Forward by David Lapp:

In the game of Doomtown, one of the most unique aspects that our community loves are building not only for the goals of what you’re trying to achieve with your outfit, but how the deck is going to function in the combat element with poker values. Throughout the history of the game, this concept goes back to 1998 CCG days of your standard, ‘build to 40 on 3 values’ structure along with variant takes broken down on our forum articles. The following is our first article adapting this to Five Sails.

Article by Grand Admiral Tom Sorenson:

Every card in 7th Sea: City of Five Sails has RPT (Riposte, Parry, Thrust) values on it used exclusively in combat (possibly modified by its maneuvers or boosted by external techniques). How much you should care depends on how you want to approach fights.

Deck Type 1: Pacifist

 Do you want to avoid fights like the plague? Like Tempo Advantage?

• Include as many cards with only Parry on them as possible
• Let your eyes glaze over the rest of your RPT

Why? These “parry-outs” let you end duels while minimizing your wounds.

Outside RPT: Focus on high Influence approach characters, effects that can engage or otherwise neutralize opposing characters for a day, and ways to make more location claims, and movement cards to maximize your ‘chess game.’

Deck Type 2: Haymaker

Want to make sure characters die? Like Character Advantage?

• Include at least 4 cards with 5 Thrust (and additional 4-threat cards)
• Include at least 6 cards with 3+ Parry/Riposte
• Include no more than 5 cards with less than 2 Parry

Why? If you can kill an opposing character with your challenge and a single combat card, it minimizes your potential returned wounds. Restricted Hostilities is your friend!

Outside RPT:

• Include at least 2, 5-Resolve characters with 3+ Combat
• Include attachments that send more threat (especially on Challenge)
• Include ways to counter opponent gaining Renown or Dominating
• Include ways to do damage outside of combat (ie, Bleed Out), cards that initiate Challenges, and cards that move to counter the ‘chess game.’

Deck Type 3: Tennis

Enjoy Gambling & Reflecting Damage? How about Card Advantage?

• Include as many cards with 3+ defense and 3+ offense as possible
• No more than 3 or so cards with only Parry or less than 1 Parry
• No more than 4 or so cards with dash Riposte if you have ways to add Riposte

Why? You need gambling consistency, to keep your duelists (and therefore everyone else) alive and to keep sending a killing amount of threat.

Outside RPT:

• Include at least 2, 3-Finesse characters with 2+ Combat and combat effect(s)
• Include ways to move and attachments that have +Riposte (or Parry)
• Include ways to extend fights vs Pacifists or survive them against Haymakers

In-Depth RPT Breakdown

Pacifist

• Get in as few fights as possible, exiting them with minimum wounds
• Wounds to your adversaries are irrelevant
• Examples: Domination Vodacce, Economic Eisen, Domination Ussura, Economic Castille, Economic Montaigne
• These decks focus on winning with Domination or Renown (Economic) but can do either
• Your goal is to get to your victory condition before other decks can whittle down your characters to generate an advantage
• You generally rely on a lot of “tempo” effects like engaging, sending home, and claiming
• Influence is the most important stat, with the others being mostly irrelevant
• One of your primary strengths is tempo advantage. When your opponents engage to issue a challenge, if that challenge doesn’t result in a kill, that engage is almost pointless. You, as the Pacifist claims, gets renown, and advances your win condition. Further, if the challenge comes after the Pacifist deck has already engaged for value, such as claiming, even if your character dies, you can still arrive at your win condition before the tables fully turn. The additional tempo (“controlling”) cards above can also give you that little bit of extra push to cross the finish line.

RPT Considerations

• Include as many cards that have parry and nothing else, especially if they let you remain at a location (Hidden Corridors, Pressure is On, Regroup)
  • These are used to accept challenges and immediately end them
    • Reducing the wounds you would have taken for just refusing
    • Bypassing on-refusal punishes
    • Preventing your opponent from playing more combat cards
  • Cards like Unsanctioned Duel and Raise the Stakes are incredibly dangerous against you
• The rest of your RPT is irrelevant
• Pick cards exclusively for their actions/reactions/wealth
• Playing parry outs from hand is super valuable because it is effectively a 0-cost take 1 or 2 wounds, that engages an opposing character
• If you have high enough parry out density and like to take risks, you can gamble for them to try to eke out even more value (but I prefer reliability)
• If you can’t decide between two cards for their effect, you can pick the one with higher parry + riposte

• Haymaker (Overwhelming Thrust)
  • Initiate as many good challenges as possible
  • Maximize wounds to your adversaries
  • Wounds to your characters are mostly irrelevant, as long as your character lives or the opposing leader dies
  • Getting challenged is painful (great style for hunting pacifists)
  • Examples: Value Ussura, Value Eisen, Thrust Hunting Eisen, Servo Bomb Vodacce US, Servo Bomb Vodacce UK
• These decks focus on winning by generating an Approach character advantage (for whatever victory condition presents itself) or assassinating the opposing leader, usually sacrificing an early renown advantage
• They generally include a lot of ways to negate opposing claims/renown collection to buy time
• Movement is incredibly important to hunt down opposing characters and react to big Domination and/or Renown plays
• High resolve (5+) characters with 3+ combat are the most important
• Influence and support characters help to boost your fighters and not lose
• Your primary strength is you greatly restrict the opponent’s options in later days, and Assassination is a very real threat

