7th Sea is an out-of-print collectible card game (CCG) first designed by Dan Verssen and published by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) from 1999 to 2002.
Its theme is swashbuckling nautical adventure found in classic stories like Treasure Island. It is set in the world of Théah shared with the 7th Sea tabletop role-playing game.
Setting In the 7th Sea CCG, players take the role of naval captains in the fantasy-Restoration world of Théah. 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 has 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 The game 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 Théah'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 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 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.
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 Doomtowns Dudes. The game combined both while also providing multiple resource types and multiple combat procedures.
Crew members are the sailors hired to operate the ship. The captain is also considered a member of the crew, though they hold a specific leadership role and perform distinct duties alongside the rest of the team.
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.
Crews also had various traits that allowed them to use certain cards. Some of the most common traits were: Swordsman: The crew's skill in mêlée measured with a number (+1, +3 etc.). It translates as extra damage in boardings, and it allowed the crew to attach swordsman school attachment cards. All captains had some level of Swordsmanship. Heroic/Villainous: These mutually exclusive traits revealed a crew's "way of life". There were various cards that were compatible with one of these two traits. For most of the history of the game, Villainous was considered a better trait to have on your Captain, since it gave access to easy card draw. Sorcery: There were various types of sorcery in the world of Théah, and various crew could use them as attachments. However those attachments had a specific sorcery requirement of a certain level (0–2) that the crew had to have to attach them.
Each ship had a limited amount of space for crew and that meant that smaller ships usually had lower resource and offensive capabilities. Usually this was balanced out with different benefits, like stronger special abilities and lower sailing costs. Players usually chose crew for their deck depending on their style and their faction's strengths, usually focusing on one or two statistics and maybe a trait (like sorcery). Crew with sailing or swashbuckling were always useful due to their innate use on movement and damage soak, however players also focused on more than one or two of the other three skills, Cannon, Adventuring, and Influence so as to be able to use specific cards more easily. Decks which focused on many skills together were the most difficult to build, however a good player then had a much greater versatility.
Crew cards had a Punch as their boarding attack.
Actions Action cards are the surprises you can spring on an unsuspecting opponent. They are one-use cards that have some immediate effect. In 7th Sea, action cards had two costs. One was for the player and the other for his target (the canceling cost) and it was in the form of Skill: number. Costs are paid by tacking one or more crew with the appropriate skill, until the number is fulfilled. The canceling cost was there for the target of the action, and it allowed him to cancel the action by paying it. Thus some pretty powerful cards could be balanced by having a lower canceling cost. Cost and cancel need not use the same skill.
Action cards came in two types, Acts and Reacts.Acts are cards a player used in his turn. They usually worked to provide some unexpected effect, such as a combined cannon attack or an unstoppable boarding.Reacts are the much more common form of action cards. They can only be played on specific triggers such as an augment to a cannon attack, or suffering hits instead of a boarding attack.
All decks employed action cards, and usually the more aggressive decks employed a greater number.
Action cards' boarding attack could either be a Dagger or a Slash.
Attachments Attachment cards are default enhancing cards for your other cards (the other being adventures). After the player pays the cost, he chooses an appropriate card to attach it to. Usual targets for attachments were: Crew: Attachments ranged from pistols and earrings, to parrots and spells. Ship: Ship attachments usually modified the ship in some way, such as a treasure hold, better sails, figureheads (usually specific to factions) etc. Some ship attachments had the drawback that they took up crew space. Sea: Sea attachments usually were ports, monsters, and allies you could employ. These often required a specific sea.
Usually attachments had some kind of trait that classified it, such as Item, Henchman, Pet, Swordsman School, etc. For example, a pistol would be an Item while Rum Runners would be an Ally. These traits were used to specify targets for other cards.
In later sets requirements for attachments became more frequent. Those requirements ranged from a skill level (Cannon 4), to the alliance to a faction (e.g. Crimson Rogers), to the existence of a trait (Villainous), or a trait at a specific level (e.g. Porte 2). Due to the speed of attachments, they usually had a much lower reward/cost ratio than adventures.
Attachment cards' boarding attack was a Club.
Adventures This is the second type of card a crew could attach. Adventures are the usual stuff of Hollywood pirate or naval adventure films: ancient relics, captured damsels, sea monsters, etc. These cards were almost exclusively completed by the use of the adventuring skill and were defined by the following: Seas away: Adventures did not automatically attach to a crew, but rather to a sea. When played, an adventure was placed a number of seas away from your ship (usually 1 to 3). To complete an adventure, your ship had to be on the same sea as the Adventure. This served as a balance factor for the more powerful or cheap adventures by forcing you to sail to the target sea to get it (something not always easy when opponents were waiting in the middle) Native sea: Most adventures had one specific sea in which it was much easier to complete them. This could range from a single point of adventuring lower for low-end adventures, to several points lower for the more costly ones. Then other adventures were easier to attach to specific crew, such a Villainous, Skeletal or Rose and Cross crew member. Reward: Adventure rewards usually increased a skill by a number of points with a high reward/cost ratio. However, in later expansions, Adventures started giving various effects, such as traits or special abilities.
Although Adventures were attached to a Sea, they were only available to the player that attached them (barring other card effects). This was a nice way to "archive" uncompleted adventures without cluttering your hand. However, some cards punished rampant adventure archiving.
Adventure Cards' boarding attack was a Thrust.
Chanteys Chanteys were introduced later in the life of the game. They signified various global changes in the world of Théah in the form of popular songs used by the populace. Chanteys were similar to actions. However their effects, contrary to action cards, were permanent. They could either affect only the player or an opponent, or it could affect all players. Chanteys worked in a way similar to terrains in Legend of the Five Rings or Omens in Legend of the Burning Sands. That is, only one Chantey could be in effect at any one time. At any time that a Chantey came into play, the former Chantey was discarded. More powerful Chanteys had, instead of a cancel cost, a discard cost that any player could use to get rid of the Chantey.
Ships These cards are special in that they are not in the deck but rather start in play, along with your captain. Most ships belonged to a specific faction and could only be used by matching captains. Each ship was defined by its faction, crew maximum, and sailing cost.
Crew maximum was used to determine the maximum number of crew you could have on your ship. Ships with a large crew maximum tended to be more powerful in the late game, but more vulnerable at the start.