The Magnificent Seven: Variant Campaigns - The Seven Swordsmen (Patreon)

Last time we looked at a variant where you had a single; absolutely vital, survivor that would end the campaign if they died. This time we're looking at a variant where every survivor is ultimately disposable, but you have a finite number of them and you have to be cautious with how you spend them. 

This is the Seven Swordsmen, based on the 1954 film Seven Samurai; which had a western (in all forms of the word) remake in the 1960 film The Magnificent Seven. This story is the tale of seven men (either samurai or gunslingers) who come together to protect a village from bandits. As we'll see when I discuss how to refine this variant campaign later on, the variant we have here slightly misses the mark on that aspect. Still it is a very challenging mode that is ideal for a group of people who want to play bad ass individual survivors and don't mind the odds being stacked against them to an incredible degree.

Let's take a look at the campaign rules.

It's a very simple set of rules, but there are a lot of ramifications from this one.

The main core of this variant is this dynamic where your survivors are ageless, but also you cannot gain population in any way. So yup, you have seven survivors, no more, no less; that's your lot. But these survivors get a huge boost in exchange, starting the campaign with Ageless and Sword Mastery each is nothing to sniff at, even if there is a rather large rules snafu on this one. I'll break it down for you so you can appreciate how things go wrong with designers internalize their intent so much that they can't follow exactly how their rules are written.

It happens a lot in KD:M because APG refuses to employ external play testers who can come to their stuff with a fresh eye and look at the rules as written instead of as intended. It's a huge issue, but APG do not want to address their various hubrises. 

It does not work how you think it works!

Weapon Mastery is the issue here, essentially with the rules as written the Swordsmen have Sword Mastery. To explain why, here is how the mechanism of gaining a mastery works.

When a survivor reaches a weapon mastery, it is permanently added to your settlement as an innovation. The survivor's command of the weapon is so extensive that all current and future survivors of that settlement gain that weapon's specialization ability in addition to their own weapon proficiencies. The master will keep the full benefits of the mastery, so long as the innovation remains in the settlement.

Rules: Weapon Specialist / Mastery (bold emphasis is mine)

So here is the rub, these survivors never 'reach' weapon mastery, they each have sword mastery, but that does not mean the settlement has Sword Mastery, which is how this mechanic works. It is clear that it is intended that every Swordsman should have both the weapon proficiency and the mastery, but because this variant didn't state 'the settlement starts with sword mastery as do all seven swordsmen' it breaks. You end up with a bunch of Swordsmen who have 0 ranks of sword weapon  proficiency,  which means no sword specialist ability (unless the Sword Mastery is in the settlement) and because it isn't in the settlement, they don't have any way to use Sword Mastery without one of them maxing out the sword proficiency chart. Big whoops.

So yes, this variant has a major mechanical fail sat right in the middle of it, which isn't surprising because it is a single paragraph just thrown in as an after thought. Honestly, you'd expect better from a $400 luxury board game like this, but it is right on brand for APG's overly sloppy approach to writing rules and designing mechanics. 

Again, we'll discuss how to go about fixing this variant both mechanically and thematically at the bottom of the article. Right now we'll just assume that the survivors get their sword mastery/specialization as intended and dig into the tactics from there.

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive

So, the number one goal in this campaign is to keep these seven survivors alive at all costs. Some of them will die, that is the inevitable nature of chance in Monster because it has a bunch of things that kill survivors without any form of mitigation. If you are playing Seven Swordsmen you've already accepted that you're going to lose some, if not all, of your survivors. That's both interesting in its own right, and thematically on point for the story it is emulating. Seriously, go watch Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven and enjoy a really great story told by two fantastic films (just skip The Magnificent Seven modern remake, it was never needed). 

So first up, unlike the Twilight Knight, you have few ways to avoid Murder. The closest you can get to this is to load up the highest hunt XP survivor with the Green Charm and Hunter's Heart and have them be the murder target. Not a fun way to go about doing things, but Murder is what it is. You'll also want to avoid all heavy and noisy gear for all survivors (at least until you get near the end game) for reasons we are all very familiar with. Yay, keywords with all downside and no upside are f u n.