RPT/Combat Consideration

• Send as much threat as you can as often as you can, until your adversary dies, then block their last card as hard as possible
  • Sending more threat than your restricted hostilities is incredibly important because it effectively negates some/all of your opponent’s potential Parry/Riposte (and/or you can find ways to give it Lethal). Ie, I send 4, but can do a max of 3 damage, if you parry out with Hidden Corridors, you still take my max 3 damage.
• You want to be the one challenging and sending 4+ threat where possible
• Yevgeni and techniques such as Throwing Knife/Langschwert (not Horatio) let you send these big initial challenges.
  • Against a 4-resolve character, this opens them up to being finished off by 1 damage effects like Bleed Out and Relentless
  • Quick Reflexes and to a lesser extent healing are strong against you to blunt your killing potential
• In addition to the initial big challenge, you want huge offense cards like Matchlock Musket which maximize threat
• Parry and Riposte for defense are mostly superfluous on these
• Your goal is to deal your max restricted hostilities and potentially eat theirs (which is why targeting nerds with 2 or less combat is super valuable)
• If you can kill them with the challenge and a single combat card, they can use a max of 2 combat cards to hit you back that duel
• Against that second combat card, we want cards that maximize Parry/Riposte, since sending threat has now flipped to be superfluous
• These decks rely on having very specific combat cards on very specific rounds of the duel
  • I will almost always play my big combat card from hand, so you don’t need super high density for gambling purposes
    • Minimum 4 five-thrust cards, ideally a bit more, but can be filled out with some four threat cards like Bleed Out
  • If my opponent isn’t threatening to realistically kill my character with their final combat card, I will usually gamble for my final defense. Due to this, a higher density of strong defensive cards is valuable
    • 6 or more, 3-plus defense cards
  • Due to the large amount of playing-combat-cards-from-hand, you can include some number of terrible RPT cards with great effects and your own 2+ parry outs, to protect from opposing challenges
    • 5+ total between them, keeping 2+ defense density not too unreasonable for final gamble)
  • The rest of the slots should be picked for effects
    • Run all reasonable extra challenge cards
    • Run 4-6+ cards that deal an extra wound outside combat
    • Run pretty much all reasonable movement cards
    • Anti-claim cards are solid
  • For combo and/or assassination decks, cards to effectively guarantee fights/clear a path to the opposing leader are critical

• Tennis (Extended/Value Dueling)
  • Get your fighters into all the fights
  • Consistently generate 3+ defense and ideally 3+ offense
  • Be capable of effectively generating 4 to 5 defense
  • You are trying to wring as much value out of your fighters as possible so surviving, killing adversaries, and/or draining cards from opponent’s hand through gambling or in-duel effects are the goal
  • Examples: Angeline Assassination, Montaine Dueling US, Montaigne Dueling UK, Castille Tower, Castille Scoundrels
  • These decks can be built to focus on any victory condition
    • There are hyper aggressive decks that want to kill everything and eventually the leader
    • There are defensive decks that primarily just want to protect their nerds from other fighters
    • Then there are the decks that can switch between these two focuses depending on how aggressive the opposing deck is
  • High Finesse on your fighters is the most important stat as these decks actively want to generate value through gambling
    • For the most aggressive decks, they also want 3+ Combat
    • For the more defensive decks, 2+ Combat is sufficient
  • Attachments with +riposte or +parry techniques are incredibly important to reach the consistent high defense values to keep your fighters alive
    (run at least 4 but more is better for consistency/stacking potentially weapon, offhand, and armor)
  • The primary strength of these decks is card advantage
    • Not having to parry-out or massive threat/defense card from hand enables you to play more cards for effect from hand
    • After investing in equipping your fighter(s), your remaining attachments can be discarded to pay the costs of other cards
  • This card advantage is then generally used to generate character advantage (for the more aggressive versions) or tempo advantage (for the more defensive versions) to actually win the game

RPT/Combat Considerations

• Include as many above average RPT cards as possible and only the absolute best below average RPT cards
  • For the more aggressive decks trying to actively kill characters, you can lose the game if you hit double parry-out or Sea Legs level RPT cards (run about 3 or less)
  • For the more defensive decks more focused on protecting your characters, you can include as many 2+ parry parry-out cards as you would like, but keep 1 or less parry cards to about 3 or less
• Try to fit in as many cards as possible that can have both 3+ defense and 3+ offense when gambled, including maneuvers
  • You want to keep your characters alive, while sending enough threat that your opponent must play a combat card to survive
• Many fighting decks have techniques that can boost Riposte (or parry) (Sanjay, Mastercrafted Rapier), so you want to include as few cards with a dash in your most relevant technique stat if they don’t have strong enough compensating stats (4 or less potentially overlaps with above guidelines)
• If deciding between similar cards, higher parry is generally better to keep your fighters alive and let them utilize all their finesse on gambles.

Other Breakdowns to Consider

There are plenty of other effects in the game that reward you for having specific types of cards. Ex: Otto for attachments, Cesca/Ivy for Sorceries, Daniella/Wilhelm for Faith, etc.

To determine how many of those relevant cards to include there are a few guidelines:

• If it is for an effect that can only trigger once a day: 7+ gives about even odds
• For Otto’s once a day reveal 3: technically 13+ gives about even odds to hit, but I recommend 18 attachments as a number that works with minimal ‘whiffs’
• Ivy’s effect can only resolve once a day, but you could attempt it multiple times a day, so 7 Sorceries is recommended

Follow these guidelines, add some cards for personal preference, and you’ll be on your way to experiencing all the City of Five Sails has to offer!