So, birthday number 31 has been and gone and it’s been a pleasant one. It’s been a rather more low-key affair than last year’s few days of awesomeness that Andie arranged, but it’s still been a fine day filled with good friends, board and computer games, cookies, coffee and Catan.

I wanted to talk a little bit about two of the board games we played today that weren’t Catan — 7 Wonders and Lords of Waterdeep. These two titles are relatively new to me (in fact, today was the first time I’d even seen Lords of Waterdeep, let alone played it) but I like them both a great deal. They’re very different from one another, so let’s take them one at a time.

7 Wonders is a card game based around the concept of civilisation-building. Unlike many other civ-building games, however, a game of 7 Wonders is over and done with relatively quickly thanks to its simple, elegant mechanics.

The game is split into three “ages”, each of which has its own deck of cards. These are dealt out equally to each player to give them a unique hand. Each player then picks one of the cards from the hand and passes the rest on to the next player. Some cards may be built for free, some require the payment of gold coins (represented by cardboard chits) and some require specific resources to use.

Resources are depicted in an abstract manner by cards — unlike games like Catan, though, they are not expended when used. Rather, they represent a player’s potential to produce a certain amount of that resource per turn. For example, if a player has two cards with “wood” symbols down on the table, they may play a card which requires one or two “wood” resources to use, but the wood is not expended in the process. In order to get the ball rolling, each civilisation has its own “starting resource” which it doesn’t require any cards to make use of — and player may pay gold to one another to “borrow” resources. Again, this does not expend the other player’s resources, nor does it stop them from using the same resources themselves.

Cards are split into several different types — basic resources (wood, stone, brick, ore), luxury resources (glass, silks, papyrus), trade buildings (which generally allow players to acquire resources from other players for cheaper), point cards (which simply score points), guild cards (which provide bonuses at the end of the game for certain specific cards), military cards (which represent a civilisation’s military strength in an abstract manner) and science cards. Science cards form the basis of the game’s most complex mechanic — collecting sets of the same type of “science” provides the player with points to the value of the number of cards squared, while collecting one of each of the three “science” symbols provides the player with a further 7 points.

Players may also choose to build a stage of their civilisation’s Wonder. This costs several resources and prevents the player from using a card that turn in the process — however, this can be a good strategic means of preventing the next player from getting a card they really want. Building a Wonder stage either provides the player with points or a special ability of some description. Some allow cards to be acquired for free, others allow players to rifle through the discard deck and build something which is already out of play, others still bend the rules in different ways.

At the end of each “age”, players tot up their military strength cards and compare them to the players on either side of where they are sitting. If their military strength is greater than their neighbour, they gain a point bonus that increases with each “age”. If it is weaker, they take a score penalty. This remains the same — -1 — in each stage of the game.

At the end of the game, all scores are totalled up and whoever has the most points wins. Simple.

7 Wonders is a fun game because it’s quick to pick up and understand (despite what my description above may read like to you, it’s actually fairly straightforward to learn even if you’re a complete board game newbie) and fast-paced. There’s little in the way of “analysis paralysis” as people agonise over which cards to play, and you can get through an entire game in well under an hour. Despite its brisk pace, it has plenty of depth, though, and various randomised elements provide each session with a degree of variety.

Recommended, then.

Lords of Waterdeep, meanwhile, is a Dungeons and Dragons-themed building game where each player is competing to score the most victory points by the end of a limited number of turns. Most of these victory points come from the completion of “quests”, most of which require the expenditure of resources and money — in this case, the resources being adventurers of various types. This is D&D, after all!

The basic gameplay is quite similar to Agricola. A variety of “action spaces” are available on the board, and players take it in turns to place one of their “agents” on a space to claim it and perform its action. These actions range from simply taking resources or currency to more complex activities such as playing “intrigue cards”.

Quests are completed simply by having the appropriate combination of resources on hand, at which point the player flips over the completed quest card and takes any rewards printed on it. Quests are divided into several different categories, and at the start of the game each player receives a secret card telling them which categories of completed quests will score them bonus points at the end of the game.

The aforementioned “intrigue cards” provide a lot more interaction than something like Agricola in that they are typically used to attack other players or benefit whoever is playing them in some way. Some cards allow the player to steal resources from others. Others simply force other players to give up resources, or allow the player playing the card an extra turn. They can turn the tide of a round completely almost immediately, and provide great scope for both laughs and wanting to throw chairs at your opponents.

Players may also build buildings in the city, which become extra action spaces but typically provide a bonus to whoever “owns” the building when used. The exact buildings which turn up in the game are randomised, too, so there’s an element of chance and uncertainty to what is coming up rather than the more predictable turn order of Agricola.

I enjoyed Lords of Waterdeep a lot. I’d need to play it a few more times to understand its nuances, but I felt like I understood what I was doing a lot better than Agricola. (I am constantly comparing to Agricola because mechanically it is relatively similar, though arguably less complex.) At no point did I feel I was “out of my depth” or being “left behind” — there was always something worthwhile to do, but it never felt like there were too many things to do and not enough time to do them in, which is my biggest bugbear with Agricola. It’s not a “beginners'” game by any means, but for those who enjoy a good Eurogame and have any fondness for D&D, it’s a worthwhile investment of your time.

Two great games, then; if you’re a board game fan, be sure to check ’em out. And if you’re at all interested in the hobby but perhaps don’t know a great deal about it, I strongly suggest you check out Wil Wheaton’s new YouTube show Table Top, in which he sits down with a variety of famous people (well, famous geeks, mostly) to play a game, explaining it along the way. It’s a good way to get a feel for how a game works — including the dynamic of group interaction during play. So far they’ve covered Catan and Small World.

And on that note, time for bed, I think. Night-night.

Pete, age 31