An Edifice is a large and complex structure. These imposing buildings were (or are) often worked on for several years (sometimes even eras) and by different parties. Think of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona!
Edifice is also the name of the latest expansion of the popular 7 Wonders, from Repos Production and Asmodee. In 7 Wonders, players each build their own city and associated wonder, but with the arrival of Edifice, they can jointly work on these Edfices. Is this semi-cooperative approach a great foundation or a ruin?
7 Wonders
For players unfamiliar with 7 Wonders, a brief review, from our earlier review:
“7 Wonders is a card game in which players try to collect cards in three eras (rounds) to (among other things) build their city. Collecting cards is done through so-called drafte. At the beginning of an era, each player is dealt 7 cards of that era. From these cards, a player chooses 1 card to build and gives the remaining cards there to the player to his or her left or right (depending on the era). This continues until player gets 2 cards in hand. Players then choose another card and the other card disappears to the discard pile.
By selling cards, you get three coins that can be used to buy resources or goods or to earn victory points. By building, you place cards as buildings in your city. Brown cards produce resources, grey cards produce goods, yellow cards allow you to “trade”, red cards represent military power, green cards mean scientific progress and blue cards provide victory points. In the third era, a number of purple guild cards are also shuffled through the deck, allowing players to complete tasks to earn even more victory points.
To build cards, you sometimes have to “pay” for the raw materials or goods indicated. That means you must have the production lines for these raw materials or goods present in your city. In other words, you must have the right brown and grey cards. If you don’t have enough raw materials, you can possibly “buy” them from your neighbours if they are present in their town by paying coins. Similarly, you can place a card face-down during draftee to build on your monument. Building a monument earns bonuses and victory points.
At the end of an era, players compare their military power with their immediate neighbours. The player with the most power receives victory points and the player with the least power receives minus points. At the end of the game, players receive points for their monuments, coins, blue buildings, scientific progress, guilds and more. The player with the most points receives everlasting glory!”
Edifice
Like the game setup of 7 Wonders (each player gets a unique player board and a hand of cards per era), the setup of Edifice is not much more complex than the basic game. Edifice contains 15 different double-sided building cards: five each in of eras I, II and III. For each era, players choose a (random) building card; place these cards project side up in the centre of the table. On each building card, players place 2-5 building miniatures of the relevant era. The amount of figurines used depends on the number of players playing this game.
The course of the game follows the regular rules set of 7 Wonders, but players have a possible extra action they can take during a turn. If you build a level of your wonder during an era, you can pay the cost of the building card for the current era (on top of the cost of the level of your wonder) and take a building miniature from that particular card. If there are no more figures on a building, the card is turned over and players receive the displayed reward. If at the end of the era there is at least one figure left on the card, each player without such a miniature gets the corresponding penalty and possibly even a debt (minus points at the end of the game).
Conclusion
7 Wonders remains a modern classic and this expansion adds another layer without compromising the accessibility or speed of the base game. Edifice brings an interesting new choice to life and gives players extra options for (minus) points. Edifice is a solid (as a rock built house) addition to your collection – just be beware that a slumlord doesn’t steal it from your games cabinet.
