7th Sea: City of Five Sails

7th Sea: City of Five Sails does not make a charming first impression. Its rules are a little awkward — a respectable B- in passing — and it took me about five games to stop eyeing them with suspicion. Then I started wanting one more game. That is usually how it gets you.

As a hardcore LCG, it begins with the deck: you make small deckbuilding experiments, try a change, then find out whether that choice survives contact with another strategy. A game will not reward “I put some good cards in here”. It wants a plan, and it wants you to understand what that plan actually does.

At the table, the interaction lives in what the other player brings and how their deck forces yours to respond. So far I have mostly seen BLTG echo champer, which leaves my view rather narrow; still, the urge to meet an unfamiliar deck and discover a different strategy is already part of the pull. You want to know what everyone else has been hiding.

With more time and more willing opponents, I would happily assemble three or four decks and keep putting it back on the table. 7th Sea: City of Five Sails asks for work at the start, but once you are past the thorny rules, it looks good enough to deserve a group that can show it the strategies it has been missing.