Month: September 2023

Eisen Full Strategic Breakdown

Now that I have played significantly more games of 7th Sea : City of Five Sails, I can say for sure that I love the game. Briefly, I love the distribution model (expandable, not-CCG letting me experiment with everything easily), love how every card is playable turn 1, and love how the city deck randomizes each game in an interesting, not feels bad way (with the rare exception). In addition, I have a much better understanding of how the game plays now (or at the very least, how I play it, which is almost never the same as the accepted meta). So, here is exactly how I play the Eisen deck I plan on running in the online Salon from 9/20 – 11/1 (https://pineboxentertainment.com/2023/09/12/new-in-town-a-five-sails-online-league/).

Feel free to reach out through discord if you would like to set up either a teaching game or an official game (or an unofficial game). I would love to have you play, I am happy to answer as many questions as you have, and I can give you as much or as little strategy advice as we play that you want. Discord: tomsepicgaming (the Eisen District Captain)

Eisen is the most straight-forward/honest faction. They want to recruit Mercenaries, reduce their opponent’s numbers through efficient combat/finish them off with ranged weapons, and utilize strategic movement (at least this deck does). Eisen has no ability to move around Renown on locations during High Drama, they can’t claim a location without initiating an Influence challenge, and none of their characters (including Kaspar) have a base Influence above 2. (Edeline Trinken can get above 2.)

Approach

Faction

Attachments (18)

Non-Attachments (22)

General Strategy

Generally speaking, your primary win condition is creating an extreme character advantage by prioritizing recruiting the best/all the Mercenaries and killing your opponent’s characters. From there, you can win with whatever method your opponent presents: Assassination, Renown (Economic), Domination, or the loss of the will to continue fighting (Concession/Surrender?).

City Deck Rankings For Eisen

Eisen wants Mercenaries, both in lore and in game (good stuff). In general, dueling Mercenaries are your preferred choice to help with creating that character advantage, but most mercenaries are valuable to you, sometimes just to prevent your opponent from getting them.

#1: Maryam Benu Pleroma

5 Resolve, 4 Combat, at least 1 finesse (3!), in addition to a Risk canceling Forced effect (which will cancel your own risk if you target her with it first), and a Technique that can be played first round (no thank you Veronica’s Guile). 6 Cost is less damaging to Kaspar as well with his 4 Influence on Parley.

#2: Angeline Demone

Leader level stats (aside from Resolve) with a 3 Combat. Her ability to move without engaging is also great, as is her Technique. There are not a lot of characters that she doesn’t have at least equivalent Combat and Influence to, but watch out for attachments that can push those characters out of range. While she is incredible in her own right as a card, she also has the best artwork in the game which absolutely influences her ranking. I would love a signed, full-size print of this artwork to frame…I’ll also be at Gamehole Con and likely Pax Unplugged…just saying.

#Sigurd: Sigurd Ulfsen

Against Ussura, Sigurd is the 3rd best city card for you. Not better than Maryam because Maryam can help you hunt the boar, and not better than Angeline because we don’t tolerate that kind of slander. Sigurd walks into Yevgeni‘s location, says “Sup” and stands there as your other fighters pile in behind to initiate the duels without being initiated on. Strong against Montaigne and other Eisen players as well, but almost meaningless against pacifist Vodacce/Castille (unless they get him which is annoying for you). Also, the fact that duels can’t be initiated against other characters means you’re guarded against unintervenable challenges as well.

#3-7 (these are similar in ranking):

Adelheide Schmidt is great because she is a reasonable fighter at 2 Com, 2 Finesse, 4 Resolve, but she can also turn your abundance of attachments into unpreventable damage (many of the attachments included purely to be grabbed by Otto anyway).

Carmella Vanessa Salvaggi is great because of her ability to challenge/intervene twice a day with 3 Combat (and 2 Finesse). She even has an influence if she needs to claim a location.

Kalla Forsberg is great because Eisen has so many attachments they want to attach, even from the City Deck. Reasonable offensive stats too, since Eisen frequently wants the first combat card played from hand and the 2nd as a gamble that hopefully reduces damage taken from the opponent’s final strike.

Ravenna Destine is great because card draw. She can also claim a location.

