7th Continent - How To Play

[Music] hi there and welcome to watch it played my name is Rodney Smith and in this video we're going to learn the 1 to 4 player game 7th continent classic edition designed by Bruno so tear and Ludovic Rudy and published by serious pulp who helped sponsor this video as I mentioned I'll be teaching you the classic edition but if you have the original which I have here the rules are the exact same so you can use this video no matter which version you have there are just some component differences between them which you'll find explained in the description of this video if you're interested both of them have you returning home from your discovery of the 7th continent and something dark has been eating away at you a curse which can only be lifted by returning to the continent and uncovering its mysteries many of the explorers who journeyed with you originally have already died and you could be next so there's no time to lose join me at the table and let's learn how to play the very first time you open the box you'll need to organize the various cards into the trays using the provided dividers we aren't going to go through that process here as it's very straightforward and explained completely on this included guide that said to set up you place the trays on the table within reach of the players ensuring that the exploration cards the grey ones behind the Roman numeral dividers have been shuffled behind the green dividers you'll find the related range of numbered adventure cards which are not shuffled behind this preparation and storage divider you'll find the 5 characters each player now chooses one and they all have a background story on their other side if you'd like to learn a little more about your character you also collect the matching standee and one fire piece we'll pretend we have two players in this video so the rest of the character cards figures and fire can be returned to the Box during the game each player will have a hand of cards at the beginning of the game this will just be made up of your character behind the preparation and storage divider you'll also find this satchel and journal card which you place in front of one of the players and if you wish to play an easy mode also collect card 7/7 anytime you're instructed to take occurred you find the related section in the tray using the dividers and then you take that card from there now I'm up for a challenge so I'm not going to use the easy mode card this is the symbol for dice and the satchel and journal card indicates here how many each player should collect based on the number of players so in this two-player game each player should collect three each any extra dice can then be returned to the box the next step is based on the curse or curses that you wish to fight the game comes with three you can also pick up additional curses separately and you can take these curses on one at a time or several at once however for your first game they recommend just attempting the voracious goddess curse which comes in the box the required cards are found behind the preparation and storage divider here you'll find the curse and the clue which is named after the curse along with four generic curse cards set the clue to the side for a moment and then place the main curse along with a four generic ones into a stack this begins what is known as the action deck now collect all 35 cards behind the divider called skills and the 25 character skills behind its divider go through the character skills and find the five with the matching portraits of the characters partaking in the adventure add those and all 35 of the normal skills to the action deck returning the rest of the character skills to the tray then shuffle all of these cards into a facedown action deck that you'll set near the play area now look at the clue card we set aside earlier and check for which adventure card it mentions here at the bottom if you are playing with multiple curses at once which we're not but anywhere you would check for the lowest numbered one in this case it's going to be adventure card number 10 collect it from its related section there is a green and a gold-backed card with the same value but you only take the gold one if there are no green cards of the same number in the tray so we take the green one read the flavor text here and then flip it over setting it in the middle of the play area this is a terrain card and this one represents where you begin your adventure so have each player put their character figure here now anytime new terrain is placed on the table check four yellow arrows with Roman numerals then take random exploration cards from the section of the tray matching the numerals on the terrain and you'll place these facedown adjacent to the related arrows and oriented in the same direction as the other cards in play finally read up the story text on page 2 of the rulebook and the text from the clue card of the curse you're playing this is double sided so make sure you check both sides and once you've examined this it can be stored under your satchel and journal where all cards showing this icon are placed and these can be looked at at any time during the game and that's the setup in 7th continent players will be working together as they return to the land that cursed them you'll have to survive harsh conditions find resources fashion tools and use your smarts to solve the mystery of the curse that plagues you the game is played over a series of turns and on each turn the group decides who will be the active player that really just means the player will be taking the turn and you can even have the same active player for several turns in a row if players can't decide the person to the left of the last active player will take the turn either way when taking a turn the active player picks one action to perform this is known as a terrain card before a player's action is resolved the person with their figure on the same terrain as the active player may volunteer to participate in the action and help out with it if the active player agrees then they will join in there are all kinds of actions you'll come across during the game but they always start with a white square containing an icon for example this is an investigate action this is a move action and this is a pathfinding action the game comes with a helpful player aid naming each of the actions that you might come across and I know this looks like a lot but