Rules Matter: 7 Wonders Duel

As mentioned in my last post, my husband, Mark, is helping me work on some board game challenges that were posted on Board Game Geek. The only one that we've already started is the challenge where we play one game 100 times. We chose 7 Wonders Duel for this challenge and so far we've played this game 10 times.

During our 9th play of this game we ran into the problem of not having a particular resource - in this case paper - which is needed to build wonders and other improvements. It wasn't until the very end of Age II that one paper resource became available to one of us, but was not available to the other. This lack of this particular resource colored the play of this game HUGELY.

I posted about it in my 1 x 100 challenge geeklist that this was an interesting aspect of this game that we had discovered because of this challenge. Val Ofiesh (BGG User ID: SpaceAlien) posted that there was a rule in 7 Wonders Duel that allowed you to buy the missing resource from the bank. My. Jaw. Dropped. upon reading this. I had never even conceived that this might be a rule.

Last night Mark and I pulled out the game again while we waited for some other friends to finish up a game and we checked the rules. Sure enough, the rule that allows you to buy missing resources from the bank was there. Not only that, but the cards that allow you to buy resources at a discount from your neighbor also apply to the bank. We were blown away!!! We immediately started playing  a game and were astonished at how this one obscure, hidden, barely mentioned little rule totally changed the strategies we followed and even how the game flowed. AMAZING!

Thanks Val Ofiesh (SpaceAlien) for pointing this out to me. I can't wait to try this game some more to try out some different strategies!