 We played a game a game called oath chronicles of iron exile Yeah, so the people who brought you root the same designer Cole Whirly I think that's how you pronounce his last name. Sorry Cole and The artist everyone loves is it Kyle Farron is the name of the artist that everybody loves who does that art Cal Farron All right. I was right Kyle Farron Yeah, it's like the holy trinity of amazing game art right it was basically like hey this this team brought you root this Amazing mega hit game. Let's make another game called oath. So what is oath? Oath is nothing like root really although you can see some similarities right because it's you know same designer and I saw Someone said it best as it's almost like if you took root and zoomed way out both physically and in terms of time I don't know. I think you're zooming it to pay you're zooming out in terms of time But you're zooming in like you're just one person one character one person got like your entourage and Yeah, but you're still one dude, right? Whereas in route. You're like a kingdom. All right. Yeah Anyway, so what's oath the idea in oath is that there is this sort of kingdom, right? It has a main area. It has you know sort of a suburban villages area, and then it's got a far-away hinterlands area, right? And over time, you know the kingdoms shit happens, right? There's a chancellor who rules They sometimes they continued and they keep ruling sometimes and they build things up And you know the kingdom waxes and wanes over you know and things happen And when you sit down to play oath you are playing one chapter And the story of the kingdom right you start out Basically with the status quo of the kingdom as it was right the chancellor and the stuff that they were Controlling is already set. So if the chancellor ended it's a legacy game Right, so the chancellor ended the last game in a strong position They're gonna start the game in a big strong position Yeah, and if they if they right and then me if the maybe you know and the thing is whoever won It might not have been the chant the purrs the chancellor that started last time one last time But whoever you know, let's say one of the other Nonchancellar players won the game last time well at least story wise the chancellor of the current game is Whoever won the last game right it might have been some exile or a citizen or who knows what right? So you said you set up the game according to how the last game ended and then you play out another Chapter and what happens is you have the the chancellor They start out with all the stuff there may be Characters who are citizens their citizens are on the chancellor's side. They use the chancellor's units They don't have their own units But their goal is to a get the chancellor to win But B six B come the successor to the chancellor So they become the new chancellor even though the team chancellor won and then everyone else is an exile Who is basically trying to overthrow in some manner? and You know basically you're just this individual and you travel it's every the thing about this game I love the most is that every action you do in the game right speaks Narratively the mechanics and the narrative just like you know merge completely like in the game We just not a role-playing game, but you could make it one kind of yeah Like in the game We just played because of what was happening on the board my army like my pop by base of power consisted of a bunch of geriatrics living in a tent city and That's just that's what my army consisted of that's how things shook down What are they after what are their motivations? You can infer that pretty heavily from the events that happen in the game itself Yeah, it's like every single act so there's a bunch of I'm not gonna talk about all the rules It'll take forever read them yourself. They're free online But a simple action in the game would be like muster right which lets you add dudes add war bands to your little entourage Right yeah, so you're at you are physically your pawn which represents you the character right you you you're at a location Maybe you're in the hinterlands and in the hinterlands is a forest right and in the forest There's some cards next to the forest the cards have denizens right people who live in that forest And some some locations like we had a we had like what was it a sunken city? Yeah, it has a maximum space for a zero no one can live there as zero you're not allowed to have denizens there There's a pile of nonsense there a bunch of relics right but like a pleasant veil might have three spots for denizens or something So you go there into some denizens and you see and one of the denizens is the old people the elders right they're living there So you want to muster so you do is you take? Favor right and you give the favor to the elders and then you add two war bands to your board And it's like that tells a lot you just did one action in the game But it tells this story of I did a favor for the old people and some old people joined my army Yeah, or the old people told me secrets or something right you trade with the old people I'll do hey old people. I'll do you a favor if you tell me a secret or hey old people I'll tell you secrets if you do me a favor or you know all kind everything you do in the game is something along those lines that tells a little mini story and those little mini stories add up into the big big story and then The game ends right and you figure out who is gonna be you know Who is who is ruling the kingdom next time right versus this time? And there's all sorts of fun things to interact with right you've got The denizens right you got some cards you got some cards that are your advisors right Yeah, they're basically denizens that walk around with you everywhere