by W. Eric Martin

Game expansions typically give you more of something already included in the original game: more cards, more characters, more maps, more tiles, more complications, and so on. Game spinoffs, on the other hand, typically pull out some element of the original design, then create a new game around that.

Antoine Bauza's 7 Wonders has had both expansions and spinoffs, with the former giving players more cards and more objects to build bit by bit, while the latter have focused on drafting (in 7 Wonders Duel) and on building wonders (in 7 Wonders: Architects).

7 Wonders Dice, which Repos Production will debut at SPIEL Essen 25 and release in retail outlets in late October 2025, is a roll-and-write version of 7 Wonders for 2-7 players that does away with drafting and de-emphasizes wonder building. Instead, the game features the layered, minimalistic building behavior of 7 Wonders, with each player building a city one die at a time and trying to tally a points bonanza at game's end.

Each turn, someone "rolls" the seven dice in the "dice forum", then everyone chooses a die from the results, pays the gold cost (0-3) shown in the quadrant holding that die, then marks a space on their personal game board. You start with 7 gold (because of course you do) and nothing else beyond a layout of eight buildings showing what you'll get each time you mark a space.

Your board also features a warehouse showing six resources, and unless you want to spend half your time collecting gold, you'll want to grab resources to cover building costs. More specifically, each space shows a building cost of 0-6, and each marked resource counts as 1 toward "paying" that cost, with you needing to spend gold to make up the difference.

Nearing the end of a two-player game
The buildings on your board all have analogues in 7 Wonders:

• The blue building is a points fest.
• The two red buildings represent military and defense.
• The green building has three tracks representing different scientific specialties.
• The yellow building is a grab bag of money-related actions.
• The purple building represents the guilds.
• The white building stands in for the Leaders expansion.
• Your wonder has been boiled down to three boxes in the upper-left corner, with the first two levels giving you a unique bonus and third always awarding 7 points.

Aside from the wonder, a few resource costs, and the colors of certain bonuses in the green building, the player boards are identical, but those differences are often enough to incent you to develop one building over another — and as in 7 Wonders, you'll do better if you focus your efforts in a few fields rather than dabbling everywhere.



• The black building for the Cities expansion can't be seen as it represents the spy from that expansion and does mysterious stuff





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