How to Score 7 Wonders and Duel by Hand

The last Age ends, the battles are settled, and someone pulls out the score pad. This is where a new table can stall. Seven categories, a page of squares, and players counting different things at once.

The fix is a routine. Score one row at a time, everyone together, and leave science for last. This lesson walks through both games from the current rulebooks: the 7 Wonders second edition rules and the 7 Wonders Duel rules.

7 Wonders: before you count

Two quick tidy-ups make scoring faster:

• Sort your city by color. The rulebook already asks you to stack cards of one color together. Fan each stack so every point value shows.
• Stack your Military tokens by value: the 5s, 3s, and 1s together, and the minus 1s apart.

Then pick one reader. They call out each row, and everyone writes their own number in their own column.

7 Wonders: the seven rows

The rulebook counts in this order. Read them aloud one at a time.

1. Wonder. Add the points on the stages you built. An unbuilt stage scores nothing, and a stage whose effect is not points scores nothing here.
2. Treasure. One point for each full set of 3 coins. 11 coins is 3 points; the 2 left over score nothing.
3. Military. Add your Victory tokens and subtract your Defeat tokens. The total can be negative.
4. Blue cards. Add the points printed on them.
5. Yellow cards. Some score points at the end, often based on what is in your city. Read each one and count it now.
6. Green cards. Science. Save it for a calm moment; see below.
7. Purple cards. Each guild scores by its own condition, usually something in your neighbors’ cities. Count it with the neighbor beside you so you agree.

Most points wins. If players tie, the one with the most coins wins. If that ties too, they share the win.

7 Wonders: science, step by step

Science is two sums added together. First, count your symbols of each type: compass, gear, and tablet. Include any on your Wonder stages.

Step 1, identical symbols. Square each count. The rulebook’s table runs 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36 for one to six of a symbol.

Step 2, sets. Count how many full sets of three different symbols you have. That is simply your smallest count. Each set is 7 points.

Example: 3 compasses, 2 gears, 2 tablets.

If an effect gives you a science symbol of your choice, choose it now. Try each option and keep the best. In the example above, a choice symbol scores most as a compass. A fourth compass turns 9 into 16, a gain of 7. A third gear or tablet only turns 4 into 9, and it completes no new set, because a third set would need a third of both.

A worked score

Here is one made-up city, row by row:

Notice the green row. One compass and one gear score 1 plus 1. No set, because there is no tablet. That small number is why the scoring lesson in Level 2 spends so long on which science card to take.

Duel: scoring when nobody won early

Many Duel games end on the spot with military or science supremacy, and then there is nothing to count. If the game reaches the end of Age III, use the scorebook and add:

1. Military. The Conflict pawn’s position: 0, 2, 5, or 10 points to the player it sits toward. Only one player scores here.
2. Blue cards. Their printed points.
3. Green cards. Their printed points. Duel science does not square anything.
4. Yellow cards. Any printed points.
5. Purple cards. Each guild scores from the city with the most of something, which can be either city. Agree on which one before you write it down.
6. Wonders. The points on each Wonder you built.
7. Progress tokens. Points on Agriculture, Philosophy, and Mathematics, if you hold them.
8. Treasury. One point per full set of 3 coins.

If you tie, the player with more points on blue cards wins. If that ties as well, you share the win.

The habit that saves arguments

Score in public. Say each number aloud as you write it, and let a neighbor glance at your science and guilds. A wrong total found at the table is a laugh. A wrong total found tomorrow is a grudge.

Keep the score sheets, too. A stack of old sheets tells you, game after game, where your points come from. The tournament practice lesson at the top of this course puts that record to work.