each one of these is resolved in the exact same way the various types just relate to the different thematic situations they represent with that in mind we'll now go through how you resolve an action and I'm going to pick one that you'd encounter later in the game that will help me best show you how actions are resolved but don't worry you're not gonna feel like The Adventures spoiled here by what I'm showing you these are very small examples out of what literally is hundreds and hundreds of cards that come in the game this card has the swim sail action represented by this white square and Anchor symbol the red stair icon to its left means the action cannot be performed unless all the characters get involved in it so if the active player was trying to take this action but another player had their character in a different area then this could not be performed but we'll assume the players are together in this case the first thing you do in resolving an action is determine if any items will be used you don't start the game with items and we'll talk more about how items can be obtained later but they're kept face-up in front of a player with a dye on them indicating how many times the item can be used before it's discarded the types of actions the item can be used with are represented by the brownback symbols that you see here and there may be more than one boxed area meaning that this can provide different benefits depending on how it's used for example this lifejacket if used during either a swimming sailing or resting action will give you this benefit or if it's used in a swimming sailing or fighting action can give you this benefit our action involves the swimming sailing icon and so that means we can pick either one or even both combining the effects but we'll choose just this one when an item is used in an action no matter how many benefit boxes you combine you reduce the number of pips showing on its die by one if add I would ever be reduced to zero it is just removed next determine the cost of the action which is shown inside of a blue diamond this represents the minimum number of cards you must draw from the action deck so in this case at least three the action deck is what we created during the setup and as we'll learn later it represents the life force of your group as this runs out you get closer and closer to losing so you don't to draw up more cards than you have to but the more cards you draw the greater your chances of success as we'll see later the players involved in the action can now apply the effects of cards in their hand items in their inventory or any other related effect which can decrease the number of cards required to be drawn for example we use this benefit on our life jacket which let us reduce the number of cards we have to draw by one now if we combined both of these benefits together it would have reduced the cost by four however if a cost has ever reduced below zero just consider it to be at zero once you have the final cost draw that number of cards from the action deck face down in front of you without looking at them now you must draw at least as many as the final cost but you can choose to draw more if you'd like which you might do to improve your chances of success and you truly can draw as many as you want if you really wanted to you could draw the entire deck I don't recommend it but you could do it the exception is if the action has a lock symbol by it this means you must draw exactly this amount unless it's a card effect from your hand or your inventory that is adjusting it with that understood it's now time to see how you successfully complete an action each action will show the number of stars you need in order to succeed in this case - once you're finished drawing all your cards from the action deck to pay the cost you then reveal them and count the number of stars showing in their left hand area you ignore everything else on the cards you drew so when you lay them out feel free to overlap them just like this here we have one full star but you can combine any half stars you have into full stars if you have both a right and a left side in this case unfortunately we have two rights so they don't count but remember we use this life jacket in the action and the benefit we chose from it added another star that means we do have the two stars necessary to succeed but if you had cop short you might also have cards like this to play from your hand that provides stars during this step of the action which will be explained right here I want to show you some other results so let's pretend we had a different example where a player was trying to perform a dig action and these were the three cards that they had drawn and they were using this shovel item you'll notice we have a new symbol on these results some sevens sevens don't count as a success on their own instead if you're using an item or a skill in the action that shows a star seven like we see here then this will count as a success for each seven that you reveal so for example this shovel would then generate two successes you'll also notice that here we have both sides of a star which means those will count as one success as well when calculating successes each player involved in the action may apply the effects of cards in their hand or other items they may have access to in order to generate more stars so long as those stars are coming from a printed effect you can't play a card from your hand and then count the stars showing over here on it these only count when they're revealed from the action deck when playing the actions cost either way if a player has at least as many stars as required for the action they succeed if they don't then they fail this will result in a consequence a good one or a bad one but first there are two other steps to follow from the cards drawn and revealed from the action deck the active player may choose any one skill card which is represented by this blue hand symbol and then they get to add that to their hand or to the hand of another player who is involved in the action skills provide you with abilities you can play or actions you can perform or items that you can craft which we'll discuss later you then discard all other cards into a face-up action discard pile at this time you also discard any items that no longer have a die on them and if that item was an action I mean it'll have a back that looks like this you put it into the action discard pile but if it