7 Wonders Duel

You and one opponent alternate plucking cards from a shared pyramid of 20 cards per Age, where lower rows are face-up and upper rows face-down; only cards uncovered (not partially overlapped by another card) are takeable. The repeated action is the small ritual of scanning the tableau, weighing what your opponent will pick if you reveal it, then sliding a card out and either building it (paying resource costs from your tableau or coins), discarding it for 2+ coins, or burying it under one of your four wonder slots to construct a wonder. Reveals cascade: taking a card flips whatever was hiding under it, sometimes giving the opponent a free turn of perfect information.

Setup: deal three Age decks into pre-printed pyramid layouts (Age I: 4 rows, Age III: a chevron with bonus face-down rows). Each turn, the active player takes one accessible card and resolves it (build/discard/wonder); play continues until the Age's pyramid is empty, then military and progress tokens trigger, and the next Age deals. Three Ages, ~20 cards each. The game ends instantly via military supremacy (conflict pawn reaches enemy capital — at +9 toward you), scientific supremacy (collect 6 of 7 distinct science symbols), or, failing those, after Age III on victory points (civilian/commercial/wonder/guild scores summed). Wonders are limited to 7 total constructed across both players, so the seventh wonder built denies the eighth its slot — a famous 'one short' tension.

Every pick is a four-axis decision: do I want this card's effect, do I want to deny it to my opponent (cards I can't afford are still draftable to discard), do I want to construct a wonder using it as fuel (some wonders give an extra turn or token-steal), and what does taking it reveal? The option space is small at any single decision (typically 2-6 accessible cards) but extremely deep because revealing a card hands the opponent free information. The hard part is threat assessment across three simultaneous victory paths: ignore military and you lose to a rush; ignore science and you lose to a 6-symbol sudden-death; ignore civilian VPs and you lose the points race. The pyramid layout means tempo (who moves next, who picks up double-turn tokens) is its own resource.

Top skills are opponent-threat reading (counting their science symbols and military shields every turn, calibrating when to switch from your engine into a denial-pick), tempo and sequencing (which card unlocks which downstream pick — and on which side of the table), and resource curve management (your buildings 'chain' so an early Stone Reserve pays for free for the rest of the game). Pattern recognition matters because progress tokens and guild scoring create combinatorial endgame value. Math is constant but small: shield counts, science pairs, coin arithmetic. Memory load is moderate — you must remember discarded cards because some wonders let you resurrect them.

Build a Mediterranean civilization in 30 minutes against one rival — choose your path: army it down, out-science it, or out-build it on monuments and culture.

Miguel Coimbra's signature illustration: warm earth-and-gold palette, painterly architectural studies of ancient wonders, micro-detail medallions on every card. The aesthetic is romantic-orientalist 'old empires' — sand, marble, copper — recognizable across his 7 Wonders / Small World / Cyclades body of work. High production gloss; cards read crisply at 18 inches.