Oath

6P

Oath is a difficult game. Difficult to learn; difficult to teach; difficult to play; difficult to get your head round the victory conditions and the conflict mechanics; difficult to understand what is going on; difficult to realise what the consequences of many of your actions are going to be; difficult to win; and certainly difficult to work out what on earth you should be doing.

Because the victory conditions all revolve around a player meeting one of their goals at a specific point, then mechanically, Oath could simply be viewed as a ‘king of the castle’ type game (albeit a complicated king and several complicated castles!). It could even degenerate into a tactical to and fro until eventually one person is clever (or lucky) enough to hold onto their prize. And, if this is your approach to games then I can see Oath as being rather tedious. However, I don’t think this is Oath’s purpose. It wants you to immerse yourself in the story; It wants you to experience the vast number of different sites and denizens in the game; It may want you to puzzle out how you can shape the story and use the denizens and things you come across to meet one of the multiple victory criteria but that’s just a goal. In Oath’s case, (and it’s now cliché time!) the journey is more important.

Two things really stand out; there are glimmers of Porfiriana in how freewheeling things are, but that's one of two positive attractions for me. The other is that this is the closest take from the boardgame perspective of building an RPG type environment. Pandemic Legacy had a different take on it, but it still just felt like a boardgame. Oath seems to pull off the RPG in a different way.

That said, I find the game just sort of overwrought in terms of rules overhead for what it delivers on (which is Porf's various ways to win and legacy game's evolution over plays). It's a game that shines at exactly 4p (5+ takes too long, 3 is too precarious), and a consistent group (because otherwise why are you playing a narrative game that caries over to other iterations). If you can pull that off, great. Last, before playing, you have to set expectations. When players start a game, they play to win, but I find a number of people here, regardless of whether they are going to sit at the table for the next game, have a desire to not play to win, but to create a different end situation (so, directly against Knizia's "play to win" ethos). That's fine as long as everyone at the table is on the same page.

Someone out there is going to love this, it's just not me.

Oath is a sprawling saga you build with your friends. Each session feels like a new chapter, filled with tense negotiations, brutal battles, and unexpected twists. It's a challenging but rewarding experience.

Justin

My favorite!

drags more than a little. also enormously unbalanced frankly

Oh, Cole Wehrle, you clever devil. What a wild game. We played our second game with four players and an exile won with a Vision who didn't rule any sites at all! The Chronicles are now into full swing.

At some point, I'll sit down and write an essay about this game and why I like it so much - but to be brief, it is a fantastic and largely unique experience. A Pax game mixed with a story game, and one that is more teachable/intuitive than a lot of similar games. It provides its own unique wrinkles, and the inherent acceptance of Kingmaking is something more games can learn from. However, this is something that I would probably only play with 40% of my usual opponents. A lot of people will hate this game, or just be 'meh' about it - and you don't want to play it with people who aren't all in. Very good physical production + rulebook, although it does come at a fairly high cost. Very high replayability.