was a green or gold backed adventure card or an exploration card like this that it is put behind the Past divider then you resolve the consequence of the action which is shown in this area the white background if you were successful the black background if you were unsuccessful and in some cases you will not see a fail outcome meaning that nothing happens if you were unsuccessful unless otherwise stated the outcome only applies to the active player and there are a variety of different outcomes you may encounter so let me take you through those different possibilities and show you how they work as in this case you might see a number which is a green back card that you would draw from the related area of the card tray if there is more than one green card matching the value for example we have two number 13 cards you just take one randomly if there are no green backed cards of the required value then you take the gold card there instead if you go looking for a requested number let's say number 208 and there are no cards with that number at all where they should be then return all adventure cards found behind the Past divider no matter what values they have and then put them in their related sections of the trays then find the required card as usual if a card effect is worded as let's say take card 56 if available and the card isn't in the tray then nothing happens and you do not return cards from the past also sometimes more than one player will be instructed to take a numbered card and if so the active player draws first and then the other players draw going in clockwise order around the table finally a numbered card might show a blue or purple banner like this if so you either take this numbered card or if you have a related card with a colored banner you can try adding its value for example in this case I could take card 84 or I could try adding this +5 because it's a blue banner to that value this would give me 89 could then look for that card in the tray before revealing it though check to see if there's a thumbs up symbol in the bottom corner you'll also notice there's a number here 36 this is referring to the card that would have gotten you there in this case yes we do see a 36 so that means that this card that I've come up with is a legal one for me to draw after combining the values if there hadn't been a check mark here or the value had been incorrect for the originating card then I could not have collected it I don't have the right item and I would just stick with card 84 okay once the correct card has been drawn it is revealed and then depending on the type of card it is different things may happen so let's talk about the different types of cards you might run into for example this here is a terrain card which shows a section of the continent and will be placed on the table in the position instructed by the card that revealed it usually this will be in a spot like this once the exploration card has been removed and we'll see how that happens a little bit later new terrain must go in the same direction as all other terrain and once it is added you then draw and place random exploration cards matching the Roman numerals on these symbols by any empty side as indicated by the arrows just as we did during the setup another type of numbered card is a permanent event these have a large arrow on one or more sides and are placed so the arrow is pointing at the terrain that the active player is standing on this will provide information and possibly an action for the terrain that it is attached to in this case a figure on this card can now try to climb these cliffs by taking the action here you don't actually move your figure to this card the action is still happening in this area also notice the action icon inside the arrow this reminds you of the action that brought this card into play and as long as this card is here the related action on the terrain cannot be taken again another type you might reveal when taking a numbered card is a temporary event which will have a timer symbol like this in its corner the active player must resolve this event and then discard it into the past or banish it if the card instructs like we see here banished cards are placed behind this divider and are out of the game until you're starting the game over completely once you've won or lost if you're told to banish a numbered card from the tray and there's a green and gold one always remove a green one if possible if a temporary event like this one shows this red flare around an action then that indicates that all players involved in the current action that brought this card into play must then resolve this action after the current one is finished no other players can get involved if you reveal a quest item from the tray which will have this book symbol it goes under your satchel and journal card you can always look at these at any time and some like this one will provide you with an action that you can perform on future turns if you reveal a skill card which will show a blue hand or a bonus which has a green hand like this then you add that card to your hand or give it to another player involved in the action or you can just discard it behind the past divider if you don't want to keep it if you see a red hand symbol the card is a state some will also show this symbol beneath the hand and unless an effect prevents the player from gaining that state then they must immediately discard as many cards from the top of the action deck as the number of red handed symbols they have in their hand already and you'll notice your character card is also one of these red handed states so in this case the player is holding three so they must discard one two three cards from the action deck and then they add the new state to their hand if you already have a state card in your hand with the same title for example I have one here called you are injured and then I just collected a new one called you're injured then you keep the new one and return the old one to it's numbered area in the tray it's also possible that several people will need to collect a state at the same time in those situations the active player collects one first and then the rest do one at a time in clockwise order it's also possible that a single player will be instructed to take several states at once and if so then they resolve each one one at a time before taking the next if a revealed card shows a dye symbol in its corner then it's an item the