7 Wonders: Architects

Overview

In 7 Wonders: Architects, the focus is on building your wonders, and every player has a unique wonder with different challenges on completing. They all come with their own model and cards, with which they will form their own decks. They will put these decks face up, between themselves and the player to their left, and the cards in this deck can be used by both players. There will also be a central deck, which is placed face-down. Each game will also have ac couple of "progress tokens" which will score points in various ways. These tokens are picked randomly. There are also a number of conflict and peace tokens for waging war, depending on how many players are in the game.

Unlike the original 7 Wonders, players do not take their actions at the same time, but rather go in turn order, which is a big difference from the original (in our opinion, that is one of the facts that makes the original so great..) At a player's turn, he/she will pick a card either from the left, right, or the central deck, and resolve the card's effect. There are 5 different types of cards, resources cards (just one type of card rather than the two in the original), trade cards, science cards, military cad, and finally the blue generate-vp-cards.

Typically, the resource cards are only used to build your wonder, which you will build in a from bottom to up kind of fashion. Each step typically needs 2 or more resources, sometimes you will 2 of the same kind and other times 2 of different kinds. It typically doesn't matter which resources they are. When you have built a stage of your wonder, you will discard the resources that you used to build that stage. Note that if you're able to build a part of the wonder, you must do so. Also, coins are used as wildcard resources.

Blue cards and the cat token

There is a cat token in the game which you typically get from playing a blue card with the cat token on it, and it grants you the power of sneak peeking at the top card of the central deck, and it's also worth 2 points in the end. If another player has the cat token when you play a card with the token on it, you will snatch it from that player. Blue cards are also played for victory points.

Science cards

Science cards let you grab one of the progress tokens in the center of the board once you have 2 cards of the same type or 3 cards of different types. The progress tokens grant you resources or victory points.

Military cards

Military cards are used to build your military strength in the same way as the original, but some of them also contain a horn icon, and when a card with a horn token is played, you will flip one of the conflict/peace tokens from the peace side to the conflict side. When all of the conflict tokens are flipped, there is a battle, and whoever has the most shields wins the battles, each battle won gives you a token worth 3 points. All the conflict tokens are now flipped to the peace side, and all the military cards are discarded. This lets you build up for another war!

Game end

At the end, each player will count their victory points from their wonders, blue cards, cat token, and military victory tokens. Whoever has the most points is the winner.

As you might have gathered, the gameplay is quite light and has no fuzz, so this might be perfect for families.

7 wonders Architects rule book

The rule book in pdf is avaible right here