Kurt R
United States
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
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Preface
Rarely do I buy games on impulse anymore, been burned too many times (I’m looking at you, Cutthroat Caverns), but something about 7 caught my eye so I preordered a copy and I figured I’d read comments and reviews about it before having to purchase it. Well, the order came due before there was much feedback about the game, but I decided to throw caution to the wind and order it anyway as I’m in a bit of a co-op kick and this sounded like a co-op with a lot going on.
I started to get nervous about the game as the comments about it coming in recently have been pretty mediocre or negative or even dreadful. I really was concerned I had made a mistake, and I was anxious to try it out. Recently, I convinced my group to try it. I had read through the rules and thought we could give it a go. Well, it took us a good bit of time to interpret the rules and just get the damn thing set up and after about 30 minutes, we gave up and moved on to something else (after more time just to put the damn thing away and lots of jokes about the number of components and the artwork). Confidence was not high to say the least, at this point.
A week later, I convinced a good friend of mine who likes learning new games as much (or more) than I do to give it a go. I printed the English rules rewrite by MidkentgamerUK (thank you!) and we dove in. Shortly after, a third friend showed up. We slogged through about half a game before stopping and then a night later I was able to convince two other friends to try it. These are my impressions of those two plays.
What it is not
First off, 7 is NOT a co-op game, or rather, we found very little in the game to be cooperative about. It’s a cutthroat area majority game. Oh sure, there’s the potential for the Unnamed One to win the game and all the players lose, but in my group, given the choice between one of us winning or driving the game to a draw, we’ll choose the latter *every* time. And even when “everyone” wins, the player with the most Might points is really the winner, so there really is only ever one winner in the game. And if ain’t gonna be me, I’ll do what I can to see that it’s not you either. 
So I was very surprised to discover that this game was cooperative in theory but not really in practice and that, on the contrary, the game is very competitive with some fun opportunities for screwage. To me, it’s really not as advertised and the co-op aspect of it should be de-emphasized. I bought the game largely in part because it was described as cooperative. I just don’t see it. Not one bit. This is as competitive a game as there is, so buyer beware in that regard.
The Rulebook
Second, the rulebook needs a rewrite. This has been reported by several of us now. Someone needs to come along and do the game a favor and do a complete overhaul because once we got into the game, we realized that it was not nearly as complex as it first seemed, just not effectively organized enough in the rulebook for a game with a kajillion decks of cards and several boards.
The Artwork
OK, I am by no means a prude, but I – and my group -- found the artwork to be puerile. Do we really need pictures of young girls posing provocatively with tits that practically poke your eyes out? Our feeling was – not if you have a good game. At the same time, we really liked the artwork on the boards. We found the griminess of the Innkeeper with his boils and the creepiness of the goblin in the Tavern to be well done and thematic. The other cards are just over the top in a way that screams “you’re not the target market for this game!” and detracted from our experience, e.g., “I feel like I’m playing a 14 year old boy’s wet dream…”
Initial Reaction
OK, so I’ve described how I went into my initial experience of the game with low expectations and fully expecting to dislike the game, found it to be not cooperative, the rulebook was weak, and didn’t like the artwork. So guess what I thought of the game?
I actually liked it. Yeah, once I got past what I expected the game to be, I was totally surprised to find a compelling game of resource management, area majority, and careful timing of moves with a bit of direct player interaction/screwage. The quest cards that you’re driving to complete require you to obtain the necessary resources first (gift cards). Kinda like if you had to go through a process of “producing” Caballeros in El Grande before you could place them on the board.
Here you recruit characters and purchase building and elixirs to give you the right combination of gift cards to enable you to spend an action to claim a space on the quest cards (one of about 4 to 7 available spaces on each card). Majority on a quest card will win you precious Might which is both victory points and game currency.
