7 Wonders

I’ve played a lot of Magic booster draft over the years, so 7 Wonders felt familiar in the hand almost immediately, pick a card, pass the rest, build something out of what you kept. What surprised me is how well that idea survives getting stripped of collectible-card economics and handed to seven people at a dining table.

The trick is that everyone plays simultaneously. There’s no waiting for your turn to come around, you and the six other people at the table are all choosing and revealing at once, so the game doesn’t stretch out the way most seven-player games do. I was skeptical going in that a big group would feel chaotic, and it does get looser, but the pace never drags the way a turn-based game that size would.

Where the combo click actually lands is in the wonder stage bonuses layering on top of whatever civilian and scientific structures you’ve drafted. A run of science cards that suddenly triggers a matched-set bonus, or a military push that quietly wins you a border skirmish you weren’t paying attention to, those moments are real and they happen fast enough that you feel clever without having plotted for twenty minutes.

Player-count sweet spot is trickier than the box suggests. At three or four the interaction with your two neighbors actually matters, you’re reading what they’re building and reacting. At six or seven, interaction narrows to just your immediate neighbors and the middle of the table becomes noise. It’s still fun that big, just a different, more tactical game than the one you get with fewer people. Card stock on my early printing wore down faster than I’d like after a couple dozen plays, worth sleeving if you’re going to put in the reps this deserves.