The Art and Story of 7th Sea: The City of Five Sails

Sep 10, 2021 | 7th Sea: The City of Five Sails, Design, News, Story

Cover Art by Charles Urbach

My name is Case Lopez, Designer and Creative Director for Pine Box Entertainment’s new original card game, 7th Sea: The City of Five Sails. My job focuses on themes that bring the writing, design, and art into one cohesive vision. Past articles for this project have shown the game’s card types, as well as a introducing the communal City Deck. Today I am going to pull back the curtain a little and show off some of the amazing art that we have commissioned this project. I will also discuss the story that we have set to go forward, and hopefully provide a taste of what is to come.

Art by Sally Grew

So why Five Sails? Like many of you, I played the original CCG produced by AEG that coincided with the 1st edition of the 7th Sea Role Playing Game. But while that game was enjoyable, I felt it only represented a fraction of what the world of 7th Sea was. By focusing the story and interaction to a single location, we can keep the interaction between the factions going without the downtime of roaming the vast open seas. The City of Five Sails, named in the 7th Sea RPG books as “Théah’s most interesting city,” is the perfect location for our story moving forward. It serves as a major trade hub, a place where heroes and villains congregate and has laws that defer wildly depending on interpretation. It is said that within Five Sails, a dishonest man can earn an honest coin, and the opposite is true as well. Setting our story within the city of Five Sails allows us to still keep the pirates, privateers, and explorers of the original CCG. At the same time, we can bring in politicians, merchants, musketeers and more to truly represent the 7th Sea world of adventure and intrigue all within a constantly changing, high-pressure environment. The fact that Five Sails is a port city also gives us the advantage of having the vast world of 7th Sea come to us. You never know who will show up, or what they will bring with them.

Art by Kou Yang

The City itself is surrounded by the borders of five different nations, and while they do have some influence over the city, they do not control her. Instead, the city is a melting pot of different districts and customs from all over Théah. This gives us a lot of freedom to feature different cultures. In fact, diversity has been one of our priorities from inception moving forward. Having the location of our game set in a free and bustling port city gives us a lot of leeway to bring in different aspects of Théah. Expect characters from every corner of this world including the new lands of Khitai. Our story begins with five factions that operate from different districts. Each faction has their own goals, methods, and style with how to cultivate and expand their influence. Odette, a Montainge courtier new to he city, has a group of loyal musketeers that make up with steel with what she lacks in connections. Kaspar from Eisen is a surviving general from the War of the Cross, looking to expand the ranks of his new army to fight creatures plaguing the lands. Soline grew up on the streets and canals of the Castile district of Five Sails, and with her crew of tricksters and thieves seek out any advantage afforded to them. Don Constanzo is a well known diplomat and politician from the Vodacce distict who has an army of henchmen at his call. Finally there is Yevgeni, a giant of a man from Ussura, with no known past who seems to answer to the whims of the world itself.

Art by Sergio Villa-Isaza

Now I’ll discuss something I am extremely excited about, the art! While we are using many fantastic existing art pieces from the 7th Sea 2nd Edition books, we have brought in a number of amazing artists to help to start to tell our story and help to bring the city of Five Sails to life. Artists such as Charles Urbach, Jason Behnke, Kou Yang, Sally Grew, Greg Bobrowski, Terry Pavlet, and many more help introduce the characters and vibrantly bring the game to life. Some of these pieces I chose to showcase here, but this is just a random assortment of the fantastic art that is being created.

Art by Fabian Parente

One thing that I desired from the very beginning, was a large, expanding, and interactive story. At launch, we have five factions who are vying to expand their influence throughout the city, each one with their own desires, reasons and goals that they strive to achieve. The story will be heavily influenced by the actions of the players. Organized play events, major tournaments, side competitions, online votes, will have says in whether your favorite faction will make forward progression on their goals or lose footing within the city. The ebb and flow of control within the city is truly up to you.

Art by Jason Behnke

Be on the look out for more news and information for 7th Sea: The City of Five Sails, including insight into our combat system and upcoming announcements of our launch. From all of us at Pine Box Entertainment, welcome to the City of Five Sails!