The allies (what they call “characters” in the rulebook but are better called allies) all have a banner of a certain color that expresses their allegiance. Gather enough of the right banners between your Hero and your allies and the building and elixirs that you purchase provide greater benefits. To use the benefits of your allies, you tap them. Certain Sin cards allow you to untap them and use them again. I’m a fan of card-tapping as a game mechanism, so I like that feature.
Game Experience
Like most euros, each turn is comprised of an action round where everyone gets one action at a time. On successive turns, you might hire an ally, tap the ally for the gift cards they yield, claim a spot on a quest card by paying the requisite gift cards, purchase a building or elixir, hire another character who will enhance your just purchased building/elixir, use a powerful artifact you won, tap your hero character to trade in gift cards for different colored ones, claim more spaces on quest cards, etc.
Everything you do must be with consideration to what cards you see your opponents collecting and what moves you anticipate them preparing for. You need to beat them to the punch as much as possible. The spots on the quest cards are limited, so you need to plan which cards to pursue and which to let go by. There are two quest cards which need to be completed in order to resolve a Quest (and thus end a game turn) but you can play on the next two in line as well, so you can start working ahead if you like. Oh, and at the same time, you can relinquish one of those precious quest card spots you just claimed to take a piece of treasure if you need some immediate help.
On top of these interesting decisions, you have the Sin cards. Each player has three of these a Turn (a turn is completing two quest cards) to turn in for specific benefits or to play on another player to knock that player down a bit in various ways. Of course, your opponent may have a Sin card which blocks the effect you’re trying to play, but you can wait till your opponent plays his last one and he’s defenseless.
In any case, they’re another fun resource to manage and they contribute to the other aspect of the game I like – the Cataclysms. These happen when seven Sin cards are played/discarded and/or when you all complete the two quest cards of the current quest. Better be careful, though, as they do really bad things.
Cataclysms
Now, let me pause here and address the complaint that the damage they do is really brutal and randomly destructive – and I agree. The Cataclysms remove certain buildings, remove certain gift cards from play, cause you to lose allies, etc. and do so all without any warning or ability to prepare whatsoever. It doesn’t work. So in the second play, I decided to try playing with the impending Cataclysm card played FACE UP so everyone knew what was coming. We all knew which destructive actions we were going to encounter and therefore could play our game and plan accordingly. I thought it went extremely well. Now a random element became yet another aspect of the game to manage towards. I highly recommend it.
Another reason I really like the Cataclysms is that they occur whenever you complete a Quest, i.e, two quest cards. This means that when you complete a Quest (two quest cards), you get paid out Might bonuses and treasure for completing the Quest, but at the same time, you invoke the next Cataclysm. Imagine in El Grande scoring the Castille but then suffering some penalty. Playing with the Cataclysm card face up meant that I could try to invoke the next Cataclysm and catch my opponents less prepared than I. For example, one Cataclysm might declare that already tapped allies are removed from the game, so if I see my opponent with three tapped allies, I want to invoke the next Cataclysm asap. Another way to mess with each other.
What Didn't Work for Me
These parts of the game didn’t work so well for me:
-- The portals don’t really seem part of the game. The portals work in theory like this – there are seven of them (d’uh!) which you as a team can close such that the Unnamed One is defeated. If you close all seven, whoever closes the most portals is the game winner.
It takes seven resources to close any one of them. Seven gift cards of one color is a LOT in this game, so if you’re aiming to close portals, that means you’re not claiming spots on quest cards, and I just don’t see the point in that. Maybe I will after a few more plays, but right now, the portals seem like part of the co-op element of the game that just doesn’t exist. We’re not cooperating here to close portals, we’re battling to get the most might. If you want to close portals, you’ll probably get crushed. Perhaps you could go all in on trying to close the portals by yourself and win that way, I don’t know yet. I know you’d miss out on a lot of rewards from the quest cards though.
-- The game length is too long. I suggest reducing the number of rounds you wish to play (i.e., pieces of armor) or perhaps adjusting the number of quest items which must be collected on each card, .e.g, remove the gold or fame?. Sometimes less is more, ya know?
