Game: 7 Wonders
Year: 2010–2011
Designer: Antoine Bauza
Publisher: Repos Production
Key Details: 2–7 players, 30 minutes
Gameplay Score: 7/10
Theme Score: 5/10
Overview of Play: First off, like a lot of successful games, this now has numerous expansions. But as will generally be the case here, I’m just going to focus on the base game.
This is a drafting game of three rounds, called the First, Second, and Third Ages. At the beginning of each Age, each player is dealt seven cards. Each player selects one of those cards and then sets the rest of them off to their right. Then, each player uses the selected card right away, either building it (which costs resources), discarding it for three coins, or putting it facedown under your tableau to build a stage of your Wonder.
At this point, people pick up the pile of cards that the player to their left had just chosen from, and now they choose a card. After using this card, they do it again, this time with a pile of cards that started the game two players away. This continues six times, and you’re essentially drafting cards to build a tableau. You need some resources in order to be able to build better things, which will provide useful in-game things and/or give you more victory points at the end.
After the drafting is done for an Age, there’s a comparison of military strength with your two immediate neighbors. The winner gets victory points (VP) for each neighbor they beat, and the amount increases each Age. Each loss nets you –1 VP, regardless of Age. Then, the next Age begins, and every player is dealt a new group of seven cards.
Each player gets a Wonder, which can help shape their play. Each Wonder has three stages, which need to be built in order, and each stage gives its own some different benefit, such as a resource, an ability, or VP. The Wonders help give the game replay value (they’re two-sided, too).
Like most so-called Euro games, you don’t score until the end, so it’s hard to tell exactly how everyone is doing. Again, as with all good Euros, there are multiple paths for victory (set collection, multipliers, straight VP, etc.), and you don’t have to go for the same thing every time, and you can adjust your strategy as the game goes on and you’re (inevitably) screwed.
Comments on Use of Theme: People might be objecting by now that this game doesn’t belong here because it’s not really set in Greece or Rome. This is true, but there’s two reasons I’m doing it. First: the sweet, sweet clicks. It’s such a popular and well-loved game that I figured I should give it a go. (This should be about as click-baity as I get.)
Second, and more seriously: while the game is not really set in Greece or Rome, the whole notion of there being ‘Seven Wonders’ is very much a product of the Greek mind—and most of the items on the list reflect a Greek worldview. In that sense, Seven Wondersis a very Greek game.
Like the others I’ve reviewed thus far, this game sets the stage with a little flavor text at the beginning of the rules:
Lead one of the seven great cities of the Ancient world. Exploit the
natural resources of your lands, take part in the eternal march of
progress, develop your commercial relationships and assert your
military might.
Leave your mark in the history of civilization by building an
architectural marvel that will will transcend the ages to come.
The first sentence gives away the defining decision in this game’s use of theme, using cities instead of buildings (though the latter are relevant, too).
The Greeks loved to make lists of things, often in sevens, such as the Seven Sages, the Seven Lyric Poets, and—under their influence—the Seven Hills of Rome. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was another such list—but it varied widely over time. This kind of listing reflects two key aspects of the world after the conquests of Alexander the Great—known as the Hellenistic period (323 BCE—31 BCE)—the scholarship that flourished then, especially in Alexandria (home of the famous Library and the Temple of the Muses, known as the Museion or, in English, Museum) and the more closely connected world, in which the Greeks were often tourists.
The earliest list we have is by the poet Antipater of Sidon, some time in the second half of the second century BCE (Greek Anthology 9.58). There are a couple manuscript issues, but I’ve translated it as follows:
Both the wall of rocky Babylon, which may be run on by chariots,
And the Zeus on the Alpheios have I seen,
And the hanging gardens and the Colossus of Helios,
And the great work of the lofty Pyramids,
And the huge tomb of Mausolus. But when I looked upon
The dwelling of Artemis running up to the clouds—
Those were made dim…. Apart from Olympus,
The Sun never looked with its light on such a thing.
This list differs from what we think of as the canonical list by including Babylon’s walls (in addition to its hanging gardens), and omitting Pharos, the lighthouse at Alexandria. The lighthouse was the last of the Wonders built (c. 280 BCE), so it’s possible that Antipater’s list reflects an earlier list.