7th Sea: City of 5 Sails Playtest Preview

Jul 29, 2021 | 7th Sea: The City of Five Sails, Design, News

We are Ketal and Hastur, two French playtesters for 7th Sea: City of Five Sails and we are honored to discuss this upcoming expandable card game from Pine Box Entertainment. Here we present the City Deck, one of the core mechanics of 7th Sea: CIty of Five Sails. As previously noted, in this game, players will deploy characters whose goal is to control the City of Five Sails. To do so they’ll try to take control of the 3 main city locations which are the Forum, Docks, and Bazaar.

The locations, by themselves, do not have a lot of differences between them. At the beginning of each turn, however, a card drawn from the City Deck will come into play for each of those 3 locations. This bit of randomness means that each game will be truly unique, and players need to be aware of how the revealed cards can benefit them or their opponent. Cards can be one of the three following types: Mercenaries, Attachments, or Events.

MERCENARIES

The first type of card that can appear at the locations are characters which either already live in the City of Five Sails or have just docked for a short stay. They may be pirates, robbers, or local celebrities. Recruit Mercenaries by Exhausting or turning sideways one of your own characters at the same location. Note that Exhausted characters cannot perform further actions that require Exhausting, such as Claiming a Location or initiating combat. In exchange, however, the newly recruited Mercenary will join your crew and will even be able to act this turn.

At the same time, Mercenaries aren’t totally free. The Mercenary will ask you to pay a cost which is visible at the top-left of the card. Hopefully, your characters have a high Influence value, which allows you to reduce the cost of the Mercenary they are Recruiting. You will need to plan carefully, since your influential characters are good at taking control of Locations and preventing your opponent from doing so for your victory. Will you send them to risk their lives to hire some fresh blood, and by doing so, maybe let control of the city slip between your fingers?

The character we can introduce is Takama Siad, a Healer originating from the Maghreb region of Théah in the 7th Sea universe. With a cost of 3, she’s not too difficult to hire on for your crew, but with a 0 for Combat and Finesse values, she’s not much of a fighter. Her 2 Influence value, however, makes her an interesting character that can take control of locations, or even Recruit other Mercenaries. What makes her special is her ability: every time a Duel takes place in her location, Takama Siad can heal a wound from your participating character. This ability can occur only once per turn, but in the long run it can help you keep your character alive longer so you can keep your grasp over the City of Five Sails!

ATTACHMENTS

The second card type able to appear at your locations represents all the goods passing through the City of Five Sails. Weapons, armor, even magical artifacts are some of the items we can find at these locations. With sufficient funds, everything is obtainable. It’ll be about making the correct purchases to equip and empower your characters or to prevent your opponent having access to these coveted goods!

A character can have only one weapon, one armor, and one attire. Characters can, however, possess as many Attachments as you want to multiply their abilities and let you have access to more possible Actions. Attachments can give you direct stat bonuses, grant you new Techniques to use in Duels, or even grant powerful actions to take during your turn! Obtain Attachments the same way you Recruit Mercenaries, by Exhausting your Character to Recruit the item to that Character, paying Cost minus Influence. Attachments remain with a character until they leave the game. Attachments are a way to boost your characters for the long haul. Since there are not many easy ways to destroy them, attachments are reliable investments to tilt the game’s balance in your favour!

For a low cost of 3, this versatile Attachment lets you increase the Influence value of the buying character. As previously stated, Influence lets you reduce the cost of recruitments and help gain control of Locations. That’s already a huge advantage. But furthermore, Smuggled Item possesses an incredible action. Destroy it, and you can buy another Attachment on any Location for free, or even play without cost an Attachment from your hand! Yes, you need to be clever and shrewd to survive in the City of Five Sails. Keeping an ace in your sleeve to play with perfect timing can be THE turning point of your game.

EVENTS

The last type of card that can appear at the Locations, and often the most devastating, are Events. Even if you are here to contest the control of the City, the city was here long before your struggle for control and will exist long after. An array of colorful figures run the city despite any and all attempts to challenge the established order. Event cards depict… Events (the name is on point isn’t it?) that occur in the city at the same time you are jostling for a position of power within the City of Five Sails. Events can be linked to monstrous creatures, mob uprisings, or even just to a specific character from the City itself. In any case, these revealed Events will greatly influence what happens within the game.

