A Short History: 7th Sea CCG (AEG 1999-2002)

7th Sea CCG was a collectible card game created by AEG and first published in 1999. The game followed similar design to their other games, most notable L5R and LBS, but had its own unique differences that really made it stand out in the crowd. Created originally by Jennifer Mahr, John Wick and Kevin Wilson as a TTRPG, the game was a natural fit for a collectible card game.

Deck construction was similar to other AEG games, with the following caveats:

A player must first choose a captain. The captain determines your faction.
A player must then choose a ship of the same faction as the captain, or an unaligned ship if they have one.
The deck may not be less than 60 cards and must include the captain and a ship.
A deck may not have more than 3 copies of a single card.

Throughout the games history there were a few common deck foci which were of the following varieties.

Atomic Cannon Decks, which focused on sinking the opponents ship with one overwhelming cannon attack.

Plinging Decks, focused on producing several smaller "death by a thousand cuts" attacks and forcing the opponent to tack (tap) all of their cards making them unusable against you.

Boarding Decks, which focused on catching your opponent and then boarding them.

And finally Control Decks which focused on completing secondary control victories. These decks were extremely hard to play and required a lot of time and development to effectively wield.

Just as in other AEG games, decks were made up of several cards.

To start you had a Captain, and a Ship. Then you would build your deck and fill it in with Crew cards (think lesser creatures), Action Cards which allowed you do produce cannon or boarding or some other effect, equipment and attachments which had specific conditions for play and then of course you needed a copy of all five seas!

Each turn had three phases, determining first player, main phase where most of the game takes place and the end phase where clean up happens.

The innate actions in 7th Sea were:

Moving: By tacking Crew to produce Sailing points to equal or exceed the ship's sailing cost, a player can move his ship to an adjacent sea.
Cannon Attack: By producing any number of cannon with a single Crew, a player can inflict that number of hits on a ship in the same sea.
Hire Crew: If the ship has not reached its crew maximum, a player can reveal a crew from his hand and then produce equal or more influence than that crew's cost to recruit it.
Begin a boarding: By producing sailing equal to the ship's sailing cost, a player can attempt to begin a boarding against a ship in the same sea.
Complete an adventure: While in the same sea as one of his own adventures, a player can play all costs and attach the adventure to an appropriate target.

There were many different factions, ships and captains avaliable throughout the games life. As in other AEG games, players had control of the story and would make decisions by special votes, results from tournaments and other events. Crews could gain experience, ships might be sunk and replaced, or even new captains would arise.

The full faction list was:

Crimson Rogers (traditional bloodthirsty pirates)
Sea Dogs (Privateers)
Castillians (Spanish Sailors)
Montaigne (French Based Sailors)
The Brotherhood (Escaped convicts from Castillian Prisons)
The Explorers (Think League of Extraordinary Gentlemen adventurers)
The Corsairs (Ottoman Sailors)
Gosse's Gentlemen (A dashing Rogue beholden to no nation)
The Vesten (Vikings!)
The Black Freighter (Undead Black Pearl Pirates!)

One note I'd like to make is just how stunningly beautiful the artwork for the game is. They really went above and beyond in my opinion and most of the card art was extremely well done.

Generic Crew were avaliable to all factions, this would include crew such as Fancy Dans, deck scrubbers, riggers, etc. These crew would be used to either be hired at the start of the game, or would be played later in the game off draws.

Many crew members were beholden to a specific faction, denoted in a circle in the top left of the card. They would have more keywords and would produce effects for boarding as well. This card produced P "Punch" for boarding actions.

Some crew members would over time gain experience as well, and might even be elevated to that of a unique crewman. They might even change factions, or get killed off!

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.

Action cards would typically be heavily played in aggressive decks, were more lax, slower decks might run more crew and 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.

Some attachments would attach to seas. And would provide the players with specific aids or threats.

The Black Freighter came about as a result of story events. This "undead" faction became extremely popular over the course of the game and was the only faction which would contain previously killed off characters who now served the freighter.

The first captain of the Black Freighter was Captain Necros.

Over time, some crew would be killed off in tournaments only to return as crew members on the Black Frieghter.

7th Sea was a fantastic game, one which got a lot of support over its short life. When the game ended in 2002 AEG was so grateful that they released a final set as a gift to the fans online and avaliable for printing.

In my next post I will be talking about another great card game produced in the 1990s. DUNE!

Until next time, happy gaming!