-- Also, the game setup and breakdown is significant. This is the kind of game that is pulled off the shelf as the first game of the night or not at all. I’m not setting this up at 10:30pm and putting it away. You have several card decks (like 10) plus 4 separate game boards and you need room for discard piles and the chits before you even need room for your Hero and the allies/buildings/elixirs you collect. Putting this thing away is a chore (at least as far as there is in the world of boardgaming!)
-- Buildings didn’t get used much. Buildings must be manned in order for their special ability to be available. Because you have to use one of your seven allotted cubes (which you also use to claim quest card spaces) to “man” a building, we didn’t spend much time manning the buildings which made them an underused aspect of the game. I might want to try a house rule where buildings offer their ability once you purchase them. This will, of course, make them much more powerful, but hell, if this speeds the game up in any way, then there’s all the more reason.
The Bottom Line
So let me try to sum up my thoughts.
-- I like the game and look forward to my next play. I don’t look forward to setting the game up/putting it away, so it won’t come out as often as something else. I will continue to play with the Cataclysm face up house rule, and will try giving buildings their abilities without having to be manned to see how that works. I will tinker with the game end conditions to shorten this. We stopped at 2.5 hours and only had 5 of the 7 pieces of armor (7 ends the game).
-- This game rewards careful planning and the ability to manage and keep an eye on several elements at once. After the second play, my two friends both liked it and said they would play again. We all liked the many different aspects to manage and the way you need to time your moves so you’re one step ahead of your opponents.
-- The more I think about the game, the more I think it’s a cross between Sylla and an area majority game. Sylla has several similar elements: events which produce negative consequences and great works which offer benefits, card-tapping, and ally collection. I like Sylla and I like area majority games, so this works for me. In fact, I may put Sylla up for trade and keep this game instead.
-- Just don’t expect a co-op game.
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William Crispin
United States
Wilmington
Massachusetts
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After reading the review, I am still on the fence about a purchase but it was good review and I feel much better informed now.
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Joachim Pehl
Germany
Daubach
Rheinland-Pfalz
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I really liked your review.
I still have to play 7, to much new titles from Essen *sigh* 
About the cooperative play, I assume that this aspects only work if you have an unnamed player (which is a good thing in my book), but I agree the advertisement should probably less emphasized on the coop aspect.
To bad that it seems that, like it's predecessor Saigo no Kane, there is a good game there which would have been much better if there were some additional finetuning (length of game for example).
About the portals, I guess that their usability heavily depends on the numbers of players. While paying 7 tokens is a lot, you also get 2 might per round (according to the symbol on the portal board) And I assume that it is much easier to get 7 gifts of one kind if there are only 2 or three player.
About the cataclysms, I like your idea to have them open, but it could lead to more AP, well I have to try it.
Last but not least, how did you play the cataclysms that requires you to tap chars. Usually I would say that, according to the rules chars that are already tapped are destroyed, but there is one card where this is explicitly stated ?
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Kurt R
United States
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
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tech7 wrote: I really liked your review.
Thank you.
tech7 wrote: About the portals, I guess that their usability heavily depends on the numbers of players. While paying 7 tokens is a lot, you also get 2 might per round (according to the symbol on the portal board) And I assume that it is much easier to get 7 gifts of one kind if there are only 2 or three player.
Yes, I would agree that their relevance is probably dependent upon the number of players.
tech7 wrote: About the cataclysms, I like your idea to have them open, but it could lead to more AP, well I have to try it.
I really don't think it will add AP and it will give players a better sense of control. Too annoying to buy building #6 only to have it removed from the game two minutes later.
tech7 wrote: Last but not least, how did you play the cataclysms that requires you to tap chars. Usually I would say that, according to the rules chars that are already tapped are destroyed, but there is one card where this is explicitly stated ?