Mechanically, Events can give a particular action for the first player who triggers it, or simply cards that will change the game’s rules for their particular location. You will need to adapt and adjust to emerge victorious in a city where everything can change each turn.

In the 7th Sea universe, sirens are real and their melody is still confusing and deadly, able to drive mad even the toughest or the smartest sailor. To reflect this, Siren’s Scream is an Event that lets you Exhaust one of your characters at this Location to Exhaust all of your opponent characters at the same Location. But since it self-destructs this way, you’ll have to use it first! Even if exhausting your character to do the same to a single opponent can be useful, wouldn’t it be better if you waited to see if another opponent character moves to this Location? But what if your opponent triggers it first? Siren’s Scream poses huge dilemmas and serious headaches for the players with the luck (or not?) to see this Event appear during their games.

Conclusion

The City Deck is a real plus for 7th Sea: City of Five Sails. It’s a simple way to give more value to your character movements, to the three different Locations, but especially it’ll make each game a unique experience. Randomness is already present in our decks along with drawing cards from shuffled decks. Each turn, the vagaries of the City Deck will potentially enhance or disrupt each player’s plans for that and subsequent turns. An all-mighty weapon? A fearsome mercenary? Or a game changing event? Everything can happen and you’ll need to adapt each turn to all the new arrivals because even if you don’t need all of them, you’ll sometimes need to fight to get them because you can’t let your opponent lay hands on them!

Another good thing about it is the fact that the City Deck will change over time! Through player decisions at online or in person Organized Play events, new cards will go in, some others will go out. Thus the City Deck provides an effective means to give more lore and especially more life to the game. Since this deck will never stay the same, your games will also change over time.

We are really eager to help the development team polish the game into the evolving tabletop experience that everyone will enjoy playing. For now, we’ll simply say Au Revoir, as we still need to play our 654th match-up between us. We hope we’ll quickly meet you around a game table!

Announcing Doomtown: Weird West Edition

Jul 1, 2021 | Design, Doomtown, News, Organized Play

Weird West Edition

New ways to play with your existing collection, including Solo Play, Co-Op, 2v1, and more.
Doomtown Goes Digital: Play online with our new officially supported platform: Doomtown: Online!
The Latest Rules Revision: All of the latest updates, including new ones, to keep Strategy and Fun at the heart of Doomtown.
100% compatible with your current Doomtown collection.The original Deadlands: The Weird West card game is getting a new base set and a refreshed environment; stay tuned for the Kickstarter launching August 17 by signing up here.

“The Year is 1876, but the history is not our own…”. This was how Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s Deadlands role playing game was introduced way back in 1996. AEG (Alderac Entertainment Group) licensed the alternate history setting and in 1998 created a collectible card game that would inspire an incredible fan base.

AEG relaunched Doomtown: Reloaded in 2014, and in 2016, Pinnacle and Pine Box took over to expand and support this beloved game and its die-hard community.

So much has been accomplished since then. Pine Box’s first expansion, ‘There Comes A Reckoning,’ was funded through Kickstarter and brought Doomtown from Deadlands’ the Great Maze to the rest of the Weird West. This initial expansion introduced cards for four of Deadlands’ big bads, the “Servitors”, as well as key characters such as Morgan Lash and the Cackler.

We didn’t stop there though. Through player driven storyline interaction, Pine Box took Doomtown to the town of Tombstone, Arizona, creating a trilogy of expansions aptly titled “Too Tough to Die,” “Out for Blood,” and “Hell’s Comin’ With Me.” The team and players walked the boardwalk in Tombstone itself at our 2019 Doomtown Destination Event. In 2020, we continued to explore the Weird West with our latest expansion, “Welcome to Deadwood,” bringing our unique card total to 269 new options for players to enjoy.

A New Base Set

On August 17, 2021, Doomtown: The Weird West Edition will come to Kickstarter to usher in a new era for this beloved property. Doomtown is a deep, strategic, constructible card game that features unique movement and poker-driven combat. For those unfamiliar with Doomtown and its current iteration, you read all about it here.

