The gameplay is, well, 7-Wondersish. Not enough for you? Okay.

7 Wonders Duel, for all intents and purposes, plays very similarly to its predecessor, and in many ways, feels like 7 Wonders Lite. All of the core mechanics are still here–you take turns playing cards that cost coins or resources, and these cards represent victory points, military power, scientific achievement, or trading ability. The way you play these cards determines your final score in the end. You have “wonders” that can be built which give you your own specific bonuses unique to your setup. At the end, you throw all your points into a figurative salad bowl, add ’em all up, and whoever has the most wins.

There are, of course, palpable differences from the original game, some more immediately noticeable than others. First off, the drafting system has been reworked. Instead of passing hands to each other like in the original game, now all of the cards are laid out in front of you. Only, you can’t see all of them. Half of the cards are face down, while the others are face up, showing their identity to both players. They’re also arranged in a special formation that prevents a card from being taken unless the two cards on top have been snatched. Now, players simply switch off choosing from this card pyramid. If face-down cards become eligible for choosing, they will flip over and reveal their contents. This means that the card abailability is mutual knowledge, but so too is the mystery of the face down cards. The designers assumed (correctly) that passing two decks around would be pretty redundant, and this is a nice workaround that preserves the spirit of the game, while moving in a more logical direction to accomodate two players.

The second, and other most obvious design change is in the science/military progress board. “Wait, wha? That didn’t even exist before!” Yes, I know. This is new; in fact, science and military have both been completely retooled this time around.

You’re probably anxious to know about science, so I’ll start with that one. Science has been redesigned in such a way to where it no longer grants points as its primary bonus, but special passive benefits. When you play a pair of science cards with matching symbols, you immediately get to choose one of the fancy science chits on the progress board, which will give you some kind of prize. One of them gives you a bunch of points, while another discounts your Wonder costs, and another the same, but for blue cards. They have a myriad of effects, and you’ll bring five of them into any given game.

Ah, but if only it were that simple. There’s more to science than that–the science “symbols” are back, and you can benefit from collecting as many of them as possible. Only, this time, there are seven symbols instead of three, and they don’t mean anything in the way of points. Instead, you can pull a straight up science victory by collecting six out of seven symbols. Personally, I’m all for this change. It preserves the spirit of “lots of science = instant win” from the last game, but in a way that’s less obnoxious. I was never a fan of the mandatory science battles in the previous game; in Duel, it’s pretty hard to win with science unless your opponent is a complete ignoramus. The power is still there, but to a lesser extent, and on the other hand, grabbing science even without intending to win from it is still beneficial, because of its passive boosts; grabbing even just one bonus token (two science cards) can be a huge boon to your game.

The other big overhaul is in military, which is arguably the mechanic that’s the most different from the original 7 Wonders. In Duel, the Military is somewhat of a tug-of-war affair, and it all happens in real-time. Instead of armies being compared at age’s end, every military card that’s played immediately advances the “military token” into your opponent’s track. If it passes a certain threshold, it will demand a coin payment from your enemy, as well as victory points for yourself; these affects are more profound the farther down it gets. Should the token advance all the way to the end, the game ends, just like with science. Should your opponent fight back, they will move the military token towards your side, so it becomes a game of push and pull. Military has gone from being a measly 18 point boost (at best) to an essential gamechanger, and it’s a welcome modification to the familiar folds of 7 Wonders.

Yellow cards have also undergone some slight change, as well as the trading system as a whole. First off, the trading–it’s a 2:1 conversion rate, just like before, for unowned resources. However, in Duel, you have to pay an extra coin for every copy of the resource that your opponent has in your hand. Say, for example, that you need wood. You have no wood. Your opponent has three wood. You have to pay five coin (2+1+1+1) to get one wood. This can be frustrating, but it’s also an interesting mechanic that incentivizes players to prevent resource monopolies. As far as yellow cards go, they’ve been slightly buffed; in Duel, you’ll get an extra coin per yellow card in your hand whenever you choose to discard. Nice!

Resources and commodities have barely changed, but there is now one less of each of them. Cloth and ore have been axed, so now you’re dealing with three resources and two commodities, instead of four and three. This is one small thing that makes the game feel like “7 Wonders Lite.”

Finally, Wonders have received a creative, albeit thematically destructive overhaul. Instead of one board with three (give or take) wonders, you draw four different cards, each one representing its own singular wonder. Altogether, they make four wonders, which ultimately isn’t much different than your typical wonder board. There are differences though, and they’re important.

You no longer have to build them in order, so that’s one thing. Gone is the feeling of progression from the original game; that sinking feeling of burning a card on a near-useless wonder so that you can get to the good one later. Nope, you simply pick and choose here. Also, some of the wonders have a nifty “redo” icon, which immediately grants you another turn once played. This is an excellent little mechanic that would only work in Duel, as the drafting mechanism in the original wouldn’t allow for it.

Finally, the Wonders are now totally inconsistent with each other. I don’t know how the Circus Maximus and the Sphinx are in the same city, but that is neither here nor there, and it’s not like 7 Wonders is a game you play for the strong thematic implementation.

After all of the cards have been played, players tally up point in the ol’ math-problem fashion that we know and love from 7 Wonders, and the player with the highest amount of points wins the game, unless, of course, they already won through science or military. Good times.