initiate his attack. If possible, the defender resists by playing a matching defence card from his hand (i.e. the defender's card must have a defend box matching the attacker's attack box). The defender immediately counter-attacks with the action in the attack box of that defending card. The original attacker then defends himself against the counter-attack. In effect, the exchange is reminiscent of a continuous cinematic "Thrust-Slash-Parry-Riposte" mêlée. The mêlée ends when either player cannot defend against an attack (i.e. the player's hand is empty, he chose the order of his attacks wrongly, or he has a bad boarding hand). The last attacking player wins the boarding attack, and the loser suffers hits. Boardings are interesting both because defenders can inflict hits and because the crews locked in mêlée suffer hits first. Such early hits risk loss of either crews' captain (and thus the game) while the crew may still be in otherwise prime condition. Because of this, a player may choose to avoid starting a boarding attack by passing or by playing a react (e.g. firing a musket or getting drunk). When both players perform a boarding attack, they draw 3 cards each and the attacks continue. Since boarding boxes are spread in different card types, boarding decks usually have a wide variety of card types, unlike cannon and victory decks with few (two or three) card types. Thus, dedicated cannon decks can be caught helplessly in a boarding. Death and destruction Ships are fragile things. When a ship suffers hits, the crew is responsible for fixing it by tacking or sinking (getting killed). Hits cannot be ignored. When a captain sinks to absorb hits you lose the game. Players sometimes employed action cards to help them absorb hits. Victory In 7th Sea, there were two roads to victory. You could either sink all enemy ships, or perform a control victory (play several expensive cards, one in each sea). Storyline The game was a heavily story influenced game. Its factions had ties to specific RPG elements and rivalries and alliances occurred between them as the story progressed. The first story arc saw many serious conflicts, not necessarily all tied together. Storyline deaths were not uncommon (they didn't have some specific effect in the game), and the game even saw the death of an entire faction. FactionsCrimson Rogers: Bloodthirsty pirates led by the cruel and ruthless Captain Reis, the Crimson Rogers