At the Tombstone Destination Event, our design team discussed the current status of the player base and card pool. Two issues needed to be resolved:

Cards inherited from the AEG era of the game, such as Unprepared and Calling the Cavalry, had become problematic for the game.
A large cardpool and old, out of print expansions were making it difficult to add fresh blood to our existing posse of players.

After much discussion, we decided the best way forward was to create a new Base Set.Shortly after our meeting in Tombstone, work began on it in earnest.

This new Base Set serves as a launching point for new and existing players into the latest evolution of the game. For the Standard format of Doomtown organised play events, all cards from the AEG Base Set to “Blood Moon Rising” will no longer be legal for tournament play. Some legacy cards will be removed while others will receive an update, clarifying rules interactions and balancing effects that proved problematic in their original iteration.

The following sets will remain legal for Standard tournament play: There Comes A Reckoning, Too Tough to Die, Out for Blood, Hell’s Comin’ With Me, and Welcome to Deadwood.

The AEG era will still be supported as a Legacy format that includes all expansions, which can be found listed here.

Fear Level/Town Square Markers, Solo play, Co-op 2v1 story scenarios, Multiplayer

Not only are we introducing a new Base Set, we’ve got much more to offer as we continue our exploration of the Weird West beyond Gomorra and Tombstone into Deadwood, South Dakota!

The new Base Set includes four new variants of play, including:

Introduction Mulligan
Clock Timer Fear Level
Deadly Shootout
Town Control

These options are sure to entice Greenhorn and Veteran players into alternative methods of play. For example, we implement an updated version of Classic Doomtown’s Fear Level. Instead of empowering Abomination dudes, this variant adds a clock timer. As with all things Deadlands, Evil is a choice. Do you try and fight the encroaching darkness or choose to take advantage of it?

Tackle solo scenarios highlighting key facets of the game. You can also replay key storyline moments in a new 2v1 Boss mode:

Showdown at the Clanton Ranch
Showstopper

But that’s not all, these scenarios feature the return of Event type cards from Classic Doomtown. While Events in Classic were part of deck construction, a separate Event deck will influence these scenarios.

What Else Is New?

Not only are there a variety of new ways to play, the rules are updating too, pardners! These changes serve both to make the game new-player friendly, while also clarifying potential issues for existing players. Some key changes include:

Kung Fu is now mechanically similar to Spells and Gadgets
Deed costs and production tweaked to promote town building and allowing for more Dudes to enter play
Problematic cards have been addressed, e.g. an updated version of “Unprepared”
Token Dude Statistics have been updated
Core Deeds no longer count against your Starting Dude limit

Last and certainly not least, more than 30 new cards join this set alongside many returning favorites.That’s just an overview of all the ways we think community feedback has helped us make a better experience for new players and veterans alike.

Pine Box UK

Our new UK partners at Inquisitive Goblin ensure the new Base Set, existing expansions, and future expansions will be available at an affordable rate to our friends across the pond.

Organized Play

Our next Organized Play Series features a new Control/Influence dial, Revolver Faction Spinners, Stud/Draw Coins, and brand-new promotional cards. This is part of our upcoming Undertaker program where Pine Box Entertainment volunteer players receive various promotional items to distribute to their FLGS to promote Doomtown and other games.

Story Plans

The continuation of Doomtown and the move from Gomorra to Tombstone created three major storylines:

-Stone and a Hard Place: The tale of Lucy’s fate and the hunt for her killer continues and concludes as the posse continues to avenge her (as told by Jason Pere)

-Twilight Protocol: The latest fiction by Jeff Bailey wraps up the Abram Grothe v. Mason Adler storyline originally presented through WildCards and currently being transcribed into fiction (as told by Ronnie Andrew Gouge)

-Aces Low: The tale of Jonah Essex traveling from Gomorra to Deadwood (as told by Owen Lean)

All of the current storylines will be wrapped up as Dave Hogg takes over as Doomtown Story Lead to bring us into a new era. All future sets will be designed in mind with the continuation of a main storyline and a more cohesive fiction plan for all players to follow.

