Oath Pre-Review
Game Information
Oath creates a grand narrative. While I believe it will develop an extremely devoted following among players who brave several plays and are not averse to the traditional characteristics of the multiplayer conflict genre, it is going to fall flat among many of the people designer Cole Wehrle brought onboard with his much more approachable Root.
It is unusual to review a game before it is released, but it is also unusual for a team to do almost all of its playtesting online and provide a feature and art complete tabletop simulator module well before the physical game is released, as Cole Wehrle and Leder Games have done with their newest kickstarted game, Oath. I’ve played enough, around twenty-five times, to feel comfortable with a pre-release gameplay review in order to let you know what to expect in spring when it is physically released.
Fundamentally, Oath is a multiplayer conflict game in the vein of Chaos in the Old World, Cthulhu Wars, or Lords of Hellas, but one that has a player pawn focal point and somewhat deemphasizes holding territory. It also adds a unique persistent element across games, the Chronicle. Each player’s goal is to seize one of the four objectives, determined at the beginning of the game, long enough to win the game. An incumbent regime player starts with advantages already in place (the Chancellor) and the game will quickly become complicated by the introduction of various “Visions” entering the game that present other victory conditions to the non-Chancellor players.
Instead of providing its special powers via differentiated plastic units (e.g. Kemet) or innate player power boards (e.g. Root), at the heart of Oath is an enormous deck of around 200 cards (“denizens”). In a single game, you will only have 50-60 of these cards available, describing the major features of the current world, and will almost certainly see only 30 of those cards each game. These cards are all completely unique, providing military, mystic, political, and even more niche and bizarre support to the players in their struggle with one another. The suited world deck serves to shape player incentives and specialties. While some cards are relatively mundane, giving bonuses to combat or other marginal changes, other cards reshape the context of the game in its entirety and the design team clearly felt no compunction to keep their ideas within a carefully bounded box.
Where Oath succeeds in spades is in providing drama. Because of the cornucopia of special powers, which are not afraid to be game changing, games will generally hinge on critical plays featuring the deployment of wild special powers. There are cards in the deck which make a player impossible to target via military campaigns, that force a player into the Chancellor’s existing empire against its will, and that make binding deals, even across games, possible. While some of that incredible drama is random and tactical, via pulling out a single lucky card, most of the drama I have experienced among skilled players is strategically coherent: players carefully build up a plan through several turns of card draws and preparations, then unveil that plan in a gamble on victory while their opponents do the same.
The narrative momentum Oath builds is enormous. I suspect, however, that this narrative will not resonate with players who describe themselves as narrative or thematic gamers, as none of the narrative is provided by flavor text or executive direction from a scenario or faction designer. It is instead generated mechanically, via minimalistic card titles, weird art, and strong card suit themes. Expanding this narrative focus through mechanics is the Chronicle system, which has the winner of a game add new cards into the world deck from the suits they used to win from the massive card sideboard, then removing other cards of other suits back to the box. Individual games of Oath are most akin to a dramatic short story in the much longer book of a fantasy world. Over many games, the entire game state takes very distinct thematic states due to its denizen card balance and how dominant the previous win was by the incumbent. A “Discord” suited world, where many players have been winning using discord cards in previous games, focuses on stealing from other players and burning the economy of the game to the ground while an order suited world is focused on site control and military dominance. Over time, the legacy element enhances the game an enormous amount, to the extent that a friend I play with in our forums has called the sequence of games in a continuous Chronicle “the real game.”
Editor reviews
Where Oath succeeds in spades is in providing drama.
Msample wrote: Great write up. While it sounds pretty interesting, I think I will be glad I passed on this one as I think it would not hit the table often enough to gain the competency for fast play. How strong/necessary is the legacy element if players drop in.out?
Competency for fast play doesn't take 25 games, maybe 4-5. The first one is a doozy, though. There are a lot of actions, and they vary a lot in complexity so it's really hard to get a picture of what to do on your first game. Then once you have an idea of what you can do, you can start putting things together in the next few games.
