7 Wonders Architects – Medals Expansion Unboxing and Components Review

There are going to be two groups of people when it comes to the first expansion for 7 Wonders Architects – those who are happy to have more content, and those who wish this expansion was doing more. This is not a review of the actual gameplay, just the production quality, so we will save that discussion for later, but let’s jump in and see what this game has in the box!

Frankly, there isn’t a ton to 7 Wonders Architects – Medals. Inside the box you will get two brand new civilizations, along with containers to hold the pieces and their own deck of cards. This time around, players can use civilizations from Rome and Ur, building unique wonders you know a lot about – the Colosseum – and wonders you might know nothing about…that one in Ur!

Once again, it’s hard not to praise Repos Productions for the fantastic way these games pack up. Each civilization gets their own little container, and the container has everything needed to play that civilization. You don’t need to sort through cards before you start, try to find cardboard pieces in a large bag of other pieces. Nope, everything is in these handy containers, and they work marvelously! I’m glad to see it return here, and honestly, I wasn’t expecting anything different.

The big “hook” to this expansion is the inclusion of the victory point medals. Each medal will need a sticker adhered to it – the worst part of this expansion in my opinion – and once you are done you will have 12 unique medals to use in your game. When setting up, a medal will be placed between each player, and the medal depicts a certain criteria that needs to be met before one of the adjacent players can earn that medal. Things range from having certain cards in front of you, to having specific tokens. It’s enough to warrant an entire box for the expansion, but likely will be a bit light for some players.

I’m not a huge fan of putting stickers on plastic pieces – it’s something I really don’t enjoy doing. I would have much rather had enough medals for a max player game, and have the “inserts” be cardboard pieces that you place into the medal, as opposed to a sticker. It’s definitely a minor gripe – and some people (most people?) are actually going to love the stickers!

The game also includes 4 more research tokens which will be shuffled into the base game, and really are not expansion specific, so can be used whether you play wit the medals or not.

Overall, I’m very happy with the quality of 7 Wonders Architects – Medals, and cannot wait to get this to the table!