Digital Plans

Through COVID-19, players have been able to enjoy Doomtown on TTS, OCTGN, and Untap, but we’ve also been working on an official browser-based online platform specific to Doomtown that features all the proper tokens, our gorgeous playmats, card packs, promos, animations, premium subscriptions, and more! This ensures the future of Doomtown contains a digital version that complements the physical cards and accessories. All backers of the Kickstarter will have access to this feature, and a preview video can be found here.

Previews

From now until the 17th of August, every Tuesday and Friday will feature spoilers of cards from the new Base Set. You can track spoilers and news on all things Doomtown via our various social media outlets listed here.

Why are we doing a Kickstarter?

We are going back to a Kickstarter for this project due to the success of “There Comes A Reckoning,” and also to create outreach regarding our existing product line.

What’s to Follow?

On August 19, 2021, Pine Box Entertainment and our partners at Pinnacle Entertainment Group invite players to join us in the town of Deadwood for the 25th Anniversary of Deadlands, This celebration held during the Kickstarter campaign will feature the world championship Marshal of Deadwood event, a ‘Traitor’ variant round-up, Dueling in Deadwood, Greenhorn Shooting Range, Deadlands roleplaying sessions and a variety of expeditions in town. Check out the full schedule here pardners.

Doomtown will continue with future expansions and organized play for the standard and Legacy formats.Thank you so much to all our fans and players for supporting us and welcoming Doomtown into its next iteration.

Announcing Doomtown Online

May 22, 2021 | Community, Doomtown, DTO, News, Organized Play

by Aaron Schnabel

The wind sighs forlornly down the dusty street. Townsfolk hide behind wooden shutters and closed doors. Two groups face off from each other, the only sound the rustling of dusters and the clanking of spurs. The silence is sundered by the sound of a shot and chaos is unfettered. It lasts only moments, and yet to the participants, it seems to go on forever. When the smoke clears and the gunfire fades away, there is only one person left standing in the street…

Doomtown is a game of heroes and villains, cowboys and rustlers, magic and machines. The game’s mechanics meet these themes in an evocative fashion that few other card games have managed to replicate. Nothing compares to the excitement of maneuvering your dudes around town from one deed to another, hoping to catch your opponent off-guard and remove their influential dudes from play with a clever feint of movement and action. Sometimes it just comes down to the luck of the cards and hoping you can pull that 5 of a kind you so desperately need…

Playing Doomtown in person is undoubtedly the most fun and fulfilling way to play the game for the majority of people. But as evidenced by the entire last year, live play isn’t always possible. So where do gamers turn to get their fix when they can’t meet up at the local watering hole to sling some cardboard? The internet of course!

I played a lot of Android: Netrunner before getting more seriously into Doomtown. For A:NR, I played online via the fantastic website jinteki.net, which is easy to use via fully automating the various steps of the game along with the card interactions. Thus, I found playing A:NR online a breeze. Just create an account, pull in a deck, and away you go. No client to install, no messing around with downloads, etc.

So, one of my biggest wishes for the game has always been a clone of jinteki.net for Doomtown. When I started playing Doomtown, OCTGN was pretty much the only game in town if you wanted to play online. A lot of people have put a lot of work into maintaining the Doomtown module for OCTGN and I deeply appreciate their efforts. However, there remain severe barriers to entry with OCTGN that mean that it often feels like you’re spending more energy managing OCTGN itself rather than playing the game.

These obstacles mean that the client isn’t widely adopted, which makes it harder to play Doomtown when you want to. This last year has shown that we need robust, easy to use tools to engage in our hobbies and social gatherings when it isn’t possible to do so in person.

Frustrated with OCTGN’s limitations, I took it upon myself to update an old Tabletop Simulator mod that Blargg (our wonderful dtdb.co admin!) had originally put together. I got it up to date with the latest expansions and, with PBE’s permission, posted it to the Steam workshop. I saw this as another avenue for people to play Doomtown, especially those that can’t or won’t use OCTGN. The mod has proven to be fairly popular, and I’m grateful that it has

gotten people playing Doomtown again, or playing for the first time. For me though, it’s always been a stopgap.

Similarly, Doomtown modules were recently added to untap.in and a couple of other online platforms. On one hand, this is great as it allows more people to engage with the game. On the other hand, it’s become a bit of a problem since the online player base is splintered between several different platforms.