We played that if a character were untapped, that character would then be tapped. If they were already tapped, they were removed. Similarly, if we had to tap 8 points worth of gift cards and someone only had one ally worth 5 gift card points, they had to tap that character twice to make up the 8 points, thus removing the ally from the game.
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Stephen Gassett
United States
Fort Worth
Texas
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Good review, but I can never understand it when someone says that a game is 'too long'. Unless you're playing in a place of business (like a bookstore) that closes before you're able to finish a game, or has extremely uncomfortable chairs, what is the problem with it taking a while to complete if you're enjoying it?
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Kurt R
United States
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
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Apocryphile wrote: Good review, but I can never understand it when someone says that a game is 'too long'. Unless you're playing in a place of business (like a bookstore) that closes before you're able to finish a game, or has extremely uncomfortable chairs, what is the problem with it taking a while to complete if you're enjoying it?
Really? You've never experienced a game you felt it was too long for what it was? For me, a game should have an arc, almost like a story, and if you're caught up in the story experiencing the same things over and over again, it becomes tedious when it would be better served getting to the climax and resolving the conclusion. Some times less is more.
Some games have the depth and complexity to justify spending hours and hours, say, Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization, for example. Playing that for 5 hours, the time flies by. For me, 7 can go on too long for the level of decision-making and complexity it offers.
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Jeff Jackson
United States
Mather
California
OK, one time Randy Beaman had to take baths with his brother. So one time his little brother took a potty in the bathtub .....and now Randy Beaman gets to take showers alone. 'K, bye.
One time, OK, see, one time Randy Beaman's little brother ate Pop Rocks and drank a soda at the same time and his head exploded! 'K, bye.
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Nice work Kurt.
I was also on the fence with this one and your feedback swayed me to allow someone else in my game group to pick it up!
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Stephen Gassett
United States
Fort Worth
Texas
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enzo622 wrote: Apocryphile wrote: Good review, but I can never understand it when someone says that a game is 'too long'. Unless you're playing in a place of business (like a bookstore) that closes before you're able to finish a game, or has extremely uncomfortable chairs, what is the problem with it taking a while to complete if you're enjoying it? Really? You've never experienced a game you felt it was too long for what it was? For me, a game should have an arc, almost like a story, and if you're caught up in the story experiencing the same things over and over again, it becomes tedious when it would be better served getting to the climax and resolving the conclusion. Some times less is more. Some games have the depth and complexity to justify spending hours and hours, say, Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization, for example. Playing that for 5 hours, the time flies by. For me, 7 can go on too long for the level of decision-making and complexity it offers.
Perhaps, but it sounds like you haven't played it enough that the point of tedium should have set in already. From your description of your initial attempts at playing it, I suspect the real issue may be more one of patience.
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DK Kemler
United States
Sacramento
California
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jjacjackson wrote: Nice work Kurt.
I was also on the fence with this one and your feedback swayed me to allow someone else in my game group to pick it up!
Probably me unless Spenc beats me to it. 
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Mark Chaplin
United Kingdom
Nottingham
Ice-choked tower, Mondavia, Nanglangka.
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I like the artwork - puerile or not.
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Kurt R
United States
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
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Yugblad wrote: I like the artwork - puerile or not.
You mean the craftmanship or the sexy chicks? Not challenging you, just asking.
I thought the artwork was well done, let me be clear on that. I do wonder why they didn't go for the 7 deadly sins on each card instead of just sexy teenage girls. Well, other than the obvious reason, that is.
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Mark Chaplin
United Kingdom
Nottingham
Ice-choked tower, Mondavia, Nanglangka.
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enzo622 wrote: Yugblad wrote: I like the artwork - puerile or not. You mean the craftmanship or the sexy chicks? Not challenging you, just asking. I thought the artwork was well done, let me be clear on that. I do wonder why they didn't go for the 7 deadly sins on each card instead of just sexy teenage girls. Well, other than the obvious reason, that is.
I admire the craftmanship of the sexy chicks.
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Posted Sun Nov 29, 2009 11:43 pm
