Games - Seventh Sea

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	Games - Seventh Sea

Seventh Sea is a defunct, collectible card game ("CCG") based on the Swashbuckling Adventures (formerly 7th Sea) role-playing game setting by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG).

Setting

In the 7th Sea CCG, players took the role of naval captains in the fantasy-Renaissance world of Theah. The game attempted to capture the feeling of a Hollywood pirate battle, complete with huge galleys, cannon-shot exchanges, and daring sea boardings. The game also had aspects of adventuring, treasure seeking, and the occult.

As with most of the games of AEG, 7th Sea had a complex storyline that affected and was influenced by the RPG setting. The results of tournaments would function to guide the storyline, and the storyline in turn would be used to create new cards.

Basics

Seventh Sea had many interesting concepts, including multiple winning conditions and a unique swashbuckling-themed combat system. The most important aspects were deck building, rules, and storyline.

Terms

The game used a number of terms to describe elements of game play:

Faction: The many factions in the game corresponded either to the navies of Theah's different nations, pirates, or other independent fleets. Almost every crew character belonged to a faction, though some were unaligned and thus available to be used by any player.
Captain: The leading character on a ship and most important crewmember. Captains followed special rules and were often central to the faction's storyline.
Ship: There were a many ships with various abilities. Each player would use one ship for the entire game, as well as one captain and crew. Faction ships could only be used with a captain of the corresponding faction, while unaligned ships were not available to anyone.
Crew: The rest of a ship's characters. A player could build a crew from all factions but the starting crew could not consist of a faction distinct from the ship.
Seas: The environment of the ship. Five pre-constructed cards delineated the game space.
Tack: When a card's ability was used for the turn, it was turned sideways and could not be used again. This was called 'tacking.' Tacking also resulted from damage.

The cards

The six types of cards in 7th Sea were: Actions, Crew, Adventures, Attachments, Chanteys and Ships. Each card is played differently as explained below.

Crew

The most important card type in 7th Sea is Crew. This card type combines the traditional CCG concepts of both a resource type and a creature type. Most CCGs use some kind of card type to produce resources that they subsequently use to gain other items. Usually those resources do not contribute to anything else. Examples of this are lands from Magic: The Gathering and holdings from Legend of the Five Rings. Most games also have some kind of creature card that provides offence and defense, like M:TG's creatures and Doomtown's Dudes. Seventh Sea combined both while also providing multiple resource types and multiple combat procedures.

Crew are the sailors you have hired to man the ship. Your Captain is a special and important kind of crew but he still performs in much the same way any other crew.

Crew cards have the following statistics:

* Cost: This is the amount of Influence (a type of resource, much like 'mana' in Magic: the Gathering, or 'gold' in Legend of the Five Rings) that you must provide to hire that crew and a measure of the card's overall power.
* Faction: This symbol denoted the faction this crew belongs to. Crews without a symbol were unaligned.
* Cannon: This statistic represented the crew's skill with a cannon. Its primary function was to perform cannon attacks upon other ships, simply by tacking a crew with more than 0 cannon ability.
* Sailing: This statistic represented the crew's skill at sailing. A crew with sufficient sailing ability could tack to move the ship by one sea.
* Adventuring: This statistic represented the crew's abilities in exploration and adventuring. This skill was mostly used to complete the requirements for Adventure cards, which would then bestow benefits upon that crewmember, the ship, or upon the player in other ways.
* Influence: A measure of a crew's wealth, charisma, and diplomatic skills. Influence is required to hire more crew, and as a result, it is the most important ability in the first few turns of the game.
* Swashbuckling: This measures the ability of the crew to repair the ship, in effect providing "damage soak" and how effective the crew is at Mêlée. This translates as damage (hits) inflicted from a successful boarding attack.

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