In addition, PBE took on the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and moved all of their scheduled 2020 tournaments online. This was fantastic as it gave people a chance to still play the game with officially sanctioned events and prizes. At the same time, trying to manage which platform players would use, mediating disputes if one player wanted to use OCTGN and another could only use TTS, etc. was an ongoing problem. it became clear that a single, unified platform that was easy to use and available to everyone was necessary to ensure the growth of the game and to bring the online community together.

As it turns out, Blargg had once already started building exactly what I’d long hoped for: a web-based, platform agnostic, fully automated game client for Doomtown. Rather than being based on jinteki.net however, it was forked from theironthrone.net source code, which uses javascript instead of clojure for the card automation.

For various reasons, he wasn’t able to finish it and bring it online. Thankfully though, someone else decided to step up, take that code base, and complete the project.

Thus, was born Doomtown Online. While not 100% feature complete, the client is already at a point where you can play a full game of Doomtown with a good chunk of fully scripted cards. You can even play with cards that are not yet implemented, as there are commands to allow you to manually manage the game state!

As soon as the project was announced on the Doomtown discord server, I knew I had to jump on board and help out wherever I could. I volunteered to set up a test server with the client on it, so that we could test features and games in a real environment. I learned how to use git and started fumbling my way through contributing card automations. Other people joined in to help with test automation, etc. We now have a small but dedicated team working on this project, rushing to get it to the finish line.

None of this would be possible without the hard work and dedication of the guy who started the project, who has held my hand through every step of my journey with it, and has shown great patience and excitement for the future of Doomtown. Known as trimm on the discord server, he’s been amazing to work with. I wanted everyone to get to know him a bit better, so we did a short interview:

What is your name, occupation and city of residence?

Milan Melisik (Melišík), senior programmer, Prague – Czech Republic (Slovakian by origin)

How long have you been playing Doomtown and how did you first get introduced to the game?

I think it was back in 2014. I had my eye on the game even before then, but was finally persuaded to pick it up by my friend janosikm. I have been playing it only against him since then. My first game against another opponent was in the OCTGN league against Prodigy and I remember being really nervous.

What is it about Doomtown that appeals to you over other card games?

My first card game was A Game of Thrones first edition. I was playing with my colleague who introduced me to card games. I fell in love with the deck building, but the second edition did not fulfill my expectations so I started to look for something else. Doomtown won because of the theme, unique deck building, and because I love westerns. The fantasy/horror was more like a bonus.

How did you first get involved in contributing to the Doomtown community?

Thanks to the Covid situation, and because our office was closed, I was not able to play Doomtown. Because of this, I decided to try OCTGN. When playing Doomtown on OCTGN, as a programmer, I saw a lot of opportunities for improvement. Also, because I wanted to learn some Python, I decided to fix some bugs, then add some small features and later big ones. That pointed me to the discord community which is great and helped me a lot.

What led you to decide to start the Doomtown Online project? Why start a new project rather than just improving existing ones (OCTGN, TTS, etc)

Even as I was improving OCTGN, I was aware of its shortcomings, especially that it was not available on other platforms. The TTS module is good, but I wanted to have a great level of automation which is not easily done on TTS. As I mentioned before, I started with the Game of Thrones card game therefore I was familiar with its online client (theironthrone aka throneteki).It seemed like perfect inspiration for the Doomtown client especially when I found out there already was an attempt to create it by Blargg, so a big part was already done.

What are the advantages of doomtown.online over the other platforms (OCTGN, TTS, untapped)

Since it is browser based, it is not platform dependent and therefore is accessible to a much broader player base. The background that is reused from throneteki has been proven over time so it was a solid base for the client. The level of automation, if done properly, can be a huge advantage, especially for new players.

What has been the biggest hurdle you’ve had to overcome while working on the project? What’s been the biggest success?

The single biggest hurdle was a first step to merge the older Blargg client version with newer throneteki and have a stable code that we can build upon. The greatest moment and feeling was when the client was deployed on the server and I was able to play it for the first time with my friend janosikm.

Anything else you want to share?

