The Surviving 7 Wonders guide will help new players with tips to survive their first few games and to avoid being crushed by other civilizations in 7 Wonders, a board game from Repos Production. 7 Wonders is a drafting tableau building game where each player develops their civilization over the course of three ages. Follow these tips to become competitive faster. The Surviving 7 Wonders guide will work for the first and second editions of 7 Wonders equally.
Check out our article on rules resources to learn how to play.
Resources
Develop your resource availability early. You need access to one of each rare resource and three of each common resource to build any card that comes up. The multi resource cards such as caravansery can help get you to that magic three number for common resources, or shore up any gaps in your rare resource pool. Keep in mind, you can always buy resources from your neighbors.
Your target should be access to one of each resource (common & rare) coming out of the first age, and three common and one rare coming out of the second age.
Note: Ghiza and Rhodos require a fourth common resource – ensure you have access to it via trade to avoid building resource buildings you do not need.
Strategy
Determine a strategy path early and try to stick to it. The paths are war, science, trade/money, and monuments. For most of these themes, combining two is necessary to win. If science is your selected path, go in as hard as possible. Science yields multiplicative returns.
Wonder
Build your wonder as soon as you can. Some of the powers help you more the earlier they exist. Because cards in later ages are worth more per card than earlier ages, you invest less point density for earlier wonder builds.
Guilds
When you get to the third age, purple guild cards are available. You will only have a subset of the available guilds, which will either help you or help your opponents. Capitalize on purple cards as possible as they can be victory points dense for a focused theme. However, do not be shy about selling a guild if it does not return points and your opponent can make a killing from it.
Focus on your Tableau
In 7 Wonders your primary focus should be on your tableau. Building to deny opponents a specific card is not often a winning strategy. Focus instead on the development of your civilization.
Building wonders and selling cards for three gold is the ideal time to deny your opponents the cards they need.
Focus on your Neighbors
Your immediate neighbors are your secondary focus. They have the biggest impact on your game. Look for:
- Trade (resources): neighbors could provide resources you don’t have direct access to for a cost. Don’t forget, resources provided by commercial cards and wonder levels are not available for trade.
- Trade (coins): by prioritizing resources your opponent doesn’t have, you can encourage them to buy from you.
- Military: If you tie in military points, you can avoid the one point penalty while denying your opponent a victory token. If you beat by one or more points you earn a victory token. Sometimes you can earn a cheap military victory by building an unexpected last minute military card. Don’t forget to count the military points obtained from wonders.
If you enjoyed 7 Wonders, pick up your own copy of the game from your friendly local game store or click the link below.
Check out the YouTube version of this guide below.
