7 Wonders Duel rules refresher

Read the refresher

You are trying to beat your opponent either by military supremacy, scientific supremacy, or, failing those, by having the most victory points at the end of the third Age. You do it by taking cards from a shared layout and either constructing them as buildings, discarding them for coins, or using them to build your Wonders.

For setup, the board goes between you, the Conflict pawn starts on the neutral space in the middle, and the four Military tokens go face up on their spaces. Shuffle the Progress tokens and place five of them face up on the board; the rest go back in the box. Each player takes seven coins. Then the Wonder draft: shuffle the twelve Wonder cards and lay out four face up. The first player takes one, the second player takes two, the first player takes the leftover. Lay out four more and repeat, but this time the second player picks first. Each player ends with four Wonders. Finally, from each Age deck return three cards to the box without looking, and shuffle three random Guild cards into the Age III deck, returning the other Guilds unseen.

Each Age starts by shuffling that Age's deck and laying out all twenty cards in that Age's pattern, with some rows face up and some face down. The first player begins Age I. On your turn you take one accessible card, meaning a card not partially covered by any other, and you do one of three things with it: construct the building by paying its cost, discard it for coins, or use it face down to construct one of your Wonders. Then reveal any cards that are now uncovered and no longer partly covered. Play alternates until all twenty cards are gone, then you set up the next Age.

On constructing: you pay a card's cost in coins, or in resources, or both. Resources are not spent during construction, so your city's production is available every turn for the whole game, and unless some effect says otherwise, it is never reduced. If you are short a resource you may always buy it from the bank, with no limit on how many you buy. The price of each missing resource is two coins plus the number of that same resource produced by your opponent's brown and grey cards only. Resources from yellow cards and from Wonders never affect trading prices. Some yellow cards fix a resource's price at one coin for you instead. From Age II onwards, many cards show a white chain symbol in their cost area, and if you already own the building that grants that symbol, you construct the new card for free, ignoring its other costs.

If you discard a card instead, you take two coins plus one coin for each yellow card already in your city, and the card goes face down to the discard pile, which either player may look through at any time.

To build a Wonder, you pay the Wonder's cost, not the card's, and slide the card face down under the Wonder. The card itself has no effect. Only seven Wonders can be built in the whole game: the moment the seventh is constructed, the one remaining unbuilt Wonder is returned to the box. Several Wonders let you immediately play a second turn, and you take that turn after revealing newly accessible cards. If a replay would happen when the structure is already empty, it is simply lost.

Every shield on a red card or a Wonder immediately moves the Conflict pawn one space towards your opponent's capital. When the pawn enters a new zone, the active player applies the Military token there, making the opponent lose two or five coins, and that token is then removed from the game. If the pawn ever reaches your opponent's capital, you win immediately.

For science, each time you complete a pair of identical scientific symbols you immediately take one of the Progress tokens from the board and keep it for the rest of the game. Note one Progress token itself counts as a scientific symbol. If you ever hold six different scientific symbols, you win immediately.

When an Age ends, the player with the weaker military, that is, whoever has the Conflict pawn on their side of the board, chooses who begins the next Age. If the pawn is dead centre, the player who played the last card of the Age makes that choice.

The game ends the instant someone achieves military or scientific supremacy, otherwise at the end of Age III. Then add up your military points based on where the Conflict pawn sits, which is zero, two, five, or ten, plus points from your blue, green, yellow and purple cards, points from your Wonders, points from your Progress tokens, and one point for every complete set of three coins in your treasury. Highest total wins. If the totals are tied, the player with more victory points from blue Civilian Buildings wins, and if that is also tied, the players share the victory.

A turn, played out

It is Age II and your turn. You have 6 coins. Among the accessible cards is a red card showing 2 shields that costs 2 stone. Your city has 1 brown card producing stone, so you are 1 stone short. Your opponent has 2 brown cards making stone and a Wonder that also makes stone. The Wonder does not count toward trading, so your missing stone costs 2 plus 2, which is 4 coins. You could discard the card instead. With your 1 yellow card, that would earn you only 3 coins. You decide to build. Your own stone is not spent, so you pay the bank 4 coins and keep 2. The 2 shields push the Conflict pawn 2 spaces toward your opponent's capital. It started 1 space short of the next zone on their side, so it now enters that zone. You apply the Military token there, and your opponent loses 2 coins. That token leaves the game. The face down card your red card was covering is now fully uncovered, so you flip it. Then it is your opponent's turn.