World Wonders
- Board's Eye View
- 13 minutes ago
- 2 min read
World Wonders is a drafting and city building game designed by Zé Mendes, published by MeepleBR in Brazil and Arcane Wonders. Players have individual boards on which they will be placing out buildings and wonders of the world, as well as tracks that show their gold, population and other resources. The game is played over 10 rounds and players start each round with 7 gold, which you spend to buy tiles to immediately place on your board.
The polyomino tiles represent buildings, and they give you resources that increase your population and potentially score you end-game points. They always have to be connected to a road or a tile of the same colour. Tho' everyone is building their own separate city, World Wonders is highly interactive because polyomino tiles aren't replaced during a round: if you take a three-square tile, there won't be another one available for me to take this round. The exceptions are the monuments that represent Wonders of the World, for which three are always available. These each have specific placement requirements but they always cost you all of your remaining coins... That means they are best taken after you've spent most of your coins to acquire roads and polyominoes. However, waiting for the most economically advantageous time to take a monument is a push-your-luck decision because someone might just jump in ahead of you to nab that monument. And, of course, the monuments score you victory points...
It's the eponymous World Wonder monuments that give this game its striking table presence: each one is a unique painted wooden construct or set of constructs. Early on in the game, it's usually quite easy to earmark places where monuments can go but as your board fills over the course of the game so you find there are monuments that you just can't fit into your tableau. For the most part, World Wonders plays briskly at all player counts but if your experience mirrors our plays at Board's Eye View, you'll find turns take noticeably longer in the last couple of rounds.
And if you enjoy this game as much as we have, you'll want to add the Mundo Wonders Pack that adds another nine painted wooden world wonder monuments to mix in with the 21 wonders in the core game. It's not an essential add-on but you'll particularly appreciate it if you are playing World Wonders at higher player counts.
