I’ve already sung the praises of 7 Wonders Second Edition over in our separate review, and I am certainly guilty of considering it to be among the “very best” games that you could have in your collection. But, if 7 Wonders Second Edition has a downside, it’s that it is played with a minimum of three players, and generally at its best with around four or five. What if you can’t muster that many people and you want a similar experience? Well then, what you want is 7 Wonders Duel. What if you’ve played 7 Wonders Duel and you want MORE? Then, what you really want – are 7 Wonders Duel expansions!
7 Wonders Duel: Pantheon Expansion
In the 7 Wonders Duel: Pantheon expansion, the players will add a new pantheon board above the original military and advancement tracks, and will place a number of tokens representing different belief systems (Greek, Roman, Egyptian etc) onto specific cards within the Age I setup. Whenever these tokens are “accessed” because the card(s) below have been taken, the player who does so will look at the deck matching the symbol on the token, choosing one God from the top two, and then placing it onto the pantheon board.
And this is where 7 Wonders Duel: Pantheon expansion gets interesting. Placing a God card closer to your opponent will give them access to that God in Age II or III at a lower cost, whilst placing it closer to you will make it cheaper for you. By reading the game, a player can use this feature to either help their own strategy, or hinder that of their opponent. If your opponent has a warlike strategy, for example, then you might place a relatively useless God close to them that will enhance their science. Alternatively, if you are focussed on science yourself, then you might want that God closer to you.
Either way, when these Gods are placed (and there will always be four) they will be face down during Age I and unavailable… When the cards for Age II are placed out, the God cards are flipped over so that both players can see them. In addition, three belief tokens will be placed on the Age II cards – these give a randomised discount on purchasing God cards, creating interesting decisions when choosing which cards to take during the second Age.
7 Wonders Duel: Pantheon is a very simple expansion which adds relatively few major rules to the base game, and no new symbols or additional play time. In addition to the pantheon board, the tokens and the God cards, the only other components are a set of temple cards which replace the Age III guilds and then a couple of new wonders – and this keeps things really focussed. I don’t think I would ever play 7 Wonders Duel without 7 Wonders Duel Pantheon now, and I think this is an essential expansion.
7 Wonders Duel: Pantheon can be purchased on Amazon.
7 Wonders Duel: Agora Expansion
Having just explained how wonderful the Pantheon expansion is thanks to its simplicity, I am now going to explain how 7 Wonders Duel: Agora adds significant complexity to your game, but nonetheless it still takes 7 Wonders Duel to another level. A much more complex expansion, 7 Wonders Duel: Agora adds yet another new board (the senate) which comes with a large number of randomly chosen mandate tokens, a deck of senator cards (to add into your Age I, II and III decks), a deck of conspiracy cards and then a handful of other components.
The main thrust of 7 Wonders Duel: Agora is the senate – and taking control of the different mandates on offer. Now, when military power advances, so too does your power in the senate (replacing the coin cost that used to represent progress either way on the military track) and taking control of the available mandates (by having more senator cubes than your opponent) is critical. New cards shuffled into the decks also do this, but critically, most cards will only influence mandates in one of the specific quarters of the senate.
7 Wonders Duel: Agora Expansion can be purchased on Amazon.
Conspiracy cards are powerful new effects which can be drawn (usually in two’s), chosen and then “built” in the same way as a wonder, allowing a player who has one to prepare it and potentially spoil their opponents plans in secret, whilst the other player will be constantly guessing as to what is printed on a face down, prepared conspiracy card. 7 Wonders Duel: Agora can add a particularly aggressive feel to 7 Wonders Duel, but for experienced players, it offers a lot of ways to manipulate the game that were not present before.
Whilst 7 Wonders Duel: Agora is a lot more complicated than 7 Wonders Duel: Pantheon, it is not massively complicated in comparison to some bigger eurogames, and it’s a worth iteration to the basic 7 Wonders Duel formula. One word of warning though, whilst it is possible to play with both 7 Wonders Duel: Agora and 7 Wonders Duel: Pantheon, I would not recommend this for new players. Taken together, the two expansions do materially elevate the amount of things you’ll need to think about in 7 Wonders Duel and the game no longer feels like quite the same entry-level experience as the base game alone, or even with 7 Wonders Duel: Pantheon.
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