The Hungry Gamer Reviews 7th Seal

0:00 Oo, that looks tasty. Welcome folks to the Hungry Gamer is back with another game review and today we're talking about Seventh Seal from Dvere Games designed by Julio Falagon with art by Will Kirkby and I do apologize for mispronouncing any of those names. Additionally, thank you to Dvere for sending me a copy of this game so I can make this video. Now, what this game is is this is a solo only dice placement tableau building game in which you are trying to battle your way through all of the seals here to defeat the evil monster. And you're going to do that by rolling dice, placing dice, and killing bad guys before you get killed as well. And now, before I get started, please make sure you turn on your cling on subtitles because if I make any mistakes in the rules overview, that's where you'll find the corrections. And if you are interested in how this game is played, you want to jump ahead to my final thoughts, then you want to go to the timestamp on the screen right now.

0:59 For those of us still here, let's talk about how this game is played. First thing is you're going to pick your heroes and where they're from. And there are a bunch of different ones. I have just one example here. So I could be from Uluru or Shambala. And with this card, I can be Nua or Punapu and Expelqu. And I definitely butchered that name. But let's just say for the sake of argument, I'm going to use this combination here. Then I look over here and it tells me I get two black dice and one yellow dye. Additionally, I'd look here. I see I have 12 health on two different dice. And then next to me, I'll place these two ability activated markers, which I can use on these two abilities that I've started the game with.

1:55 Then what I will do is I will grab this here and I will flip over my first fight, which is two cards like so. And then I will take my die here, this damage die, and I will place it right here all the way on the left. And this is going to be moving down like this as the game goes on. What this is telling me is I can place two green dice, which can also be black, of three or less to do one damage to this. Or three dice that are all different numbers and I can do two damage. And up here, it's telling me that ones are going to wind up being locked. So rolling ones are going to be bad. Then I look over here and it tells me I have three yellow bad guys, underlings. And they go right here in front of you.

2:40 You can see that with these two spots here. And then I have a third one. So, it's going to hang out here. If I wound up getting red ones, they'd go on this side and green ones would go on this side. Then I would take my three dice and I would roll. And now this one would wind up being locked, but just for the sake of argument, I'm going to say I use this one right here. And I made that a two. Then I take a look at all my other things here. So, oh, I almost forgot. When I place these out, I should have drawn dice for them. And so, we pull here and I get set at a three.

3:28 This one there. I pull here and set at a two. Another red dye. And I pull here like so. And the key here is I can hurt the bad guy, the main guy, and just start hurting him, or I can start hurting the mini bosses here, the underlings, because if I defeat them, I will get those dice for the rest of the round. So, with what I have rolled right here, I'm going to also, just for kicks, do a rroll, and we'll get that. And we'll go and roll that. And it is a six. I misspoke. What this means here is this means those are three odd dice and those are two even dice. I almost said the wrong thing there. And so now I get to try to beat these things. And so for here, I need a three. So I could do one damage to it. Now what's going to happen at the end of the round, this die is going to move over. And what this is going to do is this is going to tell us that all the red and green monsters are going to activate. Oh my goodness. And look at that there. This guy should be over here. And this one should be down there. And what it's telling me as this moves over is one, it's going to do two damage to me. And all the red and greens are going to activate. So the reds would be over here. There are none. But this green one would activate. Now, unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to defeat it. And as I look here, it's going to do one damage to me. But if I were to hurt it,

5:00 it would move over here, and it's going to be doing five damage. So, I might just actually leave that one alone. So, I think what I'm going to do is since the yellows aren't going to activate this turn, I am going to take this six and I'm going to put it here as some armor for me. And then I'm going to use both of these do a single damage to the boss here. Like so. Then this will move over. This guy here will attack me for one, which will drop my armor by one. These guys don't attack. And this guy here attacks me for two. Just like that. Simple enough that I can gather my dice and I roll. And here we go again. And I recover my abilities and so on. Now, what matters is rather than be playing through a turn is as you defeat things, two things happen. One, you take the dice. Red dice you take and they become more health and then you flip it over and you're going to have a one-time use. So, in this case, I could spin this card, put it into the discard pile there, and I would get to roll two dice. If I were to defeat this one here, I would gain a blue dye, which I would be using in my dice rolling pool to attempt to damage monsters there. And now this one here I could actually use up there rather than having to use my special black dice. And again, it has a power on the back. And so on. Assuming I

6:32 defeat this boss before it gets all the way to the end like so. I will then flip these over. And I now have a choice of a new power that I'm going to get. And along and with that power, I'll get another one of these abilities. So I can activate it once per round. And both of these affect the values of my dice. So, I'd keep one and I would add it to my character. Let's just move this out of the way. And I would add it on. And we're going to say, whoops, that I'm going to keep this one right here, like so. And now I have that ability as well. Addition to that, I would also gain this other black dye, which means next round I would have three black dice and one yellow. These other dice that I collected would go back into the bag to be used for the next bad guy. The next bad guy would then flip over just like so. I would place this at the level five on there.