#Reasonable Mercs (similar in ranking):

Leja Juska is the best of these but not quite as good as the 4 above. Reasonable offensive stats, but not great. No other power, but the 1 influence is relevant.

Eko Sorridi 3 resolve is so low and easy to kill. If it weren’t for that, he would be great with his combat stats and City Reaction. Don’t forget it can hit a character fleeing with Not Today.

Vladislav Novikoff isn’t as good as Sigurd, but a reasonable card against Ussura/Montaigne/Eisen. Very weak against Vodacce/Castille, but annoying for us to play against.

#Valuable City Attachments

Syrneth Hand, Eager Blade, Burnished Cuirass, Sorte Deck

Fairly unimpressive Day 1 unless you can get them on a fighting Merc you recruited. Not bad on Kaspar to enable him to do some fighting, but he would much rather be recruiting Mercs. Day 2 onwards these are great on your fighting characters to either make them hit harder or stay alive longer. +1 combat is a big deal because it makes your 3 Com characters send 4 threat/Restricted Hostilities on challenge which is usually enough to outright kill a character, preventing them from just refusing. These attachments also enable effects that rely on having an attachment.

#Lower Tier Mercs (for Eisen)

Non-fighting, mostly 3-Resolve, mostly 0-Combat mercs. They can definitely help prevent us from losing to opponents taking control of locations though as they all have 2 Influence.

Claude De La Roche: is a solid Merc that can certainly help not lose against Renown/Domination decks. But, at 6 cost, we would much rather have an opponent pay 6 for him and then kill him.

Giacinto: 3 health is easy for us to kill and, while his effect isn’t weak, we are much more interested in fighting than engaging/moving a character for the turn, generally speaking. Wins games though.

Gustavo (Luis de Martinez de Ladera): 3 Resolve, so easy for us to kill. At 18 attachments in our deck, it isn’t as unlikely as I would like that we whiff and don’t get a card draw from his effect.

Kaj Kousei: Syrneth Hand is the only artifact we actively care about in the city deck.

Takama Siad: Has been better for me than I anticipated when I begrudgingly recruited her, but she can’t protect herself, has to be in the same location of the duel, and the dueler has to still be alive.

#Everything Else

Most of these are fairly unimpactful to our gameplan.

Captain’s Coat scares me with its ability to help enable an early Domination victory against us before we overwhelm the city.

Duckfoot Pistol is another way to finish off a non-Leader, but we have a bunch.

Crystal Eye, Object of Wonder, Smuggled Item‘s +1 influence is nice, especially for recruiting 5 cost characters but mostly a luxury for us.

Penya Shows the Way, Point of Opportunity, Risky Undertaking, Siren’s Song, and So It Begins all have noticeable effects which can be huge but aren’t usually.

Guild Triskelion is scary for some opposing characters to get, and to be fair, it is pretty great on Daniella and even reasonable on Otto.

Efficient Eisen Combat

Background (Knowledge Gained)

When I first started playing 7th Sea : City of Five Sails, I was enthralled by 3 defense (Riposte+Parry) cards as a way to keep my characters alive in duels, in addition to pure-parry or “parry-out” combat cards which are fairly rare for the factions I was looking at first. My thought was that as long as my character survives, I can eventually win the duel. That approach did not work for me, at all.

The biggest demonstration of that for me was when my high defense Ussura deck went against the strong overall RPT cards of Montaigne. Yevgeni challenged Odette and left the duel having taken 3 wounds and inflicting none (to be fair, I think I forgot to add the +1 Thrust to Yevgeni combat cards). I was very confused. It seemed like combat wasn’t very effective, Finesse was everything, and luck played a large role. So I built my Gen Con Eisen list with Unsavory Salve and other ways to get out of combat while still mitigating damage.

