Image Courtesy of zefquaaviusThis review continues my series of detailed reviews that attempt to be part review, part resource for anyone not totally familiar with the game. For this reason I expect readers to skip to the sections that are of most interest.
Summary
Game Type - Card Game (Expansion)
Play Time: 25-45 minutes
Number of Players: 2 – 7 (Best 3+)
Mechanics - Card Drafting, Set Collection, Variable Player Powers, Simultaneous Action Selection
Difficulty - Pick-up & Play (Can be learned in 10 minutes and only takes 2-3 plays to get a handle on the thinking required)
Components - Very Good
Release - 2011
Designer - <PERSON>( Ghost Stories, Hanabi, Mystery Express, Takenoko)
What’s the New Take with ‘Leaders’?
Well as the name would suggest, players can now add famous leaders to their developing city states to help them better conquer, construct and commerce their way to victory.
‘Leaders’ also provides a new city state in the form of Rome and also offers up some new Guilds.
I will not be covering the basic play of 7 Wonders in this review. If you would like to know more about the base game I suggest that you check out my review here –
7 Wonders - A Detailed Review
The Components
The expansion box is a funny long but narrow affair and as its size would suggest, the components provided are relatively few...but that is in keeping with the base game. In that same vein, the expansion box is largely empty.
Leader Cards – In all a total of 36 Leaders are offered up by the expansion. They feature good quality art in keeping with the base game and 1 of the cards is left without a power to allow owners to create their own power. I don't tend to do that sort of thing so I am unsure if I should use it or not, meaning the game may only have 35 Leader Cards (36 if you grabbed the <PERSON> Promo Card from the Spielbox Magazine).
Image Courtesy of lacxox
New Guild Cards – In all 4 new Guild Cards are provided. 299
I will discuss each of these in turn later in the review.
Image Courtesy of lacxox
Rome City State – A new City State is provided in the form of Rome. This is a solid inclusion and its powers are based around the new Leader mechanics.
Images Courtesy of acquarian
6 Value Coins and Courtesan Token – Due to the higher starting Gold totals and ability to generate greater wealth, Leaders provides 6 value coin tokens and the Courtesan Token is used in conjunction with a Leader...more on her later.
Image Courtesy of <PERSON> – Due to the ability to score for Leaders, the expansion offers up a new scorepad with an extra row for this purpose. In truth the old scorepad can still be used by simply adding any points earned by Leaders to another score and that's what I plan to do when I exhaust my Leaders scorepad.
Image Courtesy of <PERSON> and Storage – The rules are really well put together...leaving no room for ambiguity and only taking up 2-3 narrow pages to explain how 'Leaders' can be added to the base game. The rulebook in truth is mostly filled with Leader Card explanations and there is a nice mini-bio section on each of the Leaders and the basic role they played in history.
The game fits comfortably into the base game box but I have even seen some images where people are managing to fit everything into the expansion box. Either way it simply means that only 1 box needs to be transported to game sessions and the other can be left on the shelf or thrown out to save space.
All in all the component quality of the expansion is on par with the base game and looks right at home. Did it need such a big box...not really (although there would be no way to fit that Rome board into a smaller/alternate shaped box...so maybe I am being a little harsh on this point).
Image Courtesy of <PERSON>
What’s New?
The approach I will take in this review will be to look at each of the new moving parts and discuss their impact on the play of 7 Wonders as a whole.
The Leaders
Drafting – Not surprisingly it is the 36 leaders offered up by the expansion that make for the greatest addition to the base game.
At the start of the game, each player is dealt 4 Leader Cards and using the same drafting system implemented by the base game, each player selects one Leader to keep before passing their hand of remaining cards onto another player, however cards are passed to the right instead of the left and that maintains the alternating draft direction throughout the game.
In this way each player will begin the game with 4 Leaders. 872