Leder games Oath chatter

I think for some people this is really gonna hit and for others it's gonna be the mother of all toads. I feel like some people are gonna have a bad or slow first experience and then never play it again, making the pseudo-legacy elements something a lot of people don't experience.

I'm definitely open to playing again, especially if I/we can shave off some time, but I'm pretty hesitant to pick it up myself, so far.

Yes, I suspect that your experience with this game is going to come down to your average downtime---or at least your average downtime watching someone stare at the board or cards. That's obviously going to max out at first play, which is a tough characteristic from a market perspective.

But who knows!

I'm constantly playing low level solo two player while I'm idle.

Giant Python is a better and more interesting card than I thought it was. Textually, anyone who attacks you has to target a multiple of 2 in terms of targets (banners). The real, practical effect is to not allow anyone to snipe anything from you---this is especially helpful in supremacy game where lone sites where your pawn is not at are super vulnerable to an attack. If you make it to usurper, that means that the lowest number of dice anyone can roll to steal sites from you is 4 defense dice, with at least a +2 from armies. 4 or 5 is where the variance starts to accelerate on rolling blue dice, so this is a pretty big deal.

Anyway, just love it when you see a card you aren't sure of on utility and then you mess with it some more in the right situation and you have an "aha" moment.

I don't get this fanboyish about game stuff often, but I could listen to Cole Wehrle talk about his design process like any time:



He talks about the end of Oath design and then talks Root, but lots of interesting thoughts.

Enjoyed an interesting game a few days ago. The Oath was for People's Favour, one Exile had the matching vision and made their move just before the dice rolls were about to kick in. Second Exile just sat back and let the Chancellor burn favour taking it back, then it swapped hands twice again. In the process both Exile #1 and the Chancellor were knocked back quite hard with only one secret between them, no favour reserve, and so much favour burned out of the game that the PF was super cheap.
Exile #2 then takes a big turn emptying out the favour banks and buys the PF with seven tokens. They then sit back with enough secrets to easily mill the two per turn needed to keep it growing beyond reach while still having some reserve to keep growing their army. Icing on the cake was to retreat out of reach so that even a suicidal grab against 9+ dice and a massive defensive hoard would be impossible. First Usurper win that I've seen.
What was unique was the Exile #1 only revealed advisers in order to use the conspiracy and Exile #2 only revealed at the very end in order to maximise favour gain on trades. Requests for citizenship were also dismissed at various points.
This game definitely gets wilder the more keenly you can envision your endgame plays. Unless you are angling for supremacy it really pays to keep your advisers secret.

Yeah, weirdly, the darkest secret and people's favor wins can be the most secure to reliably usurp because the same resource that gets you the title also makes you almost impregnable to having it taken too via dice.

We played a learning game last night. I've taught this game 4-5 times and it is still just kind of hard and leaves you with a "what the fuck am I supposed to do now?" open world feeling once the teach is over.

In that last game, I felt like I had a pretty cool thing going on with my advisers and relics, but wasn't quite able to hold onto the Usurper. I had kind of a slow start as one of my first cards was one that makes it free to muster in a type of area that never showed up. (Beasts).

Then the best thing I could do at the end was sort of play kingmaker.

Played a four player TTS game with a TWBG crew. Was great to play with sornars, not sure, and mezike again. Real pleasure. Since we had all played together before, things went nice and quick. Game ran about 2 1/2 hours with real spills and chills, a large number of almost winning moments, and no real opportunities for arbitrary kingmaking. I get that some games of Oath are going to have arbitrary kingmaking, that could be a big turnoff, but they don't always turn out that way if people are playing for their own win chances. Which is good. Clutch play of The Gathering prevented a win from me, and then sornars and mezike's Commonwealth staved us off (BARELY) a bunch of times until a stability roll check on the final turn.

TO ME, this game when played quickly is absolutely humming in its current version. So good.

Strategywise, visions, visions, visions are what the exiles really need to be doing and this game proved that in spades.

