The Babel expansion for 7 Wonders includes 2 expansions – Tower of Babel and Great Projects of Babel that can be used together or separately with the base game. Plus along with the other expansion packs helping to bring new life to the game for fans of 7 Wonders.
Tower of Babel
This expansion allows you to erect the mythical tower of Babel. Beware – each tile built influences players dealings in commerce, war, science and civil affairs. Each player is randomly dealt 3 pieces of the Babel Tower. Then there is a mini-round of choosing one tile and passing on 2 tiles. This process repeats itself until each player has created their own hand of 3 Babel Tiles from those available to them in this selection process. The game then follows the standard game play with an additional action available of building a Babel tile. At the end of each player round – the Babel tiles that have been placed down are revealed.
Here’s where they come into effect for all players, not just the person(s) who participated in this action, changing the rules of the game until the tile is no longer in effect (since being covered by another Babel tile). For example can lead to paying taxes to the bank, save on resource costs, use of neighbouring cities to construct buildings for free, increase/lessen military defeats/victories etc. For those that did participate in the building of the Babel Tower at the end of the game you can earn more victory points.
Great Projects of Babel
This expansion allows you to enhance the area around the Tower of Babel via building city walls, ports, archives, obelisks, triumphal arches and other prestigious monuments. Prior to starting the game a Great Project card is randomly chosen and placed faced up. Then Participation tokens are placed on this card. The game then follows the standard gameplay except for when a player constructs a building of the same colour as the Great Project card in play. That player then has an additional option to participate in its construction by paying the Participation cost and the cost of their building. If so – the players takes a Participation token.
Note for this to pay off the Great Project of Babel has to be fully constructed by the resolution of the current Age’s military conflicts. If so – those players that participated gain Reward tokens, which are taken into account at the end of the game when scoring. However if not fully constructed in time, then the project is considered a failure. Here’s the stinging bit for those that didn’t participate – they get penalised instead for not helping to construct this Great Project, not the ones that participated. If those being penalised cannot pay the penalty then they have to take a Penalty token thus lessening their victory points at the end of the game.
In Summary
These expansions certainly bring new elements into the gameplay of 7 Wonders that allows you to impact players that you wouldn’t necessarily directly impact otherwise. You do have to be on the ball as there’s a lot more rules to follow in each Age and watch out for what you can and cannot do due to the actions of these expansions that you may have previously be able to do. One for fans of 7 Wonders looking to revitalise one of their favourite games when regular playing with friends.
Are you ready to take on the Babel? Available here
Note it does require the original game to play this expansion.
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