The language of Antipater’s poem makes clear the nature of these wonders: they are something worth seeing. In this sense, his poem is him bragging about having been able to travel around the Eastern Mediterranean, seeing the things worthy to be seen (towards the end of his life he even went to Rome).
Another variation of the list appears in one of my favorite authors, Hyginus, author of the so-called Fabulae (a term that can mean ‘stories’ or ‘myths’ or even ‘plots of plays’). He lists the Septem Opera Mirabilia (‘Seven Marvelous Works,’ Fabulae 223), and gives more details about who built each one, and out of what. But he also adds details about how tall each one is (and in some cases how long, too). These numbers are almost certainly wrong, but their inclusion reflects a key part of what makes these Wonders important: they’re large, human productions. The differences between lists reveals the subjectivity of the whole endeavor, and recalls all of the clickbait lists with titles like, “Ten Places to See Before You Die!”
We, however, have inherited from Renaissance authors the list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World now considered canonical:
The Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The Temple of Artemis at Ephesos
The Great Pyramids at Giza
The Tomb of Mausolus
The State of Zeus at Olympia
The Colossus of Rhodes
In the game, however, this becomes seven cities:
Alexandria
Babylon
Éphesos
Gizah
Halikarnassós
Olympía
Rhódos
The accent marks here are meant to match the Greek tonal accents, and are an interesting attempt to make the list more Greek. Similarly, the -os ending is more foreign than the Latinized -us ending. The only Greek name missing an accent is Alexandria, probably because the name is so familiar (a more literal transliteration would be Alexándreia).
There’s an interesting slippage in here—and that starting blurb—between cities and buildings. I’m assuming that the main reason for changing the names is to have much less text overall, especially of the clunky, foreign kind. It also means less worry about the difference between, say, the Pyramids, and a statue of Zeus (even if you know that it was supposedly about 40 feet high, according to Pfeiffer’s reading of Callimachus Iambus 6). It makes all of the Wonders seem equivalent—which is important in a game, because you don’t want to give players any impression that their chosen piece is somehow inferior. But these are not all famous cities, and certainly not equally wondrous for their architecture (Rhodes, by the way, is the name of both an island and the main city on that island—a common practice on Greek islands).
The other interesting idea in the blurb is that these architectural marvels will “transcend” time. But this hasn’t proven to be the case; only the Pyramids are left. Most of the other Wonders were gone by late antiquity, either through natural disaster or destroyed by Christians as part of pagan religion.
Although the Wonder tiles don’t use the names of the Wonders themselves, the names are in the rulebook, in the section clarfiying each Wonder’s powers. The only name that’s a bit confusing here is “The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus,” which doesn’t make it clear that this is the tomb of Mausolus, ruler of Caria in the mid 4th century BCE, from whose name we get the word ‘mausoleum.’
Even though they don’t use the names, the Wonder tiles depict the Wonders nicely. The pictures are large and splashy, and some research went in to them. They help add to the overall feeling of the game as a big, colorful mess (in a good way).
The Wonders also make their way in through cards that hint at their names, e.g. ‘Statue,’ ‘Walls,’ ‘Lighthouse,’ ‘Gardens,’ and ‘Temple.’ In the case of the Lighthouse, it looks close enough to some reconstructions of the Pharos Lighthouse that those in the know will get the allusion. The ‘Builders Guild’ shows Egyptians building a pyramid, so that gets worked in that way. The only Wonder missing, then, is the Mausoleum, probably because it’s too dark and/or it’s not a clear enough sign of “progress.”
With the individual Wonders removed, the main theme really becomes the idea that societies progress in a linear notion. This notion of progress is evident in the resources you use to build. There are two groups, the ‘raw materials’ (clay, ore, stone, wood) and the ‘manufactured goods’ (glass, loom, papyrus). The idea of progress is also reflected in the mechanics, because the three rounds of drafting each use a different set of cards, and these three sets reflect the notion of linear progress mentioned in the blurb.
