World Wonders: My Favorite Mechanism

Hey, I'm Jamie from Stonemire Games and today I'm going to talk about my favorite mechanism in the game World Wonders, which I just played recently at four players. So, here is uh here's this isn't my board. This is a image from Board Game Geek, but this is a finished World Wonders board that includes actually two different mats really.

There's a there's a a match where you're placing these polyomino tiles and these chunky wooden wonders. And there's a track map where you're keeping track of things like your your income, your your population, and some other tracks that you're advancing on that essentially just contribute to moving ahead on your your population track.

World Wonders does a lot of little things that add up to what I I had I had a great experience playing my my first time. Um, essentially every round of the game, one shape, one tile of each type is revealed from the top of the stack. So, this is one of the little things that I really appreciate that you know exactly which shapes are going to be available each round.

And you also know how much they are going to cost each round. So, it looks a little bit like Castles of Madin Lewig, but instead of having variable pricing, you know the prices for these different tiles. Uh, and that's important because you only have $7 to spend over the course of the round as you're spending money on these tiles to place on your map.

There's tension because once a tile once one of these tiles is taken in that round, that tile is gone for the round. You're not going to get another tile of that specific shape for that round. So, if you really need like this little L shape this round, then you need to buy it right away um before someone else takes it.

So, I really enjoyed that information plus that the tension that it adds. the other level of this. Uh, and I want to talk about the wonders in a second. Let me see if there's anything else that I should mention before I get there. Um, yeah, actually before I get to the wonders, I'll mention that. Well, yeah, let's let's talk about the wonders now because the wonders are these big chunky wooden tokens.

There's only three of them available at any given time. And, uh, they have different requirements for where they can be placed. And so, a card might come out saying, "Okay, this wonder is now available." Uh, and it will have a spatial requirement saying something like it needs to be placed on top of the river and touching one of these little natural uh, nature formations here, rock, trees, things like that.

And so, and it needs to be next to like a blue tile. And so, suddenly it gives you a reason to really look at what the other players are doing because there is tension between you and the other players to get that wonder. It fills up a lot of space. It helps you accomplish certain goals and it's probably going to give you some points as well.

And so I really like this. It gives you a reason to actively not just have that tension of is another player going to take this wonder or this tile before me, but can another player gain access to this wonder before I can. Um, so I really like that. I also like there's only three of them out there at the time at a time and that they give you these kind these short-term goals to pursue, these little spatial requirements to pursue and you get the the thing right away.

You're not just working towards an endgame victory point. you were getting this big chunky wonder on your mat right away if you were able to use your turn to gain that wonder. But there is one catch. I've talked about spending money throughout the round and that feels good that you get this $7 each round and you get to spend it on these tiles.

Once you decide to buy a wonder though, you have to spend the rest of your money. And so if you see a wonder come out and you really really want that wonder, ideally you would have already spent m most of your money and you would only have $1 left and then you'll buy that wonder for a dollar and that would feel great.

But it doesn't always work out that way because there are certainly times where you know that someone else is also racing to that wonder and maybe they've already spent more money than you so they're about to get it for a dollar or$2 dollars. You have three or$4 dollars left that you could spend. You could space it out on a few roads on maybe one other smaller tile and you were presented with this very diffult difficult decision.

Do I spend $4 on a wonder when I could spend a dollar on a wonder later? That is a great decision. I think this is such a clever design uh space to put into this game that wonders cost the rest of your money for that round. uh that just adds so many calculations that you have to consider and it isn't over the overwhelming type of calculations.

It's more of a value calculation. Is this wonder worth all the rest of my money or do I hold out? Do I wait? Do I try to budget just so I can spend a dollar or two on a wonder at the end of my round? Because it does end your round when you do that when you have no money left. Uh I love that design decision in in in uh World Wonders.

One last thing about the wonders as well. I really like that you have these ongoing goals that are pushing you towards uh towards the wonders, but it also is paired with the fact that there aren't that many endgame goals to consider. There's really just three things. There's you're trying to surround the tiles.

You're trying to completely surround these tiles. You get points if you do that. Um you're trying to have a diversity of uh track advancements because you score points equal to the lowest track that you've advanced. And you're also trying to touch each of these different zoomed in each of these different natural formations here.

You're trying to have a tile or something touching each of them and you'll score points for that. I think this is also I didn't want to overlook this because um if the game had given you too many different things to pay attention to uh for for scoring, I think it would have diluted the decisions regarding the wonders.

But the wonders are such a big extravagant portion of the game that I'm glad that there are just they're they're scoring things to pay attention to, but they don't overwhelm your decision to the point that you stop paying attention to the wonders. I really appreciate that about World Wonders as well.

A lot to love. A lot of clever decisions in this game. And I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you have a different favorite mechanism or a favorite mechanism in World Wonders, let me know about it. or if you can think of other games that have this mechanism where you have to spend the rest of the money for the or the rest of the resources that you have for that round regardless of what that amount is uh to get something that you want.

I'd love to hear about that. I don't know of many games like that. I know that there are plenty of games where you spend money until you have no money left and then your your round ends. Um but I can't think of anything off the top of my head that has this mechanism where it just says like the cost of this thing is the all the rest of the money that you have.

I think that's pretty cool in world wonders. All right. Yeah, let me know about that in the comments if you think of any other examples. Thanks.