Leder games Oath chatter

oh shit! Sorry everyone!!!

I don't know why the title of this thread keeps changing but I'm changing it back because this is clearly the oath thread.

No worries. I'd really like to participate in this discussion, but I have so little brain space for new stuff these days that I'm kinda just waiting until development is complete before I delve into it.

Fun thread about the origins of this game.

Does anyone have a reference for all the symbols I'm finding on the lower left of site cards? Putzing around with a 3P game to get into the swing of it all, and I'm stumped by a couple of them.

In the upper right corner of the tabletop simulator table (from where you are started looking) there are the preview player aids, one of which explains all the site cards.

I wonder if the game needs some maximum limit to the number of cards carried over after a Chancellor win.

edit: Over on BGG, Cole is floating a new change to the game which is pretty interesting. He's assigning relic prices to the *card* you're on rather than the relics. So the power of the relics would be variable at a given site but the price would be fixed, I would assume places like the ruined city would have cheap prices or whatever, and you might get a really good deal at certain relic sites on something that is quite powerful.

I have no idea how this will play out from a balance perspective but it feels like a pretty good idea. In a lot of games, even relic hunting games, the relic focused terrain cards feel like kind of a downer because they usually have only 1 denizen card which is super, super limiting. And since it doesn't matter where the relics are, it isn't super exciting to see the relic sites because there are usually other spots with relics sitting on them still to go to. And what really matters is the price of the relics themselves, not the site you're at, so you're better off going to those if they have cheap relics because you can also make some money and secrets from trading.

He'll be tinkering right up until the printing press starts to run!

I would prefer him to work on the People's Favour and Darkest Secret which currently have lots of conditional rules attached that betrays the fact they just aren't working as intended. Add/remove favour in wake, unless there is only one or two on the card then don't, oh and flip it to mob rule if it gets to six, flip it if it is siezed but not if recovered, except that you do flip it if you recover it on the mob side, you can't have less than one favour but that isn't really possible anyway, some of these rules will be on the card and others will be buried in the rulebook, oh and here's the Darkest Secret with a whole bunch of other rules that work in a totally different way to the People's Favour. Ugh. It's the one bit of the game that is really grating for me at the moment.

Yeah, the in-game documentation on those two things is really bad, hopefully it's indicative of an update they need to make to the design. I don't find them as annoying as you do in terms of the actual rules load they suggest.

If there's anything in need of a last minute punch-up it's the Relics.

Aside from collecting them for a win, they haven't seemed super-effective. And when collecting them for a win, you generally want the less effective ones, because they're cheaper. It's about volume at that point.

More tinkering, including a change to one of our least favorite site powers, the "extra advisor" (spoiler, those are gone).

boardgamegeek.com/thread/2487480/update-print-and-play-kit-c

The proposed relic tinkering didn't materialize yet.

Well, we knew what we were getting into when we downloaded a playtest kit!!!

New version of suited terrain cards:

"Homelands.
If you play a card of this suit to this site, without discarding a card of the same suit from this site, you may gain what is shown below."
.

That’s fine, it’s not like there are any major upheavals in gameplay going on. I’m glad I didn’t get into the game before campaigning was updated as that was by all accounts the final seismic change.

The new rule for homelands makes sense as it encourages you to put multiple cards from the same suit into those locations - feels like you’re less likely to see a Beast homeland filled up with Hearth cards etc. and it will instead truly become home to the Beast faction.

Having the Chancellor start with effectively a couple of extra advisors in hand during a Chronicle game was also quite brutal.

A good opening draw as the Chancellor combined with owning one of those sites was easy extra-value trades, before anyone else could even move.

Had a couple of back-to-back 2p games today, we both took turns as Chancellor and both won. First play was for relics and was heavily lopsided given that I knew exactly what I was doing and so was never really in danger. Second game I was the exile up against the People's Favour Oath and played for a Dark Secrets vision, except I got distracted along the way with needing to campaign to take away the banner of devotion; my plan ended up completely shot to pieces as I ended up in the wrong place and struggling to earn Secrets with the double problem of my vision being slowly buried in a discard pile and needing to dig out the world deck on my own in order to hit the three visions threshold. Fortunately I found the relic that gave me five card draws but I managed to mess up my own game when I got into a panic and tried to seize People's Favour - it went badly for me and then after the Chancellor borked their end-turn dice roll I was able to pick up the Darkest Secret, gain some bonus supply, and dig out the third vision but then found myself with hardly any defence because of my failed uphill assault in the previous round. If I had stayed on target then it could really have gone either way at the end.

Lessons learned:
Visions really are super-important for Exiles. Even simply revealing one puts the Chancellor into a panic as they then have to fight on multiple fronts.
If you pick a strategy then goddamn stick to it.
Two player really isn't that great beyond learning games - you want at least a third person so that the world deck gets mined more rapidly and opens up the prospect of creating a commonwealth for a real three-way battle.
The Chronicle is much more interesting than I thought it would be. The game really takes on a different shape and I've got to admit that I'm already kind of tired of seeing the same stuff in the intro setup having now dug a little deeper into the chronicle evolution.

I think that's a good point. Even if you don't plan on using it in the near future grabbing a vision and even revealing it is probably a good idea.

I think I have a number of games left in maybe the next playtest kit and then I might stow away until the full game comes out. Not totally sure on that though. I honestly don't want to wear out the fun discover of the cards before I get a full solid final ruleset and game.