We have not published the list yet, but one of my favorite games of 2023 was World Wonders, published in the United States by Arcane Wonders. As I said in my original review in December, the combination of the puzzle of matching up the buildings to the available monuments, the economic decision of when to buy buildings or grab a monument before someone else steals it, and the sheer joy of the toy factor of looking at your board in the last two rounds and enjoying the diorama has been tough to beat.
One way to beat a game like this is just to add more stuff, right? Arcane Wonders is back with a small box expansion to the original game called MUNDO Wonders Pack.
The MUNDO Wonders Pack is a very small box just a little bit bigger than the size of your hand. It is designed by Ze Mendes, the original designer of World Wonders, with illustrations by Matthew Selers and Victor Sales. Opening the box reveals only three different types of components:
- Nine more wooden monuments reflecting the new wonders you can build
- Nine monument cards
- Nine MUNDO cards
That’s it, but for me, that’s exactly what I would want in a small box expansion. Before we talk about what it adds to the game, we should probably do a quick overview of the game itself (although you will find much more details in the original blog post). The elevator pitch is simple. Players will compete to build out a playground of roads, bridges, and city districts in an effort to score the most points over ten or so rounds, with the fun way of scoring those points by having your city buildings match up to the requirements of the monuments that randomly show up in the game.
With that out of the way, let’s turn back to the expansion pack, and start with the monuments themselves. I’ll admit it, one of the best things about the base game is the fact that they went all in on creating little masterpiece replicas of ancient monuments that we are — for the most part — very familiar from history class. The Pyramids, the Roman Colosseum, and The Great Wall are all there in the box ready for you to add to your player board.
MUNDO leans into the toy factor with nine absolutely gorgeous new monuments. From Stonehenge to the Sphinx, from the Colossus of Rhodes, Terracotta Army, and the Hanging Gardens of Bablyon, there are nine new objectives for players to meet during the game to score one or two more points and place that particular building on their player board.
Integrating those new monuments is easy. The game comes with nine monument cards, one for each of the new monuments. Just shuffle those into the deck of cards in the base game and you’re ready to play. Weird note, though. The cards in the base game have a regular finish to them, while the newest cards are all a gorgeous linen finish. For purposes of game play it does not really matter, since this is not a deck building game and it would be tough to figure out which cards have yet to come out based on the back, but it is unusual.
But the last component may be the most interesting of all. The game also comes with nine MUNDO cards, and there are three different types. They all represent different ways to score even more points at the end of the game. These particular cards take the place of the nine discussed above. Instead of mixing them in with the regular deck, these nine cards will be shuffled separately and two cards from each of the decks (the regular base game monument deck and the MUNDO deck) will be drawn, giving you four options of monuments to build.
The difference? The MUNDO cards not only give you the requirement for building that particular monument, but it also lists additional ways to score victory points. For an example, let’s look at the Arch of Ctesiphon monument.
This monument needs to be surrounded by all green spaces on the board (the ones with nothing on them) and cannot have any natural resources adjacent to it when played. If at the end of the game, a player completes the requirement of having all of the spaces around the monument still green — in the words, the monument is completely isolated by the end of the game — the player scores three points. If not, the player only scores one point.
That’s such a slight but clever twist on the original game mechanic, which is all about building certain buildings, streets, and configurations to land a particular monument. Now, anyone can play this monument, but they are committing a big group of green / monument spaces (eleven all total) to the monument with no allowances for further building there.
Some of them even have non-building requirements for scoring, like Stonehenge.
In that one, the player is trying to build Stonehenge and then work on their population at the same time. Scoring the maximum or close to the maximum in population by the end of the game will give the player three points, but again, one has to steer their strategy in that direction for the rest of the game.
We’ve played both ways, with and without the MUNDO objectives. I like both. For a first time play, we always use the advanced objectives in the base game, so I feel like it’s easy just to throw in the new monuments and play the game normally. Players still have to think about end game scoring goals with the objective cards already, so that seems plenty to have on their plate.
On the other hand, for veteran players, having one half of the monuments being straight points if you can match up the requirements and the other half having these intricate little dances that you have to perfect to squeeze the max points out seems much more appropriate.
The MUNDO Expansion Pack is a perfect little addition to World Wonders. Just for the sake of the nine new buildings, I do not see any reason not to include the pack in your base game, and having the MUNDO card objectives freshens up the game if you have a lot of plays under your belt and want a new look.
Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo
** A copy of the expansion was provided by the publisher. We purchased the base game ourselves. **
Board Game Gumbo 
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