Yeah, it really clicks along. There wasn't a lot of downtime, and some big swings of fortune in this game.

I'm excited to get the final version in my hands. The art updates and other little TTS tweaks look great.

The way that game ended was amusing, just the Chancellor and his minstrel alone in the marshes, no land nor edifice and no advisors, followed by an angry mob trying to set their pitchforks alight in the damp mire.

I laughed when you pointed out that there would be no edifice even though the Chancellor won, since you controlled *no* sites.

I was thinking about the way favor pools in this game in suits and where and how that happens. So the obvious suit pattern is that discord burns favor, hearth never burns favor and often draws favor to its bank. Which, thematically, is really cool. I think the next level thing I should be doing early in the game is watching people's adviser powers and counter picking at least one advisor in a suit that either has multiple people with strong powers that cost favor or is at a site I anticipate having money spent into it for troops, etc. Alternatively, just having a hearth advisor/site around might be a smart move since favor often pools there.

Issue 3 of Senet is worth picking up if you like the art of Kyle Ferrin. There’s a short interview with him on his art for Leder Games which includes a pullout featuring four pieces.

Someone on BGG explained your pawn being a representation of your player board on the map. This may be obvious but it wasn’t to me and makes a some of the rules a lot more intuitive. For example, to seize someone’s banner (aka The Darkest Secret and The People’s Favor) your pawn needs to be at the same location as the pawn of the person you’re trying to seize it from (why the recover action works from anywhere is less intuitive, I suppose it represents you naturally earning those things via favour or secrets vs seizing them via conquest). This is relevant as I think I may have misplayed this at least once during our game.

In general, the rules burden of Oath is on the upper end of what I can remember. I really enjoy the game but it seems like there’s a fairly simple base with a number of exceptions that I always seem to forget! I suppose the only way out is through so I guess I’ll just need to play more games .

I don't remember a time you played it wrong, that's one that I have internalized ok. You sat on top of me at the fertile valley and kept attacking. It's why the turn before we lost to Daniel's stability win I believe I exiled you to a random hinterlands space---I wanted you to have to waste supply coming back.

The one I miss all the time is the darkest secret restriction on recovery! It's really important because someone can bunker in somewhere if it has the right stuff at it and just army up rather than constantly have to worry about losing it to secrets from another player.

More solo games, 3 handed. Some of these combat cards are just very, very good and worth ruling or taking advisor slots for, even as the exile. Rangers, for example, makes late campaigns against the darkest secret and people's favor that save the game possible since there'll usually be 4+ blue dice and save your army (skulls). The +/-3 darkest secret card is also a simple but really well designed buff.

Took the morning off, so I played again in my 3 player solo chronicle. Lock down exile darkest secret vision win. Had an interesting exile vision win with a muster up, grab the darkest secret in an early turn with 3 secrets, pile another couple secrets on that card with a denizen card using favor, then blast the board with the nomad card that takes away all of everyone's secrets but their last and immediately flip darkest secret vision. Dare them to come and take it---you've wiped their economy (and your own but so what), you'll be rolling a ton of dice if they try to fight it off you.

I *cannot* for the life of me remember the "can't recover the darkest secret" advisor proviso in any game I play. I like that it's there, but it's so hard to remember.

Big picture, I really wish that supremacy win condition was just a little bit stickier. I think the darkest secret and people's favor conditions are satisfyingly sticky---like, if you steal the darkest secret and you've prepared properly with a big stack, it is suitably difficult to pry that out of their hands. I can even imagine winning those with a usurper condition. You can pull all kind of shit with the denizen and advisor cards to make it harder too. And they *always* have to tangle with the armies on your board in addition to the dice. Same with relic victories, though it's a bit less sticky since the relics tend to have fewer dice on them.

But the supremacy condition... any player never has to roll more than 2 or (3 if usurper) blue dice to take a big dent out of the win condition. Critically, the other players can agree to do so progressively on separate turns in bites. It's hard to imagine anyone but the Chancellor winning with a supremacy victory condition.