In the First Age, the cards are mostly basic resources, and a few more developed things, such as an ‘Altar,’ ‘Baths,’ a ‘Theater,’ a ‘Scriptorium,’ as well as a few basic military cards. In the Second Age, there are more cards with the ‘manufactured goods,’ but there is also the ‘Aqueduct,’ ‘Temple,’ ‘Library,’ and ‘Statue.’
The Third Age has the most elaborate and famous things, as well as various kinds of guilds. In addition to the ‘Palace,’ ‘Academy,’ and ‘University,’ you also have the ‘Arena’ and ‘Senate,’ which both look very Roman. There is also a ‘Siege Workshop,’ which depicts the Trojan Horse. There’s a ‘Pantheon’ card, too, but instead of showing the temple in Rome of that name, the picture shows Egyptian gods, and resembles the temple at Karnak (but this might be less a mistake than a learned sort of joke, since ‘Pantheon’ means ‘all the gods’; what better way to express that idea than show what the Greeks and Romans considered the weirdest-looking gods in the ancient world?).
In general, the art is well done, with lots of attention to detail. Most of the cards look vaguely Greek or Roman, but there are also Egyptian ones, and some that seem like they’re meant to be Indian (e.g. ‘Palace’ looks sort of like the Taj Mahal), so the game tries to encompass a broader view of the ‘ancient world’ than just Greece and Rome. Again, the overall implication seems to be that all civilizations follow the same linear track of progress—and that civilization means the same everywhere (not a very popular notion in academia these days!).
The card art is very well done, colorful and thematic. Every named card has its own custom picture, so there’s lots to look at, even if you’ve played the game a lot. The colors of the cards are rich and saturated, too, and the whole thing really pops. Some of the best art is saved for the seven tableaus, with each depicting one of the Wonders. Overall, it’s a good-lucking game.
There are two other components: the coins and the military tokens. There are two denominations of coins, 1 and 3. The higher value coin clearly resembles the owl from various Athenian coins (the other side of the coins shows their value). To me, the 1 coin looks like old Macedonian coins, which show the sun on one side; the only difference here is that the sun has wavy, rather than straight, rays. But if this is supposed to recall these famous coins, it’s a nice nod to Alexander the Great, who was responsible for the creation of the Hellenistic world which produced the desire to travel to see such wonders and—perhaps more importantly—categorize and canonize them.
The military victory and defeat tokens, on the other hand, are very Roman. Since these represent victory points, it’s no surprise that they have laurel wreaths on them. But the ones with you get from winning (as opposed to losing) military contests also have an eagle on them, making them look like a Roman legionary standard. So, once again, even though it’s not specifically a Greek or Roman game, most of the details recall Greece or Rome, a reminder that the whole notion of ‘Seven Wonders’ is a product of that world—and also perhaps suggesting that Greece and Rome are the most recognizable part of the ancient world, and/or that people think of these Wonders as belonging to that world.
Overall Thoughts: This is a deservedly famous game, and is one of those games that almost every gamer seems to have played (and even owned) at some point. If you’ve never played a drafting, tableau-building game like this, it might take a couple plays to get the hang of, but it’s quick to learn, and it’s easy to play multiple rounds because it goes so fast.
My biggest complaint about this game is the same general one I have about most games with a tableau-building aspect: if you get too many players, it’s hard to feel like you have any connection with the other side of the table. In a sense, it’s great that the game plays seven, in part because there aren’t too many non-party games with that high a player count. But I think the sweet spot is three or four, since that way you can keep an eye on the whole table and then do one of the best things to do in any drafting game: hate draft (when you take a card not because you need it but to prevent someone else from getting it).
There’s not a ton of material here to work into a classroom, but it would obviously be good as a way to get into talking about the Seven Wonders, and what such a list suggests about the people that made it, since the whole idea tells us so much about a certain aspect of the ancient Greek mind. Each Wonder could be a decent research project in and of itself, though we know a lot more about some of them than others, so it could be a little uneven. But it’s a fun game, and could be a good way to think of notions of progress and even what makes a human achievement particularly notable, and you could ask students to think up a list of modern Wonders (Andre the Giant will always be the Eight Wonder of the World in my book!).