Review: Castaways (boardgame) pt 2

Pretty poor outing for it's first run of four players, unfortunately.  I played with Z, Nan, and WJ, and it more or less sucked.  Well, Z was plenty invested, and both caught onto the rules immediately, and sneakily played to win, as I imagined the game would go.
Here's the crap part: WJ and Nan continued to play like loser-Pandemic.  WJ literally just fished on her turn, every turn, and surfed the web on her Nexus the rest of the time.  Nan was pretty much asleep in his chair.  Only Z and I were making any decisions to try and leave the island, and they would go along with whatever we determined had to be done next.  Neither of them made any effort to win, either.
Back to square one in looking for good co-op games.  Though, playing by myself (yes, the game can be played solo) was kind of interesting.  Lonely, I should emphasize, but interesting.

Review: 7 Wonders (boardgame)

Played 7 Wonders with Nan, Z, and WJ.  Interesting and fairly quick.  Well, quick depending on who you're playing with.  Occasionally you choose your move in about three seconds and someone (or everyone) else sits around pondering their cards for half an hour.  If that kills you, and your friends have a penchant for that, better implement a timer system, which we are considering for all games at home from now on, sidebar.

You randomly choose and man a wonder of the world - there are some that you would want more than others; have not quite figured out the advantages inherent in some of them.  Everyone gets seven (eight?) cards from the Age 1 deck, and you choose one to play, then pass your hand clockwise.  Here are your choices:

• Resource card: generates resources that you can use to play more cards. 
• Science card: has a symbol on it that can add up to big victory points at the end if you have a lot
• Victory card: has straight victory points on it
• Trade card: increases your ability to get resources or gold
• Combat card: more shields means that you have more fight power when everyone battles at the end of the age. 1/3/5 victory points for winning against your adjacent opponents between every age. 
• Play a card face down: to level up your wonder and give yourself access to it's special abilities and victory points

Tada!  Limited options, limited cards, and everyone decides at the same time then passes their cards on to another player, so even if you have seven people, it's always your turn.  Thus, your choices affect you, and you can also choose to deliberately sabotage someone else.  And, if you already see that you're losing by a wide margin, the entirety of the game can't last all that long, so your freedom is always nigh, at least.  

The biggest complaint, after only a few plays, is that there seems to be a very distinct way to win.  I almost expect that if I wanted to crunch numbers, I could mathematically prove that there's only one reasonable strategy... but I don't really want to ruin it, so let's just think about it in broad terms.

• Resource cards count for absolutely nothing in the final tally of victory points.  Sure, they allowed you to build other buildings, but seeing as you can only play 7 cards per age, 21 cards total, each card you waste on resources is a card that could have netted you victory points...
• Victory cards count for exactly the number that is written on the front, which is anywhere from 1-8.  The higher level ones are extremely expensive, though several of them can be had for free if you build the low level ones early on in the game.  Of course, waiting around for free ones is something of a gamble. 
• Combat cards give you victory points at the end of the age, IF you have more than your left or right neighbor.  Sure, you get -1 victory point if you lose the battle, -2 if you lose to each of your neighbors, but you can only win a maximum of 2/6/10 each age, and that's IF your neighbors are letting you win.  Early on, only 1 combat shield can be built, and in age 3, up to 3.  But it's not only expensive, it's using up one or more or your precious 7 cards per age. 
• Trade cards help early on in making resource purchases less expensive, so one of those could be useful.  The rest provide you with gold, and only one or two will provide you with victory points at the end, so they're basically played when needed. 
• Playing a card face down is pretty useful, depending on your wonder's super power.  But that's only two cards - and you'll just want to put one down there that you don't need, and you want to keep away from your opponents. 
• So we're left with green science cards.  There's three symbols, and if you have all three, that's 7 victory points for every matched set.  ALSO, you get n^2 for each symbol, where n=the number of cards you have with that symbol on it.  So if you have, say, 2 compasses, 2 wheels, and 3 tablets, that's 7x2 for the two sets, 2^2 for the compasses, 2^2 for the wheels, and 3^2 for the tablets.  That's 31 victory points for seven cards, and don't even get me started on all the other bonuses you can get.  And, a lot of these cards can be had for free if you build the early versions.  Just saying, Z won both our games by going for nothing but green cards. 

So the analysis reveals that if only one person is going for green cards, they will FOR SURE win. They build exponentially, for crying out loud.  Even if only two people are collecting greens, you will probably lose to one of them.  Apparently, every person playing must try to get green cards, even if they aren't benefited by them at all, just to deny the monopoly.  This game will likely be at Thanksgiving, so it'll be under some more scrutiny then, and hopefully we'll know for sure.

Sorry if I semi-ruined that game with math.  I do that sometimes.