Are those cards sleeved or do they all have that grey border? I saw one that looked really shiny so I presume sleeves. That said, there appear to be a few irregularly-shaped cards - more square than rectangle. Were those sleeves hard to find?
Custom sleeves that came with the game.
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Nominated for post of the year, should we establish such a thing.
eta: Also I hate you, as I just ordered a copy.
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Looks very cool!
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Fantastic write-up. Forwarding this to my family.
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A bit more of a general overview. I’ll try and keep it brief so as not to bore. The Chancellor has probably the most complex role.
He has to fulfill his victory condition (top left, Oathkeeper of Protection). Since Chancellor Chris (formerly Black) won last game with that as a Successor for a different Oath, he’s chosen it as his win condition this time. The Chancellor also has to manage the Imperial Reliquary, a repository of Relics to be handed out to prospective Citizens. His player board holds the usual six actions, but has a more generous Supply track, which shifts right the more warbands he has deployed.
As an Exile, this is my player board.
Less warbands available, so the Supply track is different, but the principle is the same. The more warbands you have with you or on the map, the less spare Supply you have, the fewer actions you can do on your turn. The Exile/Citizen player boards are identical apart from the art, so you don’t need a photo of Dandalf the White’s.
The map changes between games. Those sites not ruled by the winner cycle out, the others stay in. The empire coheres, so sites slide up and into the next region if there are spaces, and new sites are filled in from the outside inwards. So the Cradle looks the same.
Note Chriscellor playing Horse Archers. Like I did. Bastard.
The Provinces have shuffled up a bit to make room for Salt Flats, complete with the ‘Black’ Keep from last game.
And the Hinterland is all new territory, with only one site revealed.
Whereas normally traveling between regions is expensive, in this case, the Lush Coast and and Barren Coast only cost 1 Supply to travel between them. One of the best and hardest things to learn regarding Oath is the basic framework of the game is one thing, the panoply of cards that break all the established rules is another.
On his turn Chriscellor gets some cards out to collect Favour, and does little else, Searching to his heart’s content. One immediate problem he does have is the amount of Imperial warbands already out. Yes, he rules five sites, but he hasn’t got much room to Muster more troops before it starts biting into his supply.
Apologies for the phone photo, but this was my starting hand, from which I had to choose one.
Having more cards in a suit is usually a good thing, enhancing your Trade action and bringing in more Favour. I chose Pressgangs and regretfully discard the others. I Trade on the Keep, bringing in more Favour, and then Muster using Pressgangs, gaining two more warbands, before Traveling to the Shrouded Wood. Two can play the Martial Culture Game.
Dandalf the White promptly takes that as his cue to Campaign against the lone Imperial warband guarding the Salt Flats, and despite the fact it gets an extra two blue defence dice, it makes little difference.
Hollow swords count as half, swords as one, double sword and skull two but instadeath for one of your warbands. Dan rolls 6.5, rounded down to 6. He autokills one of his warbands, but Chriscellor rolls one blank, remembers his other two dice, and rolls two more blanks. Classic. Dan rules the Salt Flats now. I could see Chriscellor eyeing Horse Archers, which would have negated three attack dice from Dan’s Mercenaries, but he didn’t use it. Evidently not worth turning a massacre down a notch to still lose. Dan leaves a warband to rule and heads for the Tribunal. I can see Relic lust in his tiny eyes.
Chriscellor Searches a bunch again, milling through cards from the World deck, collecting another and keeping it face down. Obviously a nice surprise for someone.
I do a little Campaign and kill the lone Imperial warband with no fuss. Chriscellor doesn’t even look at Horse Archers. Which is a shame, because I play Great Herd and steal it. I now rule the Shrouded Wood, complete with Martial Culture and Horse Archers. I do a little travel and join Dan on the Tribunal.
My Campaign is extremely bloody, mainly for me, totalling 7 swords and sacrificing three of my warbands, half my total strength. Dan loses his warbands and is banished to the Hinterland, losing half of his Favour and his Mercenaries. It’s Martial Culture o’clock.
Oldest trick in the book, mate.
Dan fully explores the Hinterland and finds the square root of fuck-all. Chriscellor joins him.
Dan settles in to some serious searching, finally digs out a Vision, and promptly ambushes Chriscellor with the Conspiracy, stealing a Relic from him, using advisors of the same suit as those of the Chancellor, and a Secret.
Just a note about the currencies. Favour are the coins, which act much like straightforward currency, you spend them to do things, and they go to the respective banks along the bottom of the map. Secrets are different, representing knowledge particular to you. Certain powerful actions and cards require you to destroy Secrets, but most of the time, you use Secrets to get Favour, and at the end of your turn, you get the Secret back. You’re leveraging information for gain.
I end up recovering the Banner of the People’s Favour, representing popular support. This costs me an increasing amount of Favour, to keep the masses sweet, but means I can pull off a Successor victory.
I plot up in the Black Keep, and steadily Trade and Muster to bring in Favour.