7:33 And then it tells me here I get two yellows, which I would then place out. In this case, one here, one here, and I get a purple, which would go over here as well. And I would continue through the game. And if I'm able to defeat the bad guy before I get killed, I win. And by defeat the bad guy, I mean this one, then this one, then this one. If I can defeat all of them, I win the game. If I die, which is what I always do, I've lost the game. And that's how this game works. So, with that being said, what do I like about this game? The first and biggest thing to me about it is there is so much in a small box. It is really easy to take this somewhere. It doesn't take up a ton of space on a table. For example, I I've played this a lot at school and I just sit on one of my student desks and I'm able to easily play. So, I really like that. I love how much variety is in that box.

8:35 And that has to do with the way that the bad guys are coming out, the different combinations. There's not a lot of different things going on, but the way they combo makes for a lot of variety every single time you play, and I really, really like that. Now, before I continue on the things I think work, let's talk about what are my quibbles with the game. First off, it is hard as heck. When Pat from Dere gave me a copy of this a cover, I said, "Well, I'll get this out pretty quick." And then I sent him another message at one point. I said, "I'm going to record this as soon as I win." Hasn't happened. I finally just had to give up and record because the closest I've gotten is getting to the final boss. This game is hard as heck. And yeah, it's just hard as heck. Along with that, this is not a game that is going to surprise you every time you play. The arc is always exactly the same. You're going to get your monster out there.

9:36 They're going to get some more guys. You're going to fight the guys and move on and probably die. So, it's just not a game that's going to feel new every time you play. You're doing the same thing. It's a matter of how do you react? How do you build your tableau? Next thing I'll say is the heroes are cool. The art is really cool in this game, but they don't feel particularly special. Yes, they all have a power. the place they come from gives them a power and different color dice that they might start with, but you know, you just have a little power. So, it doesn't feel like I'm playing Gilgamesh as opposed to the hero as opposed to one of the other heroes. And then the last thing I'll say is I had a little of a hard time with the rule book. I wouldn't go so far to say it's a bad rule book. Everything's in there. But I think because there are a lot of icons, in fact, you can even see in my rules overview, I actually got some icons confused, there's a lot of iconography that you have to learn, and that can really slow down your first couple of plays. But getting back to the things that I think work well, I think it looks great. I said the production is really cool with the small box, and there's a lot of stuff in there that does a lot of stuff. But also, not for nothing, it's got a magnetic box, which is really cool. But the art, I think, is really cool. It's different than most of the things that you see currently in board games. So, I like that. I think it looks really cool.

10:55 It's fun going through some of the monsters and seeing things that maybe you know, like I know who Gilgamesh is. I'm sure many of you who read Gilgamesh in high school know who that is. But you might flip out Hades. You might flip out Seth. So, it's really cool the way that works. You're flipping out things that you might have some kind of connection to based on your own interest and history and all that. That's really, really cool. I think the tableau building is very satisfying and it's interesting the way you're putting out the powers you get for beating each boss. You get to pick one. Great. But the way that you get the single use powers when you beat the monsters, and you got to beat those monsters. I forgot to say it in my overview, but if you don't kill the monsters before you kill them, you're going to get hit with little penalties at the end of the round. So, you want to beat them. Then the question is, well, how do I use this onetime bonus? When do I do it? Do I do it now? Do I wait? Really clever tableau building. The way that works and those permanent powers, the way you start to be able to affect your dice and mitigate the dice rolling and change them is very, very cool. The next thing I'll say is every round is a surprise in the best way. There's a lot of variety in the bosses you're going to face. And there are a lot of different types of bad guys in those decks that are coming out, the underlings. And so the way those things come out, it's just a lot of surprise of what it is you're going to deal with every single round. Even though, as I said, the arc is always the same.

12:19 There's also a really fun decision space of trying to figure out what do you want to attack now. Sometimes it's opportunistic. It's like, well, I rolled the perfect dice to just kill this monster. I should just do that. But other times, like in my brief example, it's like, well, nothing's really jumping out at me as the best choice. So, do I try to hold on and deal with the increasing attacks that are going on? Do I try to just kind of whittle a couple things down, even though that might power them up a little bit? Really, really interesting the way that works, especially because something else I didn't mention, but when you fight the underlings, that die only moves over one space no matter how much damage you do. So, if they can take four damage and you do three damage, it's going to move over one space. So, maybe that makes them attack really hard or maybe that weakens their attack. You don't know. So, it's really interesting trying to decide how to use the dice even when the dice are all rolling well for you. And the last thing I'll say is it's a meaty game that you can play fairly quickly. This is not a lightning fast game. This is probably a 30 to 45 minute experience when you sit down and play, but it feels much meteor than that as you're playing through. And I think that is really, really cool if you're looking for something as a solo gamer. But there you have it, folks. That is Seventh Seal.

13:37 This is one that was not on my radar at all. I saw it at Gen Con, caught the last half of a demo of it, and I said, "That is really cool. I'm really interested in playing that." And I've really enjoyed it. It's hard as heck. Maybe I should learn to roll dice better, but it's a satisfying play. So, if you're looking for something as just a solo gamer, dice placement, tableau building, this is really one I think you should check out. So, there you have it, folks. As always, if I made any mistakes in the rules overview, please let me know in the comments with the time stamp so I get that in the cling on subtitles. If you found this video useful, please like, subscribe, share, maybe become a channel member. As always, thank you so much for watching. Have a wonderful, wonderful day.