Outside of that, the major advantages you have here are Ageless and that sword mastery. Ageless gives you immunity to the Phoenix's main nonsense and a bunch of tools to help control who has the highest hunt XP at any time. Plus that absolute mastery over the sword on everyone.

Now it is easy to look at that and think 'ok so we're going swords on all' but that's not really the best way to play, because Swords (outside of a few exceptions) are not very powerful. However, that statement is in isolation of what happens when every single sword in the game comes with mastery "attached" to it. I am sure you are already familiar with how the Vagabond armor set (which does this very thing) broke large portions of the Monster late game due to its ridiculous interaction with the Black Sword. Well even when you are not abusing that abomination of a combo, it turns out that swords are good when you master them.

Effectively every single sword in the campaign is +1 accuracy, +1 strength, +1 speed and has the Proficiency ability tagged onto it. That's a reasonable trade in power, it turns something like the Scrap Sword from this:

Into effectively this:

I don't know about you, but a (3/4+/4) weapon with the sword specialist ability attached to it is the kind of thing I'd rock in the mid game with pleasure. Especially if you can get Deadly activated on it. And you can look at this with just about every single sword out there, they almost all universally become really potent.

However, you should not be neglecting other weapon types during this campaign, Weapon Masteries matter, especially spear, shield & Fist & tooth. 

As such, you absolutely should be looking to pick other weapons for your survivors to use alongside swords, perhaps even to the point of having each hunter carry two weapons. One training weapon and one main sword. This works very well with Shields and Spears, but can get complicated with weapons that are more focused around attacks only (like Axes, Clubs, Bows etc). Still, it is a great way to pivot your survivors and give them personality, each one of them can be working on a different weapon type while still having a strong fallback in the sword (thank you bone sword for being so cheap and good in this mode).

Re-Writes: Smoothing Out the Experience

So, I've mentioned a few times that this variant campaign is a little half baked, the truth of the matter is, there are two house rules you can undertake in order to make this a working variant and

The first is simple: Just make sure the settlement has Sword Mastery innovated when you create it. This seems like an essential move that was overlooked.

The second one is to make this experience more like the films it is intended to mimic, while also giving you a buffer against some of the worst things that the settlement events and timeline can throw against you. It involves tweaking the variant a fair bit, but the experience is far more enjoyable and faithful to the source. It's also a good 'training wheels' experience for the official version.

Upon completion of the prologue fight, roll for population on First Story as normal. The returning survivors + 3 chosen from the settlement each become one of the Seven Swordsmen (Yes, this means losing survivors during the prologue fight hurts).  

The settlement gains the Sword Mastery innovation

The Seven Swordsmen gain the following: 

• You are Ageless
• You have Sword Mastery
• You cannot be chosen for intimacy

All other survivors gain the following ability

• You may not depart the settlement. (No hunting, no special showdowns etc. These people never face monsters).

If all Seven Swordsmen die, then the settlement is doomed: Game Over

What this does is recreate the experience of 7 hardened individuals protecting the settlement while it tries to carry on with its day to day lives. Only the Seven Swordsmen can ever go out to hunt, if they all die then the settlement is doomed to perish. 

It also mechanically allows the Swordsmen to dodge a lot of the problems which happen, except for things like Murder and Cracks in the Ground. If you want to soften the experience even further you might want to have Murder house ruled to have the murderer as one of the swordsmen and the victim as a 0 hunt XP member of the settlement. This way the swordsmen do not just butcher each other every time murder is drawn, but they are still impacted by the experience and can be banished/executed etc anyway.

Final Words

This particular variant for campaigns is one for experienced players, or people who don't mind a hard challenge for a small group of individuals who can all die. It's a lot of fun, but this one is less about winning and more about 'how far can you go?'  I'm going to play it on stream for my next campaign, perhaps combined with Bloom and Skull.