7 Wonders Duel is about what you’d expect when you redesign a game that goes up to 7 players to allow only 2. That’s not to say it’s bad, only that its balance between systems to interact with and players to interact with is a bit off. Fortunately, the systems here are enjoyably tight and have been buffed up with a pristine level of polish by veteran game authors Bauza and Cathala. Nevertheless, a game of 7 Wonders Duel feels as much like playing against it as it does your opponent. Co-operative games notwithstanding, that is rarely a good thing. No aspect of the game’s design plays to the strengths of 2-player experiences. You spend more mental energy calculating cost benefit analyses and counting icons than you do on responding to the other player’s actions. Because of this, 7 Wonders Duel, though cleverly built, is a somewhat lifeless game of resource optimization and multi-tasking that falls short of creating a compelling competitive dynamic between its players.
The main thing 7 Wonders Duel succeeds at, and much of the praise it has been awarded is due to this, is updating the diverse elements of 7 Wonders to work smoothly in the context of 1v1. It is still a tableau builder played across three rounds called “Ages”, but player-to-player card drafting, 7 Wonders‘ mechanic magnefique, has been significantly retooled into a solitaire-esque spatial puzzle where cards are arranged in overlapping patterns and players take turns selecting from those unencumbered. Thusly, player selections free up cards underneath, creating pathways toward others that may be highly desirable for one or both. Some cards start face up so can be included in your planning from the very first turn, while others are arranged face down and only reveal themselves when they become available to the players. Card utilization itself is mostly unchanged: they can be added to your tableau by paying their cost, burnt for some cash (very useful for destroying something your opponent needs but you have no use for), or used incidentally to build one of your “Wonders”, four of which are drafted by each player at the game’s beginning. Once in your tableau, cards can provide everything from resources to cash to new abilities to raw victory points, all just like the original.
While the beating heart of the game is still very much 7 Wonders, a multitude of adjustments and additions make it a very different game. One big change is that trade is no longer handled by buying resources produced by your neighbor but is instead an open market where everything is available at all times. Be careful, though! Prices are driven up when your opponent produces resources of the same type you are purchasing (there is such a thing as supply and demand, after all). Military has also been tweaked and is now measured via a tug-of-war-like track running between the two players. While it is only scored once at the very end, pushing ahead mid-game can result in the destruction of your opponent’s funds or even immediate, game-ending victory. Another system seeing updates is Science, which is no longer the set collection point bonanza it once was. Here, it mainly functions as a way to earn bonus abilities. By collecting two science cards depicting the same symbol, players earn “Progress Tokens” from a predetermined offer which have a variety of powerful effects. Also, much like military, science has been bolstered with the possibility of an instant game over if either player at any point collects 6 distinct symbols of science. The implication of such additions are indeed intriguing, but the majority of games of 7 Wonders Duel will still end the traditional way: by tallying up players scores at the end of the third age.
Everything in 7 Wonders Duel is well thought out and frictionless. It is very evidently the product of well-established designers, and careful attention was paid to make it appeal to competitive cutthroats, the conflict-averse, and everyone between. Though direct player interaction is limited, there are still plenty of ways to influence your opponent’s decision space — by driving up the cost of resources, blocking them out of cards they need, amassing threatening amounts of science or military, etc. Additionally, the inclusion of multiple victory conditions forces you into a juggling act where paying due attention to the other player’s actions and responding tactically is crucial lest you suffer an abrupt and shameful defeat. It’s perfectly brainy stuff, but this pile of rules and considerations also creates a mechanical chasm that keep the players at an unfortunate distance from one another. Look at titles like Battle Line, Android: Netrunner, or Santorini, which smash their players’ brains together so hard they practically switch places, and 7 Wonders Duel just feels ineffectual by comparison.
The best 2-player designs tend to be games of information, domination, or some combination of the two — games that make the rules disappear so two minds can contend with each other as intimately as possible. 7 Wonders Duel fails at this, and it doesn’t even try not to. Its information isn’t malleable; you cannot bluff, mislead, or lay traps. Points are not awarded for besting your opponent in territorial skirmishes or battles of wits, but by linearly acquiring resources through a series of card selections. I’m not saying that every game needs to focus primarily on mind-games and open conflict, but they should at least feel eventful. So while there’s definitely a time and place for more relaxed designs of this nature, the 2-player format is rarely it. Systems-heavy games with lots of moving bits to track, and resources to collect, and engines to build, and what have you work better with more players for a number of reasons. Some structural: more players means more inputs into the systems so a greater amount of the game state and decision space are determined by player choice. Some social: complex systems should typically be balanced with appropriate levels of drama and theming to avoid becoming dry; having more players gives designers more options for achieving this. And some purely utilitarian: more time to think and plan between turns. Obviously not every design is going to magically get better if you just keep expanding it to accommodate more and more players, but that’s exactly my point. Every rule, mechanism, and system that has ever and will ever exist is going to have a sweet spot for the amount of players it works best for, and the rules, mechanisms, and systems in 7 Wonders Duel, in my estimation, aren’t in it.
The cultural importance of the 2-player board game cannot be overstated. Games like Chess, Go, and Backgammon have been played for thousands of years, and their longevity and legacies can only be ascribed to the powerful effect they have on the people they bring together. They allow family, friends, and strangers alike to see sides of each other not visible by any other means. To design for two is to forge new possibilities of understanding between people more directly than any other type of game can, a noble pursuit when approached with the gravity it deserves. The intimacy of the 2-player game is as sacrosanct an experience as those in this hobby get. Anyhow, this has become less of a review of 7 Wonders Duel and more of a treatise on 2-player board games at large, but that’s the only way to explain why I don’t like the game more than I do. Yes, it is well designed, polished, tight, tactical, and a thousand other complimentary words that good board games are. But for me, it doesn’t quite satisfy. Because when I sit across the table from a friend, loved one, or even a casual acquaintance I want to play something that is going to bring us closer, even if it’s by putting us at each other’s throats.
7 Wonders Duel gets a rating of THREE out of FIVE, indicating it is WORTHWHILE.