There were six of us this week and Andrew was keen to play his newly acquired 7 Wonders: Babel expansion. We also included both Leaders and Cities expansions as well. Babel introduces two new elements to the game: Each player receives through a draft at the start of the game some rule-modifier tiles which they can bring into play by forgoing the opportunity to add a card into their tableau. Four of these can be active at any one time and they affect all players until they are overtaken by a new rule modifier being placed. The other addition is that, in each age, there is a common project that is being worked on and players can contribute towards completing the project for a benefit if it is completed; but if it is unfinished, those that didn't contribute suffer a penalty.

The additions in Babel don't alter the game drastically but do give players additional choices of what to do with the cards they draft. It still remains pretty simple to play but some of us felt that the base game was strong enough on its own that the expansions don't really improve on the gameplay. However, it's a nice addition that I'm glad we got to play. In our game, Mark G shocked everyone by not playing a military strategy, Mark K shocked everyone by how badly he scored and Andrew shocked no-one by winning the game, although the scores were reasonably close between him and Nige.