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…
You’re relaxing at home, enjoying a rewatch of Akira Kurosawa’s seminal 1954 action film Seven Samurai, when a thought pops into your head: “Someone should adapt this into a co-operative version of Blackjack and also add furries.” Your heart sinks. You’re thinking those dangerous thoughts again, the ones your therapist warned you about. You entreat your brain to come back to reality as intense feelings of disassociation sweep over you once again. A few harrowing minutes pass. Gradually, you return from the abyss. You barely made it this time. You schedule another appointment with your therapist. Two weeks later, you are on Board Game Geek browsing through Antoine Bauza’s list of published games. You really like 7 Wonders, so you want to see what else he’s made. You are just about to ask yourself why this French dude is so obsessed with China and Japan when you see it: Samurai Spirit. It’s co-operative Blackjack. And it has furries. You cancel the appointment. Of all the games in the world that don’t need to exist, I think Samurai Spirit might not need to exist the most. Thematically, it’s pure dreck, an insipid knock off of a classic piece of cinema with the nauseating addition of furry transformations. Mechanically, it’s a crude co-op puzzler largely determined by the shuffle of the deck. The production is decent enough, but decent illustrations of furry samurai men are still illustrations of furry samurai men. If you’re in the mood for a laugh, check out the “Author’s Notes” section at the end…