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…