Episode 167: 7 Souls

1) The Pegs discuss their recent game plays including Barrage, Rail Pass, Dinogenics, The Crew: Quest for Planet 9 and many more;

2) All the Pegs review 7 Souls; and

3) Look back at Gugong.

Join in the conversation for this episode over at our Board Game Geek guild.

Show Notes

00:01:08 – The Many Uses for Hippo Poop

Banter

00:06:17 – Ocean’s Contest Winner(s)

00:08:51 – Where’s Jeremy? / Vermling stalker

00:14:43 – PiranhaPig Con & COVID-19

00:21:25 – Patrick’s dating life

Plays

00:25:58 – Barrage [Buy] – Cranio Creations; Designer: Tommaso Battista, Simone Luciani; Art: Antonio De Luca;

00:33:28 – The Crew: Quest for Planet 9 [Buy] – KOSMOS; Designer: Thomas Sing; Art: Marco Armbruster;

00:39:54 – Rail Pass [Buy] – Mercury Games; Designer: Ref Tom Green; Art: Michael Christopher, Andrew White;

00:46:51 – DinoGenics – Ninth Haven Games; Designer: Richard Keene;

00:53:01 – Nokosu Dice [Buy] – Engames; Designer: Yusuke Matsumoto; Art: Sai Beppu;

01:01:15 – Chai [Buy] – Steeped Games; Designer: Dan Kazmaier, Connie Kazmaier ; Art: Mary Haasdyk, Sahana VJ;

01:08:25 – Remember Our Trip [Buy] – Saashi & Saashi ; Designer: Daryl Chow, Saashi; Art: Takako Takarai;

News

01:15:25 – Stick Em’ by Capstone Games

01:19:30 – Ascension: Tactics, the deckbuilding minis game

01:21:50 – Inner Compass by AEG

7 Souls [Buy]

01:24:22 – Rules Breakdown

7 Souls is a recently fulfilled Lovecraftian Kickstarter designed by Conor McGoey with art by Rhys ap Gwyn and published by Inside Up Games.  In 7 Souls, players are servants of various eldritch forces, who are vying to corrupt the noble Investigators while collecting resources and souls to stymie their competition.

Gameplay takes place across three locations on the main gameboard.  Each location has three pools of resources: power tokens, soul tokens, and focus cards, though the amount of each resource varies at each location.  This amount is set at the start of the game, determined by player count, and is finite.

At the start of the game, players will receive two Revelation cards and review them in secret.  Each Revelation card has a unique end-game objective, usually based on having the least or most of a particular resource.  Players will select one and return the other to the box. In addition, an Investigator is drawn from the Investigator deck and placed face-up at each location.

Then, each round, players will choose three cards from their hand of seven to play across the three locations.  Each card represents a cultist figure with two primary features: a power number, 1 through 7, that will determine the order in which it will resolve; and one or more actions that will take place when the card resolves.  

The card play phase of the game is actually real-time, triggered when a player moves the top card of the Investigator deck to the bottom.  Then, players will rush to play a card, face down, to each location as quickly as possible. When all cards have been played, and moving from left to right, the stacks are flipped over, with the first card played now being at the top of the stack.  Cards are arranged in numerical order based on their power, with lower numbers going first. Ties are broken through a quick Corruption check, a test in which each player flips the top card of their Corruption deck to reveal either a Focused card, a Horror card, or a Determined card.  More on these later, but for the moment we’ll just say they the winner of this check takes their action and the other players are knocked out, but in the case of a tie all players take their actions in the order their cards were played.

Most of these actions involve taking a number of resources from the pools available at that location. Two cards allow players to attempt to corrupt the investigator at their location.  Each investigator has a point value and a strength, showing how many Corruption cards a player may draw, and the required number of corruption points needed to claim that investigator. Corruption is represented by the number of eyes appearing on the revealed card – most cards in a player’s deck will be Focused cards with one eye, but some will be Determined cards with two eyes.  Players may also spend Power tokens claimed during previous actions to augment the strength of their cards. If the Corruption test is successful, the investigator is claimed for end-game points, and a new one is drawn to replace it.

Managing the Corruption deck is a key part of 7 Souls, as players will have various opportunities to muddy their competitors decks with Horror cards that provide no value during Corruption checks, either to claim investigators or when competing for turn order.

After all actions are resolved, then the Investigators attack.  On the back of each Investigator card is a symbol representing one of the three locations.  This is the location that will be attacked by the investigator at that location. Players will know at the start of the round which location will be attacked, but as investigators are corrupted over the course of action resolution this may change if investigators are defeated and new ones are drawn.  Investigators will have an attack strength and resolution as well as an attack pattern. The former indicates how many successes attacked cultists will need to make in their Corruption check and, if failed, the quanity and type of resources lost. The pattern indicates which cultists will be attacked based on their position in the turn order for that location – lowest card, highest card, or everything that isn’t highest or lowest.

During the course of this phase, players may also gain blessings and altars by meeting certain conditions or spending power tokens. These are additional point-bearing cards that will be considered at the end of the game.

After all actions are taken and all investigators attack, players check to see if any location has two of its resource pools depleted.  If so, the end game is triggered. Players reveal their revelation cards and any points received for completing them, add up the points from their investigators, soul tokens, blessings, altars, and the player with the highest score wins.

01:28:40 – Review

01:57:15 – Ratings

ReRoll

02:05:49 – Gugong [Buy] – Tasty Minstrel Games; Designer: Andreas Steding; Art: Andreas Resch, Noah Adelman;

Check out our original review for Gugong during Episode 141.

Gameplay Photos

* Disclosure: These titles were received free of charge by the publishers or distributors. If you are interested in submitting a title for review, please read our Review Policy.