It wasn’t until playing with the eventual Ussuran District Captain and my life-changing friend/Epic Card Game pro Tom Dixon, that we came up with a different approach. My Ussura deck at the time was focused on churning through my deck with Vedma + Matsushka’s Sight, Devotion, A New Strategy, etc. to find Grandfather’s Hammer. The idea was that initiating a challenge with +2 thrust for 6 outbound thrust was really strong because even if a 4-Resolve character played a 2-defense card like a parry-out, that 4-Resolve character still instantly dies. In addition, with Yevgeni‘s base 4 Combat, they also can’t just refuse the duel, because death. That being said, I thought after that initial challenge, the longer the duel goes, the worse it is for Yevgeni as he will wrack up wounds since Ussura doesn’t have a ton of 3-defense cards. Tom Dixon wanted to duel though and didn’t want to just focus on big initial challenges. (I also had Boon‘s to try to make my challenges more scary. I have since come to view Boon as rather mediocre, as most people seem to).

Eventually, after we slept on it, we both came to the conclusion of: bring more combat cards that send more threat! If it is strong to send 6 threat on a challenge because it overwhelms defenses: 2 being common, 3 not-uncommon, 4 rare (Not Today being effectively 4 since it causes you to take a wound), or ultra-rare 5+ with stacked effects, why not try focusing on using Matchlock Musket, or other 4 offense (Riposte + Thrust) cards [in combination with Yevgeni‘s bonus +1 thrust] to consistently send 5+ threat to practically guarantee inflicting wounds early?! Even if these cards have little to no defense, it is much better to take the Restricted Hostilities 2 or 3 wounds on your 12 health character and then follow up by inflicting 3 or 4 wounds on their 4 health character. By making this change, we still want to minimize the amount of wounds we take, but we do that not by defending, but by killing our opponent as quickly as possible.

Strategy

Eisen follows this same idea as well, overwhelming Threat. Langschwert is one of the best cards in our deck. It lets us send 4 threat on the initial challenge which still enables us to push maximum Restricted Hostilities damage of 3 against a 1-parry parry-out. We can then follow up with a gun or Bleed Out to kill the opposing 4-Resolve character with only needing to initiate that single challenge (engage).

Further, if our opponent doesn’t parry-out or refuse, Langschwert gives us another bonus Thrust for our first combat card, which will ideally be a Fight Through the Pain or Matchwork Musket from hand, resulting in 6 threat, which our opponent is likely only able to block 3 of. Sure we took 2 or 3 damage to do it, but our opponent is probably dead, and our 5 Resolve character can probably defend enough of their Final Strike to not die. Also, sure we played a card from hand instead of a free one from Gambling, but that card effectively read 0-cost inflict 3 wounds (incredible).

Simple as that.

Fight Through the Pain is another of Eisen’s best cards for this reason, especially since (as long as your character isn’t dead), it shaves off 1 damage from your opponent’s Restricted Hostilities damage (no matter how much Threat they sent). You can effectively ignore the Action on Fight Through the Pain unless you are desperate.

Day 1

Goal

Day 1 our goal is to not lose to Domination (or Assassination for all you Yevgeni‘s out there), recruit a (good) Merc, and start growing an advantage to go into Day 2.

Muster

Otto is always our Muster day 1 to start (hopefully) drawing extra cards.

Scheme

Midnight Shipment or Let’s Haggle are basically always our scheme. If there is an incredible Merc we definitely want, Midnight Shipment to guarantee we go first (since I don’t think I have ever seen anyone else run this scheme). If there is nothing we want, still Midnight Shipment to try to get a Merc from the extra city card. Let’s Haggle can be used if there is a strong attachment on the Grand Bazaar we want for cheap or to scam.

To scam with Let’s Haggle, send Kaspar to the non-Grand Bazaar location with a Merc you want to Recruit. After your opponent moves into the Bazaar to take the Attachment, activate the City Action on Let’s Haggle. Kaspar gets to equip the Attachment from his location, since only the discount requires you to be at the Bazaar.

Action Order

1st action (assuming you won the initiative) is always to send Kaspar to location of the Merc you want to recruit.

2nd action could be the Let’s Haggle scam.
Or, if your opponent didn’t move into your location and you are not doing the Let’s Haggle scam, it could be equipping an Uppman’s Jacket in preparation for recruiting a 5+ cost Merc. Otherwise, it is probably just Recruit.

If your opponent is planning on doing some fighting, especially with Yevgeni, you probably wait until they move out of home before bringing Otto out as far away as possible to draw you a card. This can include passing if both characters are still at Home. If lucky, maybe Otto claims you a location for a Renown or 2, likely not though.

