ABSOLUTE ASCENDANCY

There are seven types of cards which can be purchased.

1. Raw Materials – Tier 1 resources required to build other buildings
2. Manufactured Goods – Tier 2 resources required to build other buildings
3. Civilian Buildings – Purely for victory points
4. Scientific Buildings – Grant you a scientific symbol. A player needs six different symbols (out of a total of 7) to achieve Scientific Supremacy. Collecting 2 of a kind allows a player to take a progress token which grants them a benefit for the remainder of the game. There are 10 progress tokens, but only 5 are available in each game.
5. Commercial Buildings – Helps acquire money and reduce the cost to pay for additional resources beyond what your city can produce.
6. Military Buildings – Bolsters your military power. There is a track which monitors the military strength between the two players. From the centre point, there are nine spaces on either side. If a player manages to push the military pawn to their opponent’s end, the game immediately ends in Military Supremacy.
7. Guilds – These score victory points based on specific criteria as specified on the card.

2. Discard the Card

Discarding the chosen card allows that player to gain 2 coins + 1 additional coin for every commercial building they have constructed.

3. Construct a Wonder

Each player also has 4 wonders that they can build, which grant special one-off abilities once completed. A total of 7 wonders can be built throughout the game so whoever builds their 4th wonder first, denies the other player from building their 4th.

Strategy

One of the things which drew me to the original 7 Wonders and what also exists in 7 Wonders Duel is the multiple paths to victory aspect. There are various ways of getting victory points, so each player is free to choose a strategy best befitting their preference or availability of cards. There is also a degree of flexibility in pivoting course throughout the game, without suffering too much drawback of being left behind. A player may choose to focus exclusively on one of the victory conditions or diversify and aim to gather points through various avenues.

I like the Military and Scientific Supremacy win conditions as these can force your opponent to choose cards outside of their strategy to prevent those win conditions from occurring. In doing so, this could potentially open up other strong cards for a player to choose from instead. Maybe a player wants to take a scientific card, but because they have their back against the wall in terms of military, they are forced to choose a military card instead. The converse could also be true.

Some Wonders allow a player to take an additional turn in a row. This becomes especially important when trying to manipulate turn order. There is an element of strategy involved when choosing which card to take each turn. You always want to try and force your opponent to take a card which would then lead to 1 or more new cards becoming available for you to pick from. Having the ability to take two turns in a row can help facilitate your position such that the above situation can occur more frequently.

Sounds obvious but do choose resource cards based not only on the requirements of your four wonders but also take into consideration the resources needed by your opponent to build theirs, to deny them those resources. Generally speaking, you should aim to gather 2-3 raw resources and 1-2 manufactured goods to form your city production.

Another thing I really like about 7 Wonders Duel that isn’t present in other games that I have is that the rulebook lists a full inventory of available cards to choose from in each age, as well as all of the different wonders and other available components. It is a good idea to review the full list of cards so you can gain a good understanding of all of the prerequisite relationships that exist between cards, as well as the distribution of types of cards across each age. This can help you understand exactly what cards could be available each age and allow you to make better decisions overall.