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7 Wonders: Architects and Medals Expansion Review

  • Reading time:11 mins read

7 Wonders: Architect is a reimplementation of the highly acclaimed board game 7 Wonders. In this game, players race to construct a wonder while engaging in battles and making scientific progress.

Gameplay

The gameplay is straightforward and can be taught in a matter of minutes. Setup is also quick and easy with each player receiving a box containing a deck of cards and a wonder. The wonder decks are placed between each player and the player to the left, resulting in two face-up decks on both sides of every player. Also, a shared face-down deck is placed in the middle of the table. On their turn, players either select a card from the two face-up decks or draw blindly from the shared deck. Most turns trigger different effects and actions.

Wonders

Every Wonder has 5 stages, each outlining specific resource requirements. When a player meets the requirements for a stage, they must discard the necessary resource cards and construct it. Each stage rewards points and some stages provide additional actions.

The action triggered by the stages of each Wonder is unique, creating an asymmetric gameplay experience. Additionally, each Wonder deck offers a different combination of cards, resulting in diverse strategies in each play.

Green Cards and Progress Tokens

Green cards symbolize scientific progress in the game. When a player acquires two of the same type or three different types, they must discard these cards to claim a progress token. These tokens offer various benefits such as extra actions, victory points, or military power. Some of these tokens are highly valuable, prompting players to compete for them when they are on display. While pursuing a scientific strategy can make a player more powerful and potentially yield significant points, it requires sacrificing valuable actions to collect green cards. So, the scientific strategy has its time and place and may not always be the best approach.

Red Cards and Battles

Red cards represent military power. Some of these cards have horn icons, and once a set number of horn icons (depending on the number of players) have entered the game, battle commences. Similar to 7 Wonders, players compare their military power to that of each of the players on their two sides, and score points if they are stronger. Then, all cards with horns are discarded. Like scientific progress, the military strategy can be unpredictable and may not always be the most effective approach.

Blue Cards

Blue cards are straightforward. They either score 3 victory points outright or grant the player the cat pawn, which allows looking at the top card of the shared face-down deck before drawing. This cat pawn is an excellent mechanic in the game and was highly sought after in our plays. It can sometimes be used strategically to better prepare for battles or prevent an opponent from acquiring a progress token or a crucial resource.

Components

The organization of components in this game is almost flawless. Each wonder comes with a dedicated tray to store its cardboard pieces and a removable cardholder for its deck of cards, making setup a breeze and keeping everything tidy. Additionally, the cover of these trays displays the rules for each wonder. An extra tray is provided for the shared deck and other cardboard tokens, although it could benefit from more compartments for better organization.

Our Thoughts

This game pleasantly surprised us. While we already enjoyed 7 Wonders, we weren’t sure about Architects. However, it quickly became a favourite that frequently hits our table, often for multiple consecutive plays. With its simple rules, easy setup, smooth turns, exciting gameplay, and a short playtime of around 10-15 minutes, Architects is one of the best filler games we have ever played.

Luck plays a significant role in this game. For example, your strategy may heavily rely on military power, yet red cards with horns fail to appear. Similarly, you may find yourself just one resource short of completing your wonder and ending the game but struggle to find it while your opponents keep drawing resources. Despite these unpredictable elements, the game remains enjoyable. Frustration from bad luck has been rare throughout our tens of plays. Regardless of the outcome, everyone at our table had a great time in almost every play.

Our games were consistently close, with differences of only 1 or 2 points, or even ties, being common. Rarely did we encounter games where the score difference was substantial. This added an extra layer of excitement to every play.

The game is designed for 2 to 7 players. While we’ve only played with 3 players (and found it perfect) I believe it would also work very well with four players. However, I have doubts about larger groups, as waiting times between turns could become an issue. Even though the turns are quick, waiting for your turn in a 7-player game might be too much, especially considering that players are only influenced by those adjacent to them most of the time.

One issue we identified with the game mechanics is the lack of compensation for players who start later in turn order at the beginning of the game. This could be easily resolved by introducing a start player marker and a rule where, after the endgame is triggered, all players before the start player would get an additional turn, so everyone has the same number of turns.

Overall, 7 Wonders: Architects is an excellent choice as a family or gateway game. The combination of simple rules, quick playtime, and easy setup makes it perfect for any occasion with all types of gamers. This game has earned its place in our collection and has become a top choice for quick fillers.

The Medals Expansion

Medals, the only expansion for 7 Wonders Architects, has been released recently. The main addition to the game in this expansion is a new mechanic called medals, which are objectives that reward 4 victory points. During setup, one medal is placed between every two players and the first player who achieves the objective claims the medal. This creates a race among players with their neighbours for these objectives. Also, an advanced variant in the rulebook suggests adding 2 shared medals during setup, which any player can claim.

The expansion includes a total of 12 medals, with only a random subset entering the game each time. The objectives associated with these medals range from collecting specific types or numbers of cards to constructing a specific stage of the wonder before your neighbours.

Medals also introduces two new wonders. One of these wonders grants the cat pawn and an extra action as its special power. The other one’s action is stealing a card from another player. However, despite the target player receiving a random card from the shared deck as compensation, we didn’t like the take-that nature of this power and after a few plays, we opted not to include the wonder in our games.

It’s important to note that the advantage for the first player is even more pronounced with the addition of the Medals expansion. Players who start earlier in turn order enjoy a slight edge in achieving objectives and claiming medals.

We enjoy playing the 7 Wonders: Architects with the Medals expansion and have never played without it since adding it to the game. It’s worth noting, however, that the addition of medals increases the impact of luck, which can lead to swingy outcomes at times. With the advanced rules, we experienced games where one player collected multiple medals and became impossible to beat. However, that was a rare event and didn’t stop us from enjoying the excitement the expansion brings to the game. Even though the base game is fun on its own, this expansion makes it even better with almost no impact on the setup time.

Disclosure: We received a review copy of this game. Also, there may be an affiliate link in the links included at the end of this article.


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