Dropping in and out is pretty easy, but if you're playing without a notion of the "next game", some of the more intricate bits don't always make a ton of sense. Specifically, the "Citizen" aspect of the game is rarely going to benefit someone in the game they're in unless it's a kingmaking sort of deal. You gain access to a different win condition that you haven't been working towards, and if you've been after a Vision win then your work towards that no longer applies. So the Chancellor is unlikely to offer citizenship to a player still in the hunt for a win (and they're unlikely to accept!). In many circumstances, being a citizen is just "lose differently".
That said, it can be a great move to pick up someone who's running last and elevate them to a citizen to help seal this game, and then they start with a slightly better position next game, having a clear victory goal from turn 1 that even takes precedence over the Chancellor's own victory goal. Without some expected continuity, those discussions become pretty moot.
In a world that didn't have literally thousands of releases every year, this would be a shining star. If this had been published in the 80s, it would be one of the biggest grail games around. But with so much competition and new title churn, I don't think it's ever going to get the repeat plays it needs to sink in. I'm glad it's being published, but i don't expect a second print run of this game. It's definitely not Root.
edit: Also, I agree "great writeup"! I'm glad you took the time to distill all those plays into something coherent and approachable. It's a tricky game to get your head around at first, and "will I like it?" can be pretty hard to answer from the just the rulebook in this case.
The other major problem that I have had with Root is that I really like asymmetric factions in general, but they are so extremely asymmetric in Root that they seem to end up somewhat scripted in terms of strategy. You can literally see the script on each faction's dashboard. That, and the asymmetry in Root feels like it reduces the potential interaction in the game to less direct than the type of interaction I like to see in a multi-player game. I get the impression that those issues are not a problem for Oath.
Scripted directions are not a feature of Oath, for sure, that semi-scripted part of Root is one of my issues with it too. Some Root factions are worse than others with that, a faction like Woodland Alliance feels very scripted.
BTW thanks for the write-up Gary. I'd echo the first couple of comments there too; I held off even thought the excitement was high about the ideas. Got an email to do a late pledge or whatever the other day and started getting the feels again. Timely article
If I were to guess, I'd say some of the Root factions were theme-first (particularly Vagabond) and some were mechanics-first, or at the very least needs-based (like the guerilla Alliance or the bartering Otters).
But to swing it back to Oath (derailment mea culpa), Oath is about as much like Root as Root is like Pax Pamir or John Company. Which is to say not very alike at all. There are some similarities in design sensibilities across those games (high-negotiation, willingness to play off-table, closed-resource economies) because they're from the same designer, but that's it.
My purpose in mentioning Root is that I don't think this game is going to be a huge hit. I think it will sell a lot of copies up-front (because of Root and Pax Pamir), people will cycle it, and then be on the secondary market for a long long time.
As it happens, I really like Cole's design sensibilities and the games that he makes. They don't really fit easily into the "play-em-all-quick" space in the hobby, though. Doubly so when you factor in how much he likes harsh economies, fuzzy alliances, kingmaking, etc.
My favourite element of my favourite game KD:M is almost entirely the stories that were crafted by emergent circumstances that evolved out of scant prompts and story nubs across successive sessions. The exposition was entirely our own to weave and that made the experience 'ours'. I just hope it gels with the group in a way that invites sustained play.
I haven't had a hard time thematically at all---the cards are *quite* specific in what group or supporter is helping you and how. And the game runs on the card plays, with the menu of action choices being pretty straightforward in terms of their verbs. You have an advisor or denizen of Arcane plague engines, or Nomad elders, or Order shield wall controlled... it's pretty clear you've enlisted their political support and the powers tend to be pretty spot on thematic.
