You know that moment when everything falls into place and you finally realise that you’ve been playing a game entirely wrong for years? Mine was on game night at Sarah’s friend Jeff’s house – the dude that uses those ridiculously loud metal coins that make a racket every time somebody breathes near the table. There were six of us, I’m stuck between Mark (he spends forever analysing every single card as if it were a matter of life and death), and Linda — this super-efficient player that makes her picks in approximately 3 seconds flat.
Anyway, I send Linda that Glassworks card in Age I that I couldn’t play, no big deal, just normal drafting, right? Well, three rounds go by and that exact same card somehow comes full circle and lands in my lap again — right when I desperately need glass for my Library. Just pure dumb luck, I thought. However, it happened again. And again.
That’s when I began keeping track of the cards. Yeah, I know — Sarah thinks I’m totally obsessive about this stuff, but stick with me here. After recording card movement for about seventy-some games, I found something really bizarre — 7 Wonders isn’t really about grabbing the best possible card from your hand. It’s about figuring out people and manipulating probabilities to build better hands for yourself later.
There are these “draft wake patterns” created by different personality types that players never seem to recognise. For instance, my buddy Ryan? Has been playing 7 Wonders for over ten years and has literally never picked up a military card in Age I. Not once! When I’m three seats to the left of him, I know for sure that any red card I pass will never come back to me. On the other hand, yellow commerce cards just keep passing through him as if he has some sort of allergy to them.
Here’s an example of something that should blow your mind: in a six-player game, if you pass a resource card that costs one coin and the next two players don’t need that resource, there is roughly a 70% chance that it’ll circle back to you in that same age. I’ve checked and double-checked this multiple times. It follows simple logic that nobody seems to catch – most players are grabbing high-scoring point cards before they’re taking low-scoring resource cards; especially if they have to pay for those resources.
This completely flips my entire approach to Age I. Rather than stockpiling every resource I need immediately, I now intentionally pass resource cards that I predict will return, and spend my early picks on cards that definitely won’t return – typically military or those instant-scoring civic cards everybody wants.
What gets really cool is when you start reading the players two and three seats to your left. That third player creates what I call your “return current” – the flow of cards most likely to return during each age. My gaming group has this guy who is obsessed with military conquest, and will always pick up every red card regardless of whether it makes sense. When he is in my return current, I know that science cards have a much greater chance of returning because he is taking away military cards that other players may have chosen instead.
I have also observed something that I refer to as the creation of “draft shadows.” When a high-scoring card like the Glassworks appears early in the game, players tend to grab it immediately. This creates a ripple effect where the next several players prioritise building science cards that require glass. If you understand these drafts shadows, you can predict which card types will be over- or under-drafted in subsequent rounds.
Age II becomes very interesting as the strategies of the players begin to reveal themselves. By the second age, the science player has shown off their green cards, the military player has displayed their red cards, etc., etc. This creates “strategy inertia,” where players are more likely to choose cards that enhance their existing tableau, and pass all the other cards.
Linda recognised this concept years ago. She employs what she refers to as her “invisible resource strategy,” which involves deliberately avoiding obvious resource-producing cards and instead collecting yellow commerce cards that offer trading discounts. Because most players focus on the immediate benefits of cards and discount the long-term benefits, she finds herself able to collect many valuable cards in addition to offering her opponents an abundance of trading opportunities.
The technique I have found to be the most effective, is what I refer to as “strategic misinformation.” In early ages, I will occasionally choose a card that suggests I am pursuing a strategy I have no intention of pursuing. For example, I will take an early military card and display it prominently, which will cause the player to my left to feel pressure to defend against military threats, which will undoubtedly alter what cards pass back to me.
In fact, I used this strategy to win a tournament in Madison. Okay, maybe “tournament” is stretching it a bit – we had something like twelve people gathered in a comic book store basement, but still. I first-picked Academy in Age I, which indicated I intended to pursue a heavy science-based strategy. The guy to my left freaked out and began to aggressively seek out science cards, including some that didn’t necessarily work well for his wonder. Meanwhile, I quietly shifted my strategy toward civic-building and collected perfectly-matched blue cards while he wasted picks trying to prepare for a scientific threat that never materialized.
Even the placement of your resource cards on the table affects the drafting patterns of other players more than you’d assume. When I position resource cards in plain sight at the front of my tableau, I find that other players are less likely to pass resource cards that match those resources. However, if I conceal them behind other cards, players making quick visual assessments will often miss them and pass cards as if I lacked the resources they assumed I needed.
The inclusion of guild cards in Age III provides a wonderful layer of psychological complexity to the game. Since the scoring of guilds is based on what other players have built, you develop a recursive cycle of prediction, where optimal picks depend on forecasting what you think other players will forecast that you’ll predict they’ll do. Essentially, it’s like playing poker, but with cardboard.
My favorite Age III maneuver is the “defensive guild pass.” When I receive a guild that would earn an absurd amount of points for the player to my left (such as the Philosophers Guild when they’ve accumulated a bunch of science), I will often pass it to them, even though it would benefit me somewhat. The player to my right statistically doesn’t choose cards that are meant to benefit someone he can’t see, so I prevent a potential high-scoring engine from reaching my primary competitor.
Since 2014, I’ve been documenting these trends with increasing detail, and my predictive ability has developed to almost supernatural levels. At our last game night, I correctly predicted eleven of the fourteen cards that came back to me throughout all three ages. Jason called me a cheater for marking the cards — it was insulting, but also kind of flattery.
Player number greatly influences these trends as well. A three-player game means that nearly half of the cards will return to you each age, which makes it essential that you read each other’s cards carefully, as you are essentially choosing your own hand twice. A seven-player game rarely returns cards, so each selection is extremely important, and you’re reading the overall patterns of the group, rather than the individuals.
It sounds crazy, but temperature and intoxication levels also affect the draft. Summer outdoor games have a significant amount of quicker, more instinctive picks, which results in more predictable patterns. Winter games — especially when Jeff brings out his good scotch — have a lot slower picks, and therefore more erratic selections. I’ve learned to adapt my expectations to both conditions.
Here’s my practical advice for improving your 7 Wonders game experience: Start by learning about the players immediately surrounding you. What types of cards do they consistently grab? What type of cards do they consistently ignore? Next, expand your awareness to the players two and three positions to your left, and study their patterns as opposed to their individual card picks. Finally, practice actively guessing which cards are likely to return and cheque your accuracy after each round.
One final tip that has helped me a great deal — most players dramatically overestimate the importance of immediate point-generating cards, and underestimate the importance of cards that allow for synergy in the future. As a result, there is a consistent trend where cards that enable future synergies such as resources, commerce, and occasional sciences, return much more frequently than their actual value would indicate.
Over the course of tens of hours of gameplay spanning over a decade, I have come to believe that 7 Wonders is not about drawing the optimal card from each hand, but about creating the optimal hands for yourself by manipulating the draft process. The actual game does not occur on the table — it occurs within the hidden currents of cardboard traveling between the players.
That’s why I continue to rank it among my top five, even though it is a far simpler game compared to the heavy-thematic games that dominate my shelf space. Every new player adds a unique drafting pattern to identify, a unique current to follow. Sarah claims I get this odd look in my eye when I explain 7 Wonders to new people — I am secretly categorizing their behaviors rather than properly explaining the rules to them.
Once you begin to see the patterns, you cannot unsee them. And, to be honest — that’s part of the fun.
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