- Designer: Antoine Bauza
- Publisher: Repos Production
- Time: 30 minutes (45-60 minutes for the team game)
- Ages: 10 and up
- # of players: 2-8
- Times Played: 3 with a pre-production copy
The real trick for any expansion is to, well, expand the scope of the
game in some way that doesn’t mess up the goodness of the original
creation. In the case of 7 Wonders, that means you have to add
more choices to the game without adding extraneous fiddly rules and/or
mechanics – the streamlined nature of the base game is a key part of its
popularity.
I’m happy to say that the Cities expansion does exactly that –
possibly better than the already published Leaders expansion (which I
enjoy as well). 7 Wonders: Cities adds new cards to
each age deck to expand the initial hand to 8 cards. These black-faced
cards are the dark underbelly of civilization expansion: spies, gambling
dens, mercenary forces, cemeteries, black markets & the like.
Rather than adding particular cards based on the number of players (as
in the base game), these cards are added randomly – shuffle each set of
Cities cards and add as many cards are there are players in the game.
Most of the new cards cost money – so, for example, you can ramp up your
military at a faster pace if you’re willing to risk running short of
cash.
Living on the edge financially may or may not be a good idea, though,
thanks to one of the new concepts in the game: debt. There are now
cards (and wonder steps) which cause the other players in the game to
lose money – and if they go into the negative, they are forced to take
on debt tokens (similar to military defeat tokens).
The other new game concept is diplomacy. Certain cards (and wonder
steps) enable players to receive an embassy – which forces them to bow
out of the next combat resolution. Their two neighboring players now
attack each other!
Of course, there are two new Wonders in the Cities expansion: Petra
(which is money-hungry) and Bzyantium (which is peace-loving). There are
also new Leader cards that work with the Cities cards as well as three
new Guilds.
Finally, the expansion includes rules for team play. Similar to
Ticket to Ride: Asia, partners sit next to each other – but in this
version, they share hand information and can plot which cards to send on
to their partner. There are some slight changes to combat resolution
(affected by the new diplomacy rules) but otherwise the gameplay is not
substantially different than the original game.
I played one “normal” four player game with the expansion – and we
never saw a diplomacy card. I found the uncertainty added spice to my
decisions – until the hands had passed completely around, I wasn’t sure
how or if my plans were going to work.
I also played two “team” games – one with 4 players & one with 6
players. The team rules make the game a bit longer (45 minutes to an
hour) but there still isn’t a great deal of downtime. The added minutes
are spent consulting with your partner and speculating about how best to
maximize what you’ve been given.
As I said at the beginning of this “first impression”, I think that this is the best expansion (so far!) for 7 Wonders. Even if you’re not a fan of the 7 Wonders: Leaders expansion, I think there’s a lot to like here.
Lots of Catan games played at the house lately... Collin has fallen in love with Klaus Teuber designs, so we've played:
…except
this time around, the numbers on the cards (each player has an
identical deck numbered 0-11) indicate only the order in which your
explorer will move. (Evidently, these explorers are weighted down with
carry-on luggage, extra supplies and/or the cares of the world – they
simply move to the front of the mambo line & stop, exhausted by
their arduous journey.) If you play your zero card, you don’t move… and
if two (or more) explorers play the same number, only the one closest to
the end of the mambo line moves. 
You’d
also like to avoid your posterior meeting up close & personal with
Kali’s buddy – because when the explorer directly in front of the rhino
picks up his brightly-colored beverage with a paper umbrella (not
actually a component in the game – but you get the idea) and gets jiggy
with it to the front of the line, the rhino charges forward until he’s
skids to a stop directly behind the next player in line. The explorer
who is now a hood ornament for the rhino loses 1 point for every space
that the rhino moved.