The thing that, I think, makes Oath a little different than Root or the like is that the cards are broadly indicative of an asset, faction or group supporting you in your quest for the throne. An Oath board is a geographically abstract representation of the political, cultural, and economic situation of a state. So it paints a broader political and military picture unlike the very specific, detailed narrative a Root game makes (as you mention). A game of Oath is a lot more like the events described in a few chapters of the Game of Thrones books than a single, military-focused, conflict. Here's my first game from the other, Oath specific, thread in the forums if this helps:
"I just played a solo two handed game of this and it was absolutely wild, delightful shit. It was supremacy and the Chancellor took territory and managed to get lots of denizen cards on the board, in particular playing toll roads and curfew, which completely left the exile out in the hinterlands dead in the water because of the punishing action restrictions in any part of the realm. By turn 6 they had no sites ruled and the chancellor had 6! In turn 5, though, the completely out of it exile drew lost heir on a "what else should I do, drawing from the world deck only costs 2 due to darkest secret" draw from the world deck and put it face down. From just holding the darkest secret at the beginning and down 2-1 in relics at the start of turn 6, the exile bought the people's favor (a relic) and then bought the sticky fire relic at their site with the last of their resources, flipped up long lost heir to become a citizen, then rolled for the end of the game. 5. Citizen red wins.
This shit writes itself. Court noble starts a civil war, is resoundingly beaten and driven to the hinterlands as the king consolidates and develops a police state in the realm (very effective order cards), then in the hinterlands slums finds out that he is the unknown bastard son via his intelligence network (darkest secret), whereupon he takes the people's favor by showing off an ancient family relic (sticky fire).
An individual game of this is super short so I think this sort of stuff is just going to be a blast."
That thread has other people mentioning some of their stories too, this one was from an older version of the playtest so some of the mechanisms have changed slightly.
I don't know most of the cards but say you get a vision of prophecy, to me, that sounds like your exile encountered a holy figure/prophet of some sort who has sent your exile on a genuine religious war to topple the government and usher in a theocracy. Maybe they had a Mohammed Esque vision on the mountain top and will lead their followers to topple the empires of old. I don't think you need a historical setting to draw from history in creating your own narrative.
As someone who really struggled to see the narrative in early games due to the density of rules, once I'd mostly internalised them, the narrative elements did come front and center and I started to become surprised and delighted by how individual games played out. I still sometimes struggle to see the narrative during the game but when I think back and reflect afterwards I start to identify the key characters, locations and pivotal moments with big swings in fate.
I think the notebook included with the game is not just a random tchotchke - having the victor fill it in afterwards will really enhance the experience in a non-contrived way. You don't even have to go full RPG with it, a few sentences describing how the match played out should be enough. To my previous point on post-game reflection, taking a few minutes to fill it in afterwards will solidify the narrative for everyone, even if it's just one perspective (which is a fun parallel to real history too!).
That would be an immediate Michael Barnes tm table sweep for me on this game forever. I might even burn the box after that. And I love this thing.
In our defense, we regularly play TI in under 7 hours, so this wasn't us being ultra-slow at games or anything. We had 4 players and went right to the end of round 8.
I've seen a couple of other people pop up with long playtimes - someone else on the discord took 5 hours and quit partway through in round 5. So I don't think we'll be the only ones.
We had a blast with the game, absolutely loved it. It felt about as epic and large in scope as a game of TI. I have no regrets.
But yeah definitely set the day aside for your first play of this one. The Playbook itself tells you that your first game can go for 4-5 hours.
Jack wrote: But yeah definitely set the day aside for your first play of this one. The Playbook itself tells you that your first game can go for 4-5 hours.
I think that's sound advice. I believe most of us in our TTS group learned in a 2p game without the bot, which isn't ideal player count but at least allowed us to muddle through and discover a good bit of the flow of play in just a couple of hours - but that isn't going to be easy to organise in RL game groups.
I hope you didn't take my comment as a dig at your group---it is not intended to be personal in any way. It was instead echoing the theme of my review that it's possible to have a long, disjointed first game that could inhibit the enjoyment of the players---though obviously not in your group's case, so that rules.
The Oath crew around here can check me on this but our later games generally clocked in at around 2 hours, 2 1/2 if it went the full distance with longer final turns where negotiation had to take place. The early turns just fly by eventually as everyone is putting together their combos and finding their opportunities. This is a far cry from some really laborious 3-4 hour teaching games at the very beginning. This thing is a tough teach and first play because of the openness.