Build the Hanging Gardens of Babylon – a review of the game “Architects of the 7 Wonders of the World”

7 Wonders of the World is one of the most popular card games. It works well with families and at parties, and thanks to simple rules, children can also play it. After the basic and two-person versions, it’s time for another proposal that draws the theme and some mechanics from previous titles.

Architects of 7 Wonders of the World is a standalone game that can be played by 2 to 7 players, just like in the original. The size of the packaging is a bit strange and although I have a lot of rectangular boxes, none have such dimensions. The visuals refer to the entire series and I like it very much.

What’s inside? Nicely illustrated though repeating cards, tiles of various shapes for wonders, card holders, progress, conflict and victory tokens, and a cat marker.

It only takes a moment to disassemble the components. Each player chooses one of the wonders and takes the appropriate container. From the center, he takes five tokens and places them in the building according to the picture on the cover, with scaffolding facing up. We put our deck in the dispenser between ourselves and the neighbor on the left. Place the common pile with the Cat, Conflict, and Victory tokens in the center of the table, reveal 3 random progress markers facedown, and place the rest in a facedown pile next to them.

The players take turns in a clockwise direction. In your turn, you need to take one of the top three cards – face down from the common pile in the middle of the table or face up from one of the players’ decks, but only those on your left or right. Then we lecture it in front of us. And that’s a whole round of choice. Now it all depends on what we have chosen.

Red cards provide military strength to resolve conflicts with our neighbors. The blue ones are clear points, and if they also have a picture of a cat on them, take their token to your play area. From now on, we can look at the top card from the closed pile and decide if we want to take it. If someone places another furry symbol, they take the marker along with their skill. Green Science cards allow you to take one of the three revealed progress tokens if you collect two of the same or three different symbols. The gray ones are resources – the combinations shown on the individual wonders of the world allow them to be built, i.e. flipped with the finished side up. Yellow coins, on the other hand, work like jokers – they can replace any resource needed to erect a building.

When someone completes their miracle, the game is over. We count the points from monuments, blue cards, progress and victory tokens, and the cat marker and determine the winner.

There are many changes compared to the previous titles in this series. We do not provide cards as in the original and we do not arrange them in a solitaire way as in the two-person version. This time we get the main deck available to everyone and our own decks, which we always share with our neighbors. This means that we will not be able to access all the cards that will be visible on the table. As in the 7 Wonders of the World, who our teammates on the left and right are of a great importance. They are the ones who can take our cards and surpass us militarily.

The rules for the player area have also been changed. Most cards are discarded after use. They stay blue for a fixed score at the end of the game, and red with no corner symbol. We always put the green, gray and yellow ones on the used pile, thanks to which they do not clutter the table.

The biggest visual change on the plus side is building. Laying down cards in previous games was completely devoid of a climate that is not too much. When I saw the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, my private favorite among the ancient seven wonders of the world, I knew immediately that I had to build them. Seeing a structure with scaffolding and then the end result, we can call ourselves for the first time real builders of old monuments.

We will not experience too much of the atmosphere and this is the case in all three titles in the series. However, for the first time building a wonder is required to complete the game, which, together with the tokens that make up the monuments, gives us more atmosphere than in previous games.

This is not the only advantage of performance. The containers, thanks to which everyone gets their set of elements right away, fit perfectly in the box. If they were not there, the components themselves would take up much less space, so the packaging could also be made smaller. However, I like this arrangement of the entire content, so even the unsuitable size of the box stopped bothering me.

The huge randomness in 7 Wonders of the World has been reduced in the 7 Wonders of the World: Duel edition . Here it is even better, because we always have a choice of two face-up cards and one face-down, and with the help of a cat, everything is visible to us. Although we can only draw a card and put it in front of us, we did exactly the same in the previous scenes.

Negative interaction occurs in a similar amount as in previous versions. You can take the chosen card and arm yourself with red shields. The main competition, on the other hand, concerns the speed of building subsequent parts of the wonder and collecting points from blue cards and progress tokens along the way. The latter can do a lot when they get into the game at the right moment. Provide a variety of bonus actions and endpoints.

Before playing this title, I had a lot of anxiety. The original is much liked by players, and the mixing in popular games generally ends up badly. Accusations of cutting off coupons and using known names are frequent in such cases and, unfortunately, sometimes right. And although I had such opinions before receiving my copy, I was relieved that it was not so. Yes, the subject matter, visuals and some of the rules have remained the same, but for me it is a full-fledged, separate title.

Architects have simplified rules, but I think that for many it is a minus because they got used to the prototype. For example, for me, for example, the equalization of all resources was strange at the beginning, because I had it in my head that bricks or wood are easy to get, while for a vial or papyrus you have to look around and stock up on them when there is an opportunity. Here, all the resources are on an equal footing and the coins have turned into jokers. Also, we don’t have the option of discarding an unwanted card or keeping another card in our play area for longer. This speeds up the gameplay significantly and makes it the shortest game in the series.

I felt the difference quite clearly when playing with different miracles. After raising the next level, we can get points and / or use a unique skill. For example, the Colossus of Rhodes gives us permanent shields that strengthen us militarily, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon provide additional progress tokens. I guess there is a slight problem with the balance of some wonders and their special actions, but in such a simple and fast game, it doesn’t bother me that much. The more satisfaction I get when I manage to win with a less helpful skill.

Architects of 7 Wonders of the World is, in my opinion, a successful title. It may not introduce innovative mechanics, but it is well-made and suitable for quick batches. All three Wonders of the World boxes remain on my shelf for now, and I will gladly show the latest version to my friends who will want to play something light and pleasant.