If your opponent is not fighting or is Vodacce/Castille with the potential of turn 1 Domination Victory, Otto‘s 2 influence can make that harder for them to achieve. Against Vodacce, you probably want to get Otto to an unclaimed location to contest the claim as reclaiming a location might fail due to Objection. Against Castille, it maybe is better to wait until they burn through their shenanigans? Thankfully, since we will almost always be going first in the first couple days, we have to worry less about Adaptable stealing a location where we have an Influence-advantage with only engaged characters.

Most of your cards in hand are not worth playing Day 1, unless you need to prevent yourself from losing to Domination Victory. If you get Syrneth Hand on Kaspar and no other Mercs, you could equip him with a Langschert and start challenging characters, even using Well-Equipped to go again. Day 1 Assassination Victories are possible against unsuspecting opponents. Otherwise, playing 1 equipment to get under 6 handsize is all you really want to do. Playing the guns to start pushing that damage is tempting, especially if sitting on a Last Word, but usually better to save it if under handsize. If you’ve got an Opulence to get it out, maybe, but your cards in hand are very valuable. Going into day 2 with a 12 card hand is quite nice for executing tactics, especially since there is likely more Renown in play.

Kaspar’s Panzerhand should never be played as it is too important of a combat card for later Days, and it is very expensive.

Also, do not forget the City Action on Midnight Shipment because clearing the location of City cards is pretty easy for Eisen, the non-engaging movement action is incredible, and your opponent might forget about it enabling big plays.

Day 2

Goal

Start whittling down your opponent’s characters, don’t lose to Domination/Assassination, and ideally don’t let your opponent get to 5+ Renown.

Muster

Now we have diverging paths dependent on what we have leftover in our hand from day 1, who (if anyone) we recruited, and which faction our opponent is playing.

The highest power-level-ceiling character in our deck is Terrell Brandt, and ideally we want to get him out as soon as possible. However, his power comes from being able to play ridiculously strong RPT attachments every single combat (since they return to hand if he doesn’t die regardless of if played from hand or gambled into). If you drew into Kaspar’s Panzerhand, you should muster Terrell. If you also drew into a Matchlock Musket, you should absolutely muster Terrell. With both of these cards you can issue a challenge with his +1 Thrust technique to send 4 Threat, follow up with Matchlock Musket to take the opponent’s Restricted Hostilities (1 to 3) and send 5 threat, and finish off with Kaspar’s Panzerhand to block 4 of the likely final strike. Rinse and repeat. If you haven’t drawn Kaspar’s Panzerhand yet, hold off on mustering him. If it entered your discard pile somehow, you could muster him with Armed and Marshaled to get it back for him, unless there is a high priority Merc to recruit (requiring a higher initiative scheme).

On the off-chance that you got to Recruit Maryam and/or you will have 2 fighting Mercs, Daniella Dietrich is a strong Muster choice. Being able to throw a Langschwert on Maryam and let her attack twice (or intervene + attack) is huge. Having 2 fighters gives you more flexibility since it takes multiple actions to get into position for her to use her City Action. You could use Stratege to move both Daniella and a fighting Merc into place with one action (since Stratege doesn’t target the performing characters), but I have not done it yet. If you don’t have reliable access to fighting Mercs, don’t recruit Daniella. Her technique is fantastic for protecting her as well, almost effectively turning any card into a defense-out.

If you are going up against Vodacce or Castille, Phillip Hase‘s 2 influence and movement City Reaction are both excellent for blocking/punishing tricksy Domination/Renown gathering shenanigans (with his 3 Combat too of course).

Otherwise, if you have a Langschwert in hand Rena Klingenhalter is a solid choice. If against Montaigne and their plethora of challenges she might be even better, as long as you have at least a Throwing Knife to get her powered up. Be Aware: if her weapon gets Sundered or Robbed in a duel (or if you throw your knife), she will immediately go back down to 2 Com/2 Restricted Hostilities for the threat currently sent at your opponent (likely not the end of the world though as it is terribly common to be able to push more than 2 damage, although we definitely try to).

Scheme

If there is a high-value Merc in the city, use whichever of Let’s Haggle/Midnight Shipment you have left to maximize your chance of getting it.

