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M.J.E. Hendriks
Netherlands
Velp
Gelderland
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7 Wonders
Game Weight: 2.2
Playing Time: 80 min + 45 min
Players: Maaike, Peter, Jaap, Michiel, Sietse
Location: Peter
Date: 10-5-2011
Wondrous Wonders Waiting to Be Built
On this balmy Tuesday evening we gathered at Peter's out-of-the-way residence for a feisty game of 7 Wonders. In fact, Peter's house, hiding behind a tree as per usual, is becoming quite the place to find. Or not. Two players, anyhow, managed to struggle to find the place and showed up a little late. But no worries, the rest of the party had already settled in and were checking out the artwork and grabbing a cuppa.
During the explanation Michiel was once again suffering from his after-dinner dip, and struggled to focus on what was being said. This cost him the first game, as he didn't pick up on the fact that there were no Brown or Grey cards in Age 3. When Maaike reminded everybody (at the end of Age 2!), it was too late and Michiel could not build the third stage of his wonder.
Anyhow, there we were, at the start of this evening, excited to build our 7 wonders. Except, that was not the idea at all. Apparently it was only called that because if you played with the full complement of players - i.e. 7 - you could all build 1 wonder, and that would bring the total to.... Hmmm, indeed, 7 wonders. Well, whaddaya know - we didn't have 7 players, so we played 5 wonders twice.
I could list what empire everyone was building (Maaike was Rhodes, I was Manneken Pis, but we didn't have the rules to that (Look here Maaike!) so I changed to something else, while Sietse had the temple of Artemis), but heck, who really cares? Ultimately it doesn't really matter as it's all so balanced that I don't think it makes a difference whatsoever.
Sietse and Peter did really well in that first game and the rest of us were unsure as to who had lost. I figured I would be in the running for last spot, having lost out on the 7 points for the last stage of the running, but I lucked out:
GAME 1
1. Sietse 55
2. Peter 50
3. Michiel 44
4. Maaike 42
5. Jaap 41
It was only a little after 10 o'clock and we figured, hey, why not another game - it should be really fast to play now we know what to do. And it was, despite some AP from Peter and Maaike slowing us down with practically every card.
The highlight of this second game was Maaike's exclamation over her Baths (the card depicted above). She was certain she was supposed to have the uncensored version since she had bought the game at Essen, but it didn't look like it. Seeing the card now I am more interested in the Uncensored Original Art version, but maybe that's just sordid little me  
In this second game I had the feeling I had done quite a bit better, but with the way the counting goes in this game it's anything but clear who's going to win. Unless, though, you're playing with Peter, and he states, quite calmly, at the end of the game - "well, I've won, I've got so many points, it's ridiculous." That was when I knew the rest of us were playing for second spot. And lo and behold, I lucked out again 
GAME 2
1. Peter 68
2. Michiel 54
3. Sietse 51
4. Jaap 43
5. Maaike 29
Notable was that this second game saw much bigger differences between the players than the first. Obviously some of us understood the game a lot better than others. Maaike kept on exclaiming that she didn't understand what she had done wrong, but that she had done something wrong. Jaap figured it wasn't really his type of game. Sietse figured he'd made some mistakes in that second game. Michiel figured he'd lucked out. And Peter, well, he thought there weren't that many non-obvious choices to be made in the game - and I agree.
It was already 23:30 when Peter kicked us out in to the middle of nowhere - the location of his abode - and the middle of a thunderstorm. Luckily for us it was only lightning and the gods seemed not too unhappy with our first outing into the world of the 7 wonders (which be only 5).
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