active player can then add this card to their inventory which is an area of the table in front of themself or they can give it to another player involved in the action that revealed the card for their inventory or you can discard the item to the Past if you don't want to keep it each player can only have as many items as the number of dice that they were assigned during the setup and you track this by putting a dye on the item you just gained set to the value showing in its corner this is known as its durability an item you gain can instead be combined with one you already have to do this take the item you just collected and slide it under the other item so that its effects are still visible here on the bottom combining can be useful especially when your item slots are full because it allows you to continue to add new benefits and don't forget as mentioned before you can use several benefits on an item that you're using as long as the symbols above those benefits match the action that's being taken that said there are limits to how many items can be combined together as shown on your satchel and journal card these white symbols here tell you that in a two-player game at most three cards can be combined per item as another bonus if the card you are adding to an item shares at least one of the same keywords which are found here in this area of the cards then you may add that items durability to the die to a maximum of 6 a player can always remove an item they have by taking back the die from it and then adding it along with any of its combined cards to the action discard pile you might do this to make room for a new item but just keep in mind you can't dismantle a combined item one card at a time unless a special effect lets you do it also characters on the same terrain can give or swap full items but to do this you must discard two cards from the action deck each time one item is given or two items are swapped and you cannot combine items you were just given from another player with an item you already have combining only happens at the moment a new item is first received now before we continue I think it would be good to remind you that what we've been discussing is all the things you might find when a consequence to an action has you draw and reveal a new current however there are other types of action consequences and that's what we're going to talk about next if a consequence instructs you to discard a card then you put it in the action discard pile if it has a blue back or to the past if it has a green gold or gray back if this symbol appears on the consequence of an action the active player banishes the green card it's referring to and then replaces it with the gold card of the same value if an effect says to return a card you put it back in its original place in the tray sometimes you'll see a symbol like this the affected player then lowers the value of one or more dice on items they have in any combination they like so long as the total number reduced is equal to this value just keep in mind once an item is reduced to zero it cannot be reduced further and is then discarded if you see this symbol in a consequence it means you must move a character which we'll talk about in more detail soon but that should give you all the information needed to resolve the consequences you might come across and once a consequence has been resolved and the involved player who has more blue hand skill or green hand bonus symbol cards in their hand than the allowed limit must discard any extras the limit you can hold is based on the number of players and is shown again in this very helpful area of your satchel and journal card so in this two-player game a person can have at most three of each but this limit is only checked after resolving the action or effect that gained you the skill or bonus so if you're already at your limit you can still gain new cards but then after taking them you must discard down to these limits okay so now we know how to take an action and don't worry you don't have to memorize everything we talked about because so much of it is summarized on this super helpful player aid this explains the symbols that you might find with an action the steps that you follow when performing an action and even all of the different consequences that we just discussed one thing we haven't really talked about though is how to explore the continent which will also be a big part of the gameplay so let's go back to the table and see how that works to explore you need to uncover areas of the continent which at first are represented by exploration cards like this that show a fond over area that you might like to get to to uncover that area you need to have your figure on terrain adjacent to it not including diagonally so for example I could try to explore this card or this one and to do this I just resolve the action here which is an automatic success I mean I could but I don't have to draw any cards and there are no gold star requirements once this action is complete as indicated in this consequence you flip the card over and then you resolve its effect in this case it's an item which can be taken in another situation it might have been a permanent event with an action that you have to perform later in order to remove this card from play either way once an exploration card has been removed the active player puts the indicated adventure card into play based on the gold arrow here so we would draw a card 0:09 you then read any text on the back and flip it over if it's a terrain card which it usually will be you then draw and place new exploration cards into the empty spaces by any Roman numerals shown on the new card that was placed as new terrain is revealed that provides new places to travel to by checking for a snowshoe sale or move icon like this on the card with your figure to perform that action as always other players can join in allowing them to move at the same time as long as they are all going to the same reachable card by reachable we mean any terrain that can be reached by an uninterrupted line from the card you were on to the one you wish to get to this means with a single you can actually travel several spaces at once not counting diagonally and I've set an example of that here let's say that this character was going to use this move action yes they could move just to here but instead if they wanted to they can move all the way to here now moving can be blocked by some events