On the off chance there is a strong Merc in the city discard pile (possibly because your opponent used Shifting Tides to justifiably fear-discard Maryam), you can use The Song of Eisen to put that Merc on top of the City Deck. Then, you can use Kaspar‘s City Action to recruit the Merc off the top of the deck.

If Kaspar’s Panzerhand is in your discard pile, you can use Armed and Marshaled to get it back to enable you to Muster Terrell.

Otherwise, now that we will have at minimum a strong Mustered fighting character, Let the Sword Decide is an excellent card likely to draw a card and can cancel a nasty Manuever/Technique YOU JUST HAVE TO REMEMBER TO USE IT TOM!!! (Cancelling Broken Time is so cruel…so deliciously cruel.)

Action Order

Once again, assuming you go first and there is a Merc you want, immediately send Kaspar there. (I frequently forget to even draw my new cards before doing so.)

Otherwise, if there is high-value fighting attachment, send one of your fighters there.

Don’t forget about the Let’s Haggle scam as an option as well, nor the actual discount if Syrneth Hand or something drops on the Grand Bazaar.

If there are no City Cards you care about, you might have selected a lower initiative scheme, therefore not be going first, so you react to your opponent.

Day 2 is when we start primarily hunting characters. The juiciest targets are ones that die instantly to a single challenge. 3 Resolve characters are prime targets and 4 Resolve characters are reasonable as well (since we are packing ways to push that last point of damage outside of combat). We can push some wounds to our opponent’s leader if that is the best challenge we get, but ultimately our goal is to eliminate entire characters first and foremost. We can always Assassinate an unguarded leader on a future day, and we aren’t able to necessarily initiate enough bonus challenges to kill off a leader outright early.

Sequencing of actions at this point becomes incredibly important and is incredibly tactical. I think this skill is largely gained by playing the game, but here are a few good examples:

  • Opponent played Marooned while you have a strong fighting Merc in play. If you send your fighting Merc to a location that has an opposing character, they get to act next and engage down (or finish off) your Merc, not good. However, if you send your Merc to an unopposed location that you expect your opponent will want to go to, if they move there, you get the first action and can challenge that character before getting engaged. They could counter this by sending a character they don’t care as much about getting challenged. If they do, you get the choice of either challenging or letting them spend cards to trigger Marooned. If they don’t go to that location, that is likely good for you too, as you can probably collect its Renown.
  • Opponent is Yevgeni and you have Sigurd. Wait until Yevgeni moves out. Move Sigurd on top of him. Then move your challengers in afterwards, protected.
  • When hunting characters, wait until your prey moves out, then move on top of them. However, if they move to a location that doesn’t make a ton of sense for them to be at, they might be planning on using an effect to move to where they actually want to go, after you commit your free move to get on top of them. Phillip and Angeline can punish that nonsense.
  • Terrell equipped with a Langschwert is going up against an Ussuran/Castillian controlled character, activate your Langschwert technique before your Terrell technique in case your weapon gets removed.
  • Wait to bring out your vulnerable characters until the scarier opposing characters are Engaged.
  • Wait to initiate claims until your opponent isn’t likely to reclaim it from you
  • Immediately initiate claims if you think your character is likely to die soon if you think your opponent isn’t likely to reclaim it from you
  • Equip weapons at home so there is only a 1-action gap between moving an issuing a challenge
  • Equip a weapon, at a location, that your opponent wasn’t counting on, after their character engaged

If your opponent is playing very cautiously and avoiding your challenges that could whittle their characters down, you can always win with Renown. If you send a strong fighter with at least 1 influence to an outer location with 2+ renown, and then they don’t send anyone to contest while engaging all of their characters elsewhere, just claim your location. You don’t have to force a challenge. Basically, if they are too worried about losing to actually advance their win condition, you can shift into it yourself.

Don’t forget about Otto either. He isn’t a fighter, so he is a great follow up character to reclaim a location, possibly after you killed the high influence character that was originally there for instance. There is generally little rush to get that card draw because it is frequently just discard fodder for your other effects like Well-Equipped, Move Along, etc. Maybe you could have drawn into a Langschwert, but the reserve-claimer/reclaimer is solid.

