‘The 7th Citadel’ Balances Adventure and Storytelling in Hundreds of Cards
After escaping from the necrodruids, it’s time to explore the Collapsing Lands and change the course of history.
Legacy games are a whole different breed of board games, compared to more classic board games like Clue or Chess. In legacy games, you play as heroes (usually) and venture forth into a world (often) wrought with pain and peril. Your quest is to bring about some semblance of peace and order, but heroes waver on the brink of failure.
The 7th Citadel Overview
The 7th Citadel is the sequel to 2017’s 7th Continent from Serious Poulp, and features a lot of the same base gameplay. Players work together to explore the map through cards, take actions available on those map cards, and make decisions that impact the world and the narrative.
In 7th Citadel, players run through one of several Threats. Each Threat is made up of Scenarios. Each scenario will have its own victory goals and special rules, which can be read in the Threat book itself. Alongside that, players can go on sidequests, grow their community with new buildings, evolve and level up their party, and explore and change the world map based on their decisions. There are even dialog options in the form of the dialog book!
Actions are marked with a white square. The action will have its energy cost in the blue diamond and the difficulty in the gold star. Each map card will often have several actions. This can be investigating the area, interacting with people, and plenty more. Characters might have special abilities or bonuses depending on the skill.
To determine success, players draw cards from their deck and attempt to pull cards with stars on them. If they draw as many or more stars as the difficulty of the action, they succeed!
The Looming Threat of Failure
The same thing that made 7th Continent great is the same thing that makes 7th Citadel great as well. Cooperative games, especially narrative ones, draw players in best when it feels like players drive the direction of the game.
7th Citadel leans into this by expanding the ways players can interact with the game’s world. The world map will change throughout the game. Players can construct buildings to gain bonuses, trigger side quests, refresh cards, and more.
If you’re looking for a game that will pull you into its deep lore and expansive world, where you can shape the narrative by your actions, and knowing that failure could mean the end, you should check out 7th Citadel.