perhaps there's a raging river like this that actually requires performing an action to get across in that case if you were here you could not move directly to this location you'd have to move and then stop here and on a separate turn attempt this action to then be able to cross over these sorts of limitations though of course will be explained on the cards themselves when you encounter them we've gone over most of the ways that cards can be revealed and added to the table but there is one other way we should go over and that is through hidden numbers sometimes a terrain or permanent event will have a number hidden on it somewhere if you ever find one of these you then draw that numbered card from the tray and then replace the old card with it to ensure you found the right one it must show a symbol here letting you know the card the hidden number was originally located on there's one special type of action we haven't discussed that we probably should and it's called crafting it's represented by this symbol here you'll often see it on certain skill cards and this allows you to convert the skill from when you're holding in your hand to an item for your inventory now in addition to the usual information for resolving the action you'll also see where are known as resource symbols and if any of them are found on the bottom right hand corner of the terrain card your figure is currently on they reduce the number of cards you need to draw from your action deck so in this case we'd normally have to draw at least three but because there's a stone symbol here we only have to draw two on occasion you'll see a fire resource like this you'll have access to that if there's a fire token on your card speaking of which there aren't general rules for placing fire instead certain cards will have effects that allow you to place fire and you'll learn about those when you come across them while playing with that we now know about all of the actions so just to summarize on turn you pick anyone action to perform and this can come from the terrain card your figure is standing on an exploration or permanent event attached to your terrain a temporary event that was just revealed a skill bonus or state card in your hand an item in your inventory or quests under your satchel and journal card also keep in mind everyone starts with a character card in their hand and this will have special abilities they can make use of during the game with that understood it's now time to talk about your life force which again is represented by the action deck as you take actions you'll often draw and reveal cards from here and as long as cards remain in this deck there are a few rules you need to keep in mind first action cards that are discarded go to an action discard pile as we've already mentioned but this discard pile can be examined freely at any time by the players also any curse cards you draw from this deck which always show a skull in the corner do nothing when drawn they'll end up being discarded but they also don't have any stars on them so they don't help you succeed at actions and if an effect enables players to put occurred back into the action deck those cards are shuffled back into it eventually if the last card of the action deck is discarded or drawn the discard pile is then shuffled and placed facedown this is not a new action deck the action deck is still considered empty and as long as it remains empty during the cost step of an action the facedown discard pile is shuffled and cards are drawn from it instead if a curse is drawn from this discard deck then once it's revealed like we have here the game ends right away and the players lose if that hadn't been drawn and the players had survived the action then any discarded cards are shuffled back into the facedown discard pile if players are required to discard cards when the action deck is empty perhaps due to a symbol like this those cards are instead revealed from the discard pile before being shuffled back into it but if a cursed card is revealed at that time again the players lose while players are in this dangerous state of drawing from what was the discard pile if in effect allows them to shuffle cards back into their empty action deck those are taken from this discard pile and then they reform the action deck with those cards and then they also flip the discard pile face-up again now players will draw from the action deck as normal and don't lose if a curse is taken and of course if this deck empties again then they'll be back in that dangerous place of potentially drawing a curse and losing you can also lose if the consequence of an action that all players are involved in states that your adventure is over yeah that can happen to also an effect in the game may cause a single character to die but that doesn't cause the game to end in a loss instead the rules here explain how to remove the character and how the player who controlled that character can rejoin the game with a new one now that's been a lot of talk about losing but it's also possible to win however I can't really describe that in detail as you win by lifting the curse and how that happens is something you discover by playing the game once you've managed to do it the game will very clearly let you know that you've succeeded another important thing to understand is that a full game will likely take several hours to complete you have a giant continent to explore and a detailed mystery to solve but you don't have to complete it all in one sitting in fact they recommend that players just set aside an hour or two per session and then take a break if you need to put the game away between sessions that's no problem the game provides a method for saving and resuming your game which is detailed here in the rulebook and I'll leave that for you to discover on your own otherwise that's everything you need to know to play seventh continent if you have any questions but anything you saw here feel free to put them in the comments below and I'll gladly answer them as soon as I get a chance you'll also find forums for discussion pictures other videos and lots more over on the game's page at BoardGameGeek and I'll put a link to that in the description below and if you found this video helpful please consider giving it a like subscribing and clicking that little bell icon so you get notification a time we post a new video but until next time thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music]