Cartagena and 7th Wonders

This Christmas, after several years, we did manage to finally have a board game evening with some friends. This despite me feeling like crap since I did get the flu (and yes, we got offered to play also other evenings after Christmas, but the status of the whole family had degenerated into hospital mode).
Considering the health status my performance was dreadful ... (yes, I blame it on the fuzzy head to the fever/cold)

The first game we played was Cartagena. The game is pretty simple and there is a minimum of luck required in fetching the right cards to proceed. Then, yes, some good strategy (I lacked that totally, as always).
Each player has four pirates and they have to go through a path to reach a boat. The player whose pirates reach the boat first win.
The pirates move on the path (the board) by discarding cards: each card represents a symbol that is on the board and when one uses the card one moves on the board reaching out for its symbol. For fetching new cards, one has to move backward.
So, the whole game is about finding a good balance between moving forward and backward, obtaining proper cards. 

Cartagena

 The game doesn't last too long and can be played by maximum 5 players, so it is quite nice to play when one doesn't have too much time. Since also it is quite simple (at least, there are not five billion steps required to understand how to play) it is perfect when maybe one hasn't been playing a game for several years. Ok, yes, in my case that didn't help out...

7th Wonders is instead much more elaborated (so, let's not think of what I didn't do when we played it). So, of course, also more entertaining since one has to think about many more parameters than moving the pirates on the board.
Each player has one of the 7th wonders (I took Ephesus) that can be built in different steps. There are different ages one go through. Each age is basically a round of cards that get passed between the players at each turn. The complexity of the cards and the prerequisites to play them or use them is higher the later the age of the world is.
There are cards of different color and therefore different properties.
The different cards, the money, the building steps of the wonder provide points to the final countdown. At the end of the last age, all the points will then be calculated and then the winner will be announced.

7th Wonders

The game is very intriguing and in fact it is ranked quite high. When playing it resembled a lot of many different games that we have played. I thought of Dominion as well as Colosseum.
Pity though that we managed to play it just once, then it was definitely too late for two retired people as we have turned out.