7 Wonders Dice Review – Rolling, Writing and Building the Great Wonders

Disclaimer: 7 Wonders Dice was provided for free by VR Distribution, although the writing and opinions of this article are my own.

Few board game franchises have reached the lofty heights of 7 Wonders. We’re now at the point where, before you even crack open the rulebook, the box includes a full-blown flowchart explaining all the different versions and which one you should play depending on your situation. As an older gamer, it’s a reminder of how far the hobby has come, and also how confusing the minefield of picking out the perfect game has become.

But Antoine Bauza and the team at Repos Productions clearly have no interest in slowing things down for my ageing, easily confused brain. Instead, they’ve gone ahead and expanded that flowchart even further with the latest entry: 7 Wonders Dice. Although, as we’ll soon discover, it probably could’ve just as easily been called 7 Wonders Roll and Write.

How to Play

Having not played a 7 Wonders game since the original, I was glad to see so many familiar concepts here, while still feeling like a completely unique board game. You’re still chasing wreath-covered victory points, still building your Wonder, and still investing in different building types to collect those leafy little scores. The biggest change is that you’re now rolling dice instead of drafting cards, and that single switch ripples through the entire game.

In 7 Wonders Dice, each turn is played by everyone simultaneously. One player grabs the seven starting dice, drops them into a small box (called the Forum), gives it a shake, then lifts the lid to reveal what everyone’s working with.

The bottom of the Forum is split into four quadrants, each with an increasing cost from 0 to 3 dollars. If you want to use a die from a particular quadrant, that’s the price you’ll have to pay.

From here, everyone chooses to either grab one of the available dice, build part of their Wonder, or pass and gain three coins. Unless you’re truly horrible at managing your finances, you’ll probably be picking a die and colouring in the building it shows on your player board, paying its material and coin costs as you go.

Each die type does something different:

• Grey Material dice generate materials, which you’ll use to pay for buildings. Simple, sensible, essential.
• Yellow Market dice help you earn money, reduce costs, or score end-game victory points. Basically, capitalism in cube form.
• Blue Agora dice work on a grid of victory points. You start on the outside, and the more blue dice you grab, the deeper you move in, scoring bigger points along the way.
• Red Barracks dice control your military. To the left and right of your board you’ll find swords, axes, and shields. Swords attack your left-hand neighbour, axes hit the right, and shields block incoming attacks. Diplomacy was never an option.
• Green Science dice also offer points, but their real power is unlocking special dice that can completely dominate the late game.

Instead of taking a die, you can also choose to fill in a section of your Wonder. These differ depending on your player board, but they grant powerful one-time abilities and are usually well worth the effort.

Whenever you fully complete a coloured section of your board, you get to choose a special one-time bonus. Once someone activates their third bonus, the game ends. Play one final round, tally up your points, and crown the most wondrous civilisation at the table.

Familiar, faster, and a bucket load More Dice

Having only played the original 7 Wonders, coming to 7 Wonders: Dice felt as familiar as pulling on your old college jumper. Everything that made 7 Wonders such a hit back in the day has returned. All the different building types, the same victory point chase, and even those cheeky side-eyes at your opponents to see what they’re up to.

What’s missing is the card drafting, and with it, some of the strategic nuance the original was famous for. Back then, you could directly mess with your opponents’ plans by snapping up a key card they desperately needed. Here, that interaction is gone. So if your opponent has a perfect strategy and the dice decide to behave themselves, well… that’s basically game over.

With that interaction missing, so too is my hawkish monitoring of everyone else’s moves. I’m no longer obsessing over their grand strategy. Instead, I’m only really interested in two things: how many shields they have, and how close they are to activating their three end-game abilities.

While this strips away some of the delight of the original, it massively speeds things up. 7 Wonders Dice has a wonderful momentum to it, thanks to the simultaneous turns, reduced player interaction, and the Forum (that little box you roll the dice in). The side of the box claims 25–30 minutes, but you can easily blast through a game in 15–20.

The Forum itself is such a fantastic addition. Chucking the dice into the box, giving it a quick shake, then flipping the lid open is as satisfying as it is efficient. As a bonus, it also makes this game perfect for travelling. No dice bouncing across train tables or disappearing into the void beneath your couch.

Another component worth shouting out is the wax pencils. Every roll-and-write I’ve played so far has used dry erase markers, which come with their own special brand of suffering. Namely, always being out of ink the exact moment I host a big game night. Cue me rummaging through drawers like a raccoon in a crisis.

7 Wonders Dice is the first time I’ve seen wax pencils included, and they work brilliantly. They write smoothly on the player boards and rub off easily when you’re done. No streaks, no fading, no marker-based existential dread.

Just roll with it

Returning to the gameplay, 7 Wonders Dice isn’t here to push you. Instead, it’s packed with fast, simple, satisfying decisions about which dice to grab and which buildings to construct. It’s also a game of abundance. In all my plays, it never felt like I was about to run out of money or get locked out of something I wanted to buy.

A big reason for that is the cost deterrent built into the dice layout. Whenever a die drifted into the $2 or $3 quadrant, I’d immediately start shopping in the bargain bin first. See if there was something useful in the cheaper slots before truly loosening the purse strings. And honestly, nine times out of ten, there was.

What surprised me most was how balanced everything felt. Across multiple plays, my wife and I tried wildly different strategies and still ended up within a handful of points of each other. Even buildings I assumed would be weak, like military, held their own when facing down science-heavy strategies.

More than anything though, the real battle is the foot race to the finish line. Whoever triggers the end game first decides whether all that investment into science and late-game buildings actually pays off… or just looks impressive on your board while you lose.

Overall, 7 Wonders Dice isn’t the deepest game out there. So, yes, if you head back to that initial 7 Wonders flowchart and want something with a bit more strategic bite, the original might still be your best bet. Dice luck absolutely plays a role here, and sometimes you’ll lose purely because the cubes hate you.

But honestly? It’s still a blast. The kind of game where you finish, look around the table, and immediately say, “Alright, one more.”