Day 3+

At this point, you are mostly just iterating on your Day 2 options. You likely won’t have your high initiative schemes to snipe Mercs anymore, but you have 3 high-effect schemes to convert into kills/strength.

Usually, the longer the game goes, the more favored Eisen seems to become, as long as Otto is actually staying alive and drawing cards, and as long as Eisen isn’t spending cards unnecessarily for minimally impactful effects. In earlier Days, you can definitely let your opponent pick up some uncontested Renown if it means you kill or heavily injure a character. At this point though, you have to be careful that they can’t convert the board into a win before they are crushed beneath you.

Miscellaneous Eisen Points

Kaspar‘s greatest strengths as a leader are his 4 Influence on Parley and his big butt (9 Resolve). His 9 Resolve lets him Refuse early challenges if he wants, effectively wasting a 3 or less Combat character’s engage. You don’t want to refuse a Yevgeni challenge, but aside from that, Kaspar doesn’t need to get his hands dirty. He absolutely can though, leveraging his 9 health to take out a character, but you need to be careful of Lethal and unintervenable challenges after that point. Getting within a few wounds of death could also prevent Kaspar from leaving home, which is a big loss for you; however, if your opponent poured tons of resources into that, we can likely finish up the game with our other accumulated resources.

Kaspar‘s City action is unreliable. I generally avoid using it unless in combination with The Song of Eisen. The main reason is I scarred myself in my loss in Gen Con top 8 where I activated his ability to greed out an additional Merc instead of claiming my location, knowing it could potentially lose me the game. I got the no-Influence, worthless-against-pacifist-Castille Vladislav and lost the game (of course there were a lot of factors to the games conclusion, but that one left a mark). That being said, I just played a game where my opponent hit Angeline into Maryam, so it certainly can be ridiculously powerful. Primarily though, I would much rather take the Merc my opponent has the option of recruiting than rolling the dice on a random Merc.

Last Word is incredible. A 0-cost (after the initial investment of playing a ranged weapon which can include Throwing Knives) move your opponent’s character is incredible for messing with their Influence math on claims, getting potential interveners out of the way, moving an engaged character into a location with your fighters, etc. It theoretically could be used in a duel to finish off a character preventing them from sending a final round of threat, but my fighters usually aren’t equipped with Ranged Weapons (possibly Throwing Knives though).

Unsavory Salve, Breastplate, Corpse Speak, and Uppman’s Jacket are included almost exclusively for Otto to fetch with his City Action, so you can discard them to pay for your better cards. It is hard to imagine a scenario where you actively want to play Unsavory Salve, especially since getting your weapon destroyed also destroys the Salve. Breastplate is overkill for your 5 Resolve characters in addition to being too expensive; its 3 parry is reasonable as your protection from your opponent’s Final Strike. Corpse Speak can be used by Daniella, and you do have some strong targets for it, but it is a lot of setup. Uppman’s Jacket could be played turn 1 to pay for itself over 2 Recruits, or it could be used to break a claiming stalemate, but I usually just discard it when recruiting as opposed to spending an extra card to Equip it.

Press the Advantage is great if you have plenty of cards in hand for its City Action at a critical moment; its Maneuver feels too expensive though. Well-Equipped City action is incredible, as is the Maneuver if you gamble into it while equipped with a Weapon. Dark Gift does work, primarily with its movement ability, but it can keep your fighters away from the dangerous 1 Resolve remaining state (Bleed Out, Razrushitel, etc.).

For some highlights from games at Gen Con with a similar list, check out my initial Gen Con tournament report/deck tech.

Conclusion

I want to play more 7th Sea, and I am happy to keep repping the honest Eisen! Now that you know my decklist and strategy, come at me. Let’s see if you can surpass my tactics.

If I get the motivation, I’m hoping to get a similar article out for Ussura, probably my favorite faction currently (because they are much less honest and I utilize a more balanced playstyle instead of ultra heavy combat). I do not have a strong enough understanding of Castille yet, and I don’t like Montaigne as much so I will likely do a much less detailed post on my decks I have ready for each. I will not defile my hands with the villainous treachery of Vodacce. (I actually just don’t want to disrupt the communities “The Family doesn’t fight [itself]” since I actively want to play as many games as possible while not taking away from others’ enjoyment.)