I love a good drafting game and I looking through my collection, I could use a few more. I recently discovered a new addition to my game library that seeks to find it’s place in that fold. So let’s look at the game “It’s a Wonderful World” and see how it stacks up!
It’s a Wonderful World is published by Origames and Lucky Duck Games, designed by Frederic Gerard and illustrated by Anthony Wolff. It plays 1-5 players in 45 min length games.
Overview and Setup
In It’s a Wonderful World, you and other world leaders are seeking to expand your Empire as you develop resources to buy and build into your kingdom. The game stretches over 4 rounds and then a winner is declared!
The game comes with a 2 piece board, a round tracker, resource cubes, character tokens and 150 cards. Each player also receives a starter Empire card to begin. Your play area in front of you will have your Empire card that you build off of and a Construction and Draft area for Development cards as you gain them.
Gameplay
Each game is 4 rounds, and there are 3 phases to each round. The phases are:
A. Draft Phase
B. Planning Phase
C. Production Phase
In Draft Phase players will each obtain 7 face-down drafted cards from the deck and take one card and pass the rest to either their right or left. Everyone reveals the drifted cards and places them in their draft area. This continues until all players have 7 cards.
Next comes the Planning Phase Where you must decide if your drafted cards will be recycled or slated for construction. Those in your constructed are considered “Under Construction” and the recycled ones are discarded and you collect the Recycling bonus resource cube. Cards that are completed are moved onto your Empire card with its production visible. Everyone does this on their own until each player has decided to move all of their cards from their draft area to Construction or recycle.
Finally the third step is the Production Phase where players produce all of the resources on the game board from left to right one at a time. Each icon for that resource that you have either on your Empire card or on the constructed Development cards will gain you one cube of that resource. Players with the single most production of each resource also gain a Character Token.
Any cards you can complete in your Under Construction are filled with the resources gained and moved over to your constructed region of your Empire card. If you have resources you cannot use they go to your Empire card. Once you have 5 here you trade them in for a Krystallium cube that can act as a wild cube.
The game continues for 4 rounds and then at the completion each player will add all their victory points from their Empire tokens, cards and characters. Highest score will win the game!
Impressions:
Things that could be better:
2 Player variant. Now I personally like the draw 10, draft 7 and discard 3 cards variant for two players. My thing that could be better is that I think it should be that format for the regular game as well, giving you more card choices throughout.
Empire variety. Personally I would love to see some ore Empire boards to really mix up the different player board options and give players a chance to try some different focused combinations from the beginning.
What I liked:
Art. The design of this game is great-the art and the graphic design really pop and stand out on the table. I love the theme and the cards really all stand out and provide some great graphics to enjoy in your hand.
Components. The cubes, although simple, really stand out on the table. All of the cardboard pieces are quality as well-this game isn’t overly produced but is just right with everything that comes in the box.
Overall
Like I said at the onset, I love a good drafting game. With the exception of 7 Wonders and Sushi Go, there aren’t a lot of “go-to” draft game for me personally. I really enjoyed the drafting mechanic of this game and how smooth it went around the board. As far as the mechanics go, this game is exactly what I would want in a clean, easy way to do drafting. There were moments where you could definitely see the need to “hate draft” cards so another player didn’t get them, and times when you were looking for things that hit combos well. I really enjoyed the combos that were possible and how much planning you needed to do to make this work. It seems like you only have so much time to do everything you want and you can’t seem to do it-a perfect feeling for this type of strategy game.
It’s a Wonderful World is competitive and interactive with any player count and I especially loved it at the 3-4 player count. The game felt like you could manage what you and others were doing in that spot. At 5 players you just have to do your thing and hope you outrun everyone else at the table! The player experience level with this game can be between newer gamers up to hobby gamers. I wouldn’t recommend it to more casual players but it is a title they may be able to work up to.
Overall I would rate this my current favorite drafting card game and a title that is likely to find its way on to my shelf for the long haul as my new go-to drafting game. I highly recommend this one to all players and hope you also have a chance to see that it is, in-fact a wonderful world!
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