This project would not be possible without throneteki so I would like to express my great thanks to people who developed it. Also, I would like to thank Blargg, because it would take much longer if not for the older client version created by him. Finally, I hope the client will serve as an addition to the already great Doomtown game and that it will help bring in more players who can experience this gem of a card game.

I want to add a very special thank you to the wonderful people at Pine Box Entertainment. They have been supportive of this endeavour the entire time, and when they told us that they wanted to make it the official and sole online client for Doomtown it was exciting, humbling and daunting. Thanks to them for keeping this game alive and going.

So, when can you expect to join others in the dusty streets of Doomtown Online? Look for the official launch in August 2021!

The Aesthetics of 7th Sea: City of Five Sails

May 7, 2021 | 7th Sea: The City of Five Sails, Design, News

By David Lapp and Rhiannon McCullough

From the Weird West to Théah, adding a new card game to Pine Box Entertainment’s lineup has been quite the adventure. When we continued Doomtown, we already had an established game to move forward on. Creating one from scratch has been a whole different beast, and quite a rewarding challenge at that. 7th Sea: City of Five Sails is currently still in development as design and playtest continue to work hard to bring you this amazing swashbuckling game. At the same time, we are also working on card layout and art and we wanted to give you a first look at one of the card types, Risks.

What are Risks?

In the 7th Sea roleplaying game, Risks are defined as important actions that could impact the story:

“When you’re playing 7th Sea, you’ll find that your Hero is put in all kinds of tough situations, moments in which real danger or disastrous consequences lay just around the corner. Your Hero takes actions in response to those threats and consequences—Risks—in the hopes of saving the day, warding off fate, or just plain staying alive!”

The Risks in 7th Sea: City of Five Sails represent actions taken in both the main phase and ‘Maneuvers’ that occur during combat. They affect the outcome of the turn and what you can do with your crew.

Nation Specific and Neutral

During deck construction, players will be able to field cards specific to their own Nation, along with those of a pool of Neutral cards to form a 35-40 card play deck. While the actual rules of play remain a work in progress, we hope you are as excited as we are about the layout and graphic design itself.

The following layouts are from some Risk cards that share certain characteristics. The name and cost appear at the top. The symbol for the Nation is in the middle of the card, towards the right. This Nation symbol and the ‘RPT’ combat values at the lower left are a nod to the original 7th Sea card game actions. The Riposte, Parry, and Thrust values are signified by symbols and occur in the same top to bottom order on every card. The card’s main abilities appear in a text box to the right of the RPT values. As in Doomtown, the flavor text listed below the text box help tell the story accompanying the written fiction you will find in card set releases and online. Please note that some terms are subject to change. For instance, the word ‘Character’ may be replaced with ‘Crew’ as we continue to develop and assign terms that are flavorful and appropriate, but also clear and concise to our players.

The Iron Reply (Eisen Nation) is only used in Combat, due to its Maneuver text.

Valiant Spirit (Montaigne Nation) is useful both outside of Combat for its Action, or in Combat for its Maneuver. ‘En Garde’ refers to the act of a straightening a card, thus once again making it ready for use.

Lastly, we have Bleed Out, a Neutral card available only to Villain Leaders. This card adds Wounds to a Character. Characters will be able to take Wounds up to their Resolve rating. That’s right, there will be an opportunity to play the bad guys.😊

Complementing the art, the new card templates have been designed to capture the sense of swashbuckling adventure and feel of the original CCG design. At the same time, we hope that the cards for 7th Sea: City of Five Sails are both readable and aesthetically modern.

Besides developing 7th Sea: City of Five Sails, David is also currently the Lead Developer for Doomtown. Rhiannon is an illustrator and gamer from the Northeast and a graduate of The University of Hawai’i Mānoa. She has previously worked with Dark Steel Games as an illustrator.

What to Expect from 7th Sea: City of Five Sails

Mar 26, 2021 | 7th Sea: The City of Five Sails, Design, News

A 7th Sea: City of Five Sails Playtest Article

I’m Max, one of the playtesters on the new 7th Sea: City of Five Sails card game under development from Pine Box Entertainment. Today I’ll provide a partial overview of what you can expect from the upcoming game.

