 of them (see below).

### Game Set-up

The picture on Page 6 of the rule book shows set-up. Basically:

1. Place weird long board between two players (sit across from each other have the two ends pointing to each of you)
2. Put the 4 red rectangular military tokens on the spaces (the two in the middle are empty, then the 2 cracked coin, 5 cracked coins from inside out)
3. Put the red plastic conflict pawn in the middle of the board
4. Shuffle the Green progress tokens (circular green pieces) and place 5 of them in the spaces on the board face up (players get to pick a token when you have a pair of the same green symbols!)
5. Give each play 7 coins

Now you’re ready to play. Well…almost.

### Wonder Selection

Each player gets the chance to build “wonders” on their side. The cost to activate the wonder is indicated on the bottom left corner.  The help sheet that comes with the game will be useful for this to understand what the symbols on each wonder mean but you’ll likely recognize a lot of them from the original game.

As per the rulebook instructions:

1. Shuffle the 12 Wonders
2. Place 4 of the Wonders face-up between the players
3. Player A picks a wonder
4. Player B picks the next 2 wonders
5. Player A gets the last wonder
6. This process goes again but Player B gets to go first

Now each player has 4 wonders each.

Important Rule Note: Only the first 7 wonders of the game that get built in the game have their effects, the 8th wonder will get put aside so keep that in mind when deciding which wonder(s) to build first! E.g. Player A and B both have built 3 wonders. Player A builds his/her 4th wonder. Player B must put his/her 4th wonder back in the box and cannot activate it.

Separate your Age I, II, III, and “G” (guild) cards.

The rules say to take three random cards from each age and put them back in the box. They then tell you to take three random Guild cards and add them to your Age III deck. Put the rest in the box. You should now have 3 stacks of cards (one for Age I, Age II and Age III).

On to Age 1.

Set-up the cards as indicated above. Instead of giving each player cards to start with immediately, players take turns selecting cards from the pyramid. The Age ends when all the cards are gone.

### On Your Turn

Similar to the original 7 Wonders, you can do the following on your turn/card pick:

* Build a card (provided you have the requirements for it)
* Discard a card for 2 coins + 1 extra coin for EACH yellow card you’ve built
* Burn a card and build a wonder with it

### For Gameplay: Major differences from the original 7 Wonders game

Military:

* Instead of tabulating after each Age who has the largest army and battling it out, whenever you build an army card, you move the conflict pawn (the red plastic thing) towards your opponent. If it gets into one of the deeper ranges, your opponent must pay that number of coins to the bank. Military victory points are tabulated at the end depending on where the icon is.

Card Costs:

* In order to build higher age cards for free, there is no longer the name of the card indicated as a cost. It is now represented by a symbol. E.g. A Mask
* No pink textile resource. Only the Blue glass and white Papyrus (or I call paper) are included.
* No ore (or I call gold) resource. Only Wood, Brick, Stone.
* Card costs are indicated across the card instead of on the bottom left side
* Instead of paying coins to your neighbours for resources, you pay them to the bank and the amount you pay is determined by:
	+ Base cost: 2 coins
	+ Additional cost: 1 additional coin for EACH brown/grey card they have of that resource
		- E.g. you need a brick. Your opponent produces 2 brick. You must therefore pay 2 coin + 2 coins (for your opponents 2 brick) to the bank. Note that resources from yellow cards do not count.

Scientific:

* No more multiplying of points. You only get the victory points indicated on the cards BUT if you collect a pair of any symbol, you get to select one of the 5 green circular “Progress tokens” which give many benefits (see rulebook for effects).

And that’s it! Everything is pretty much the same. Score tabulation is as follows if no one has collect 6 out of the 7 scientific symbols or have completely dominated by military (the red plastic icon is at the end of one of side of the board):

Victory Points to Count:

* Military
	+ Look at the combat pawn on the board. If it’s on your side, your opponent gets that many victory points. If it’s on your opponent’s side, you get that many victory points (whichever zone it’s in).
* Victory points (number with green wreath)
	+ Blue cards
	+ Green cards
	+ Yellow cards
	+ Purple cards
	+ Wonders that you’ve built
	+ Points from Green tokens (Progress tokens)
	+ Coins – every 3 coins = 1 victory point

If you’ve played the game and found that I’ve missed anything, please comment below or send me a message and I’ll amend it. Hopefully this helps make it easier for veteran 7 Wonders players to start playing the game quicker instead of spending an hour or so (like I did) reading through the rulebook to find all the differences and rule changes.

## Links and References

Official Rules

BoardGameGeek Review

Official Website