Antoine Bauza

There are games people own, and there are games people play. 7 Wonders is firmly in the second category. You can get 7 players around a table, finish a full three-age civilisation game in 30 minutes, and everyone feels like they made meaningful decisions the whole time. That’s a genuinely rare trick. The secret is simultaneous play. Everyone drafts cards at the same time - you pick one, pass the hand, repeat. No one sits waiting. No one hogs the spotlight. The game just flows. ...

They share a name, a theme, and the same publisher - but play them back to back and you’d be forgiven for wondering if 7 Wonders and 7 Wonders Duel are really the same game at all. The short version: they’re not. One is a simultaneous card-drafting game for three to seven players that plays in 30 minutes. The other is a tense two-player head-to-head that uses completely different drafting architecture and adds three alternative win conditions on top of points. Both are excellent. Neither is simply the “better” one. ...