But first, let me introduce myself, a game player from a rainy ol’ island known to you all as England. I’ve been playing card games for the last 12 years – I started, like most, with Magic: The Gathering and did my time travelling around for Grand Prix and Pro Tour Qualifiers. In 2012, I discovered Android: Netrunner, and the whole game changed, as I discovered LCGs in a big way. Since then, I have played almost all of them in some way, shape, or form. I’ve also done my time with some non-LCG games throughout the years, primarily Pokémon and AEG era L5R. So, don’t be surprised when, for context, I reference various other card games. So, with the boring introductions done and dusted, let’s talk 7th Sea: City of Five Sails, and some of the features you can expect. Please note all mechanics are still in development and you may find changes in the final product.

Approaches

Approach cards are fundamental to 7th Sea: City of Five Sails for determining initiative for the turn. They also set your starting Panache – the stat that determines how many cards you will draw at the start of the turn. If you are familiar with the Game of Thrones LCG, this is similar to the Plot Deck. Although the effects are less dramatic, Approaches tend to enhance your game plan for the turn rather than define it.

You’ll be coming to your games armed with 7 of these Approaches selected, forming their own mini-deck. You choose one Approach each turn, and then you’re off to the races (or a deadly back-alley brawl, at the very least)!

Locations

You won’t face off against your opponent in some imaginary, theoretical battlefield. Oh no, you’ll duel it out at three locations across the City of Five Sails. These are less like the Deeds in Doomtown, and more like planets in the old Warhammer 40,000 Conquest LCG.

At each of these locations (The Docks, The Forum, and The Grand Bazaar) you will deal Neutral Cards from the Search Deck (more on that below). Control these locations to earn “Hero Points,” and also use them as the base to launch your noble (or nefarious) plans.

“Search Deck” (Playtest Term)

The Search Deck really sets 7th Sea: City of Five Sails apart from other games. Between you and your opponent sits a Neutral Search Deck. This deck is fixed, it will be the same for everyone playing the game around the world. During the game you’ll be dealing one card per Location each turn.

The Search Deck contains events, characters, and attachments for players to lay claim to. Some decks rely on the Search Deck to get their game plan going, whilst some for the most part operate independent of it. All players, however, will need to be aware of what is coming out of it each turn, as it really is full of treasures. Even if you don’t want a particular revealed card, you might just want to stop your opponent from getting their hands on it.

Skulking and Scheming

The heart and soul of the game takes place in the Skulking and Scheming phase. Here you will tussle with your opponent at each location, with you and your opponent alternating taking actions.

These actions form the core of the game, ranging from challenging your opponent’s characters, playing Risks (action card), and moving your characters around Five Sails in an attempt to dominate the city! The alternating action taking (I go, U go in classic gaming parlance) is core to the game. To reference the short lived Star Wars Destiny game, sequential flow makes the game feel fast and engaging to play.

Riposte, Parry, Thrust

Combat in 7th Sea is, dare I say it, flippin’ fantastic. You see, every card in your deck has a Riposte, Parry, and Thrust value (RPT from here on out).

Once you and your opponent are locked in combat, you’ll alternate playing these cards in a deadly, swashbuckling duel. Play a card with 1 Riposte? Deflect a damage, and send it back to your opponent. Parry? Get that damage away from me! Thrust? I’ll take the hit, but I’m slinging some of my own damage back at you. Combat only ends when there is no more damage ‘incoming’ at either player, and some of these combats become epic battles of back-and-forth card play.

Just like the Poker Hand mechanic in Doomtown, this combat system drips with theme. You feel like a Musketeer or a swashbuckler every time. It also makes deckbuilding both fun and challenging. Maybe there is a really powerful card, but its RPT values aren’t great, or there’s a lower powered card but when you’re in combat, its high RPT values allow you to dominate and win the battle. Oh, and yes, some cards have points in each RPT stat, and you get to use all of them when you play them into a duel.

Concluding Thoughts

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little insight into the game as it currently stands. I’ve not delved too deep into the details, as we’re still thrashing some of them out during playtesting. Hopefully this has let you know some of the things you can expect. At some point, I hope to share with you all more insights about 7th Sea: City of Five Sails’ Factions, along with tips about deckbuilding and general game play strategy.

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