Oath Pre-Review

I think the review is very positive Gary! I can't speak for others but for me, any comment I made should be interpreted as "this sounds GREAT! If only I could be confident of getting the game played."

Finally got around to reading this. I've tried to refrain from reading too much about Oath as I'd prefer to experience it fresh. This review has certainly stoked my anticipation though. Great work Steve.

Thanks, means a lot coming from you!

I was reminded of my caveats on this review because someone on the Woodland Warriors official discord said their first game went a TI:4 length 6-7 hours.

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.

Lol, that was me!

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.

Hi Jack!

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.

As much as I appreciate this game, I don’t see my regular old group sticking with it enough, even once we start meeting again.

No worries at all Gary, I didn't take it as a dig. I definitely agree that these long first games could really turn people off the game.

The "This is just a confusing mess like Feudum!" thread is now up on BGG and I feel vindicated.