Dandalf is not having a good time, but he manages to put together a powerful trio of advisors in Mercenaries/Scouts/Horse Archers, which means six extra Attack dice and Campaigning for half-price, and his Circlet of Command means his other Relics cannot be stolen.
Tragically he does not have any other Relics.
I think Chriscellor is a little at sea, and the map is out of Relics, and he doesn’t have the Secrets to Recover the Darkest Secret. He can’t see a way to win, which is painful. Round five comes around, and he rolls a two, so we churn through one more round. Round six, he rolls a five, and looks relieved that it’s over. Successor win for me. No offers of Citizenship, and the Tribunal was never used for deals either. Dan likewise did not have a great game, being punted by me put him on the back foot, and he was never really in position to win from the second round onward.
At three players, it has good balance, but it’s always a direct 1vs1vs1 fight, and you really need an excellent reason to start using negotiation and offering Citizenship. It’s not a particularly hard game to learn the basics of, but virtually every rule has an exception and edge cases, which makes a lot of it tricky. All the blades are double-edged, and all the bets are double-hedged.
End game process involves removing a random selection of cards from the World deck and adding in cards from the most popular suits. You also get to record it in a cool little journal.
Which gives you space to record as much detail as you like, so you can stick to barebones, or tell a story.
Some of the components are very nice.
The resin Secrets and metal Favour are luxurious but not necessary.
I’m hoping to get more players ASAP, as it goes up to six, and I should be able to grab at least a couple more. The full card pool can be viewed here: https://oathcards.seiyria.com/
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I’m looking for a recommendation for a family-weight engine building game. My 8-year-old is very mechanically-minded and I think he would really enjoy a game where you build up an engine of some sort. I don’t need a children’s game, but I do need something that is fairly lightweight. I know little about it but I was considering blind-buying Gizmos, but I’m looking for other recommendations as well.
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Gizmos is good. It’s A Wonderful World.
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Not sure I have your definition of engine down, but have you tried Wingspan? My kids love it
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Oh, and Res Arcana!
or
?
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You know, right after I wrote my request Wingspan popped into my head. I own it and I love it, so I’ll accept it as good advice but I’m looking for other games as well.
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I think Gizmos is probably perfect. Not so toyetic that one feels like a preschooler playing with it, but colorful and whimsical, with a big, eye-catching reservoir of marbles for the center of the table and easily digestible rules which let you build machines that sometimes do tons of cool things.
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I loved both your AARs, OhBollox. You made the game seem endearing and driven by a chaotic but thrilling narrative. My Brooklyn group just tried it with five (four is suggested for n00bs) and I certainly did not have your experience. Obviously, the design contains multitudes and the rules are pretty whacky, but it’s the first Wehrle design where I’ve left the table a bit nonplussed. Clearly I really need to go over the rules not once more but thrice more. And while the cards are very important, the victory conditions are vital to understand, but they are–to my mind–very arcane.
Looking forward to trying this soon with a lower player count and more familiarity with the workings of the design.
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I left out my learning the rules as I didn’t think it would interest anyone. Playing with five when you start is definitely not recommended, we have a fifth player join us sometimes, and it easily adds an hour onto the game. For some reason, the time taken on your next game is usually cut in half, dropping from 4-5 hours to 2ish, presumably just due to greater player familiarity and ease of orientation in a sea of options. For us, the biggest obstacle was the number of rules exceptions, which proved onerous and frustrating for some players. The victory conditions were easier, albeit juggling them all in your head when they’re all out can be tricky. We really did have to have a learning game, where we sat through the tutorial (complete with protests we didn’t need no stinking tutorial) and then played experimentally, just taking turns doing stuff we didn’t know how to do, until everyone was au fait with the basic actions at least.
The game is almost aggressively idiosyncratic.
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Can anyone compare the relative complexity of Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion to something like Imperial Assault?
My 8-year-old son and I want to play a dungeon crawl/RPG board game but, even though we understand the game, I find Imperial Assault way too fiddly. In typical Fantasy Flight fashion, there are way too many bits for what the game does, and I find the app so be serviceable at best, with many vague decision points that tend to frustrate me.
I know Gloomhaven has a ton of stuff in the box, so I’m not saying I want things with less bits, necessarily, as long as everything seems efficient.
As far as gameplay goes, is it much more complex? Or would you reckon if someone understands the actual Imperial Assault/Descent gameplay they could come to grips with Jaws of the Lion?
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I haven’t tried Jaws of the lion but I think the gameplay is similar to Gloomhaven and I’d say Gloomhaven is a significant step up in complexity from Imperial Assault. I know my 10 year olds would struggle with it.
JotL is a great intro. I personally don’t consider it that much more complex but I’d have a good look at the rules first. Never been a fan of IA or Descent. Legends Untold is another option.
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We have played about three scenarios with my trio. They really liked it, although with three there was a little too much downtime
So based on the conversation in here a week or so ago, I picked up Gizmos for the long weekend…boy is that fun. Wife and 8yo both loved it so far. We have only played 3 games so far, so don’t know all of the strategies, but the VP Token doubler has won 2 game of the 3. Good recommendation.
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