They're just only working with you not with anyone else There's all these relics and a fun thing another game We'll tell you basically magic items you can get there's a game We'll talk about another time we'll review called Fortress the freedman freeze game that does something similar in that We haven't seen the deck So like I'll go somewhere and see in our relic and that relic just the way the game is constructed and the way you play each round Maybe no other human has ever seen at this table before so I know there's people currently playing Yeah, you haven't looked up all the card spoilers. Yeah, which I'm avoiding so like yeah, it was interesting to I saw a relic I was like oh, okay that seems like a reasonable thing for a game to do and then I saw another relic and That relic seems so powerful and weird that it gave me pause to consider what the fuck other relics might I run into Yeah, it's like yeah Cuz every time when you finish a game you remove you basically you start the game with a deck They give you and but there's a bunch more cards in the box when you finish a game Whoever one is gonna make some decisions right relating to the what's at the state of the board and they're basically gonna Remove some cards from the deck and add more car add six cards to the deck So you're constantly cycling out and in cards, right? And so the next time you play you're gonna see some stuff You're familiar with but you know the kingdom chain over time The kingdom is changing right some people who used to live here don't live here anymore Some new people showed up some people, you know, but most of it is Basically the same at least as of last game, but compared to 10 games ago. It's completely different Right, it's been so long since then, you know, there's no one alive from 10 games Okay, it's been so long So you're telling this long story the addition I got I don't know if the non I didn't like pay extra for extra Kickstarter biz I just kickstarted at the level of give me the game, but it came with metal favor tokens Oh, they feel so nice special rosin secret book tokens And also this little leathery book to write your chronicle in right because it's Making art in those chronicle books Yes, I'm like the chronicle book It's like you have one page per game that you write down what the hell happened and then you build this chronicle Right of what happened in the kingdom over time. You keep playing this game over and over. Yep Like I guess I'm just flipping through board game geek this one person they posted there They had one page where I guess the Fox people became the champ Fox exile. Yeah, like they won So they didn't write any words They just drew a picture of an evil-looking fox with like some shadowy flame and it just says shrouded rebellion They didn't write anything else. So whatever the fuck happened in that game I feel like the foxes got up to some bad news business and won the game Yeah But yeah, it's just I don't know how else to describe the game It's oh so I guess like the rules a little bit a little bit rules, right? So it's an action-point game you on your turn, right? You go this is I think the only negative about the game is that much like root It is still a game where you don't do much when it's not your turn Yep, so on your turn you do a whole bunch of stuff and then it's the next person's turn So if you're playing with a lot of players, I think you know, it lets you go from 2 to 6 if you play 2 You need an AI player. I don't think that that's great Five and six I think is too many because you're it takes so long and the players who have the last turn order I had a bit of a disadvantage because the game starts four turns worth of stuff happens then they get their first turn It's like, oh my god, right and there's too much waiting and it takes too long I think three or four players is ideal though if everyone is fully fluent in the mechanics I think the game would move literally twice as fast as our early game Yeah, you know the game is actually not a slow game if everyone knows how to play It's the first time you play you're gonna need to spend a lot of time rule learning and card reading And probably the second time and if you don't play with the same exact people again You're gonna still spend time card reading and rule learning and some exceptions to the rules are gonna get you But if you're playing with people who got good at the game, you can under two hours easily, right? And there's a lot of variance in that as well depending on how the game ends But you on your turn you have this supply meter and you just spend action points to do Actions as a whole list of actions stuff like travel out to the hinterlands or recruit some armies or go get this relic or fucking attack someone and some actions are free like put some denizens out, you know Go, you know, I guess not it's not free to go exploring and look for some cards, you know to get more cards But it's a thing you can do All right battling obviously is an action all kinds of actions you do you spend your points But if you run out of supplies right narrative again, you're spending some things you want to do cost supplies Moving around cost supplies you're traveling right obviously that cost supplies the farther you travel the more supplies it costs But just telling someone who's hanging out with you, right like one of your advisors to like, hey You should you should build you should stay here. I'm gonna leave that doesn't cost any supplies, right? You're just saying hey stay here or you're giving someone an order it takes two seconds, right? And you go around doing these things, you know telling you a little story on your turn and then you say you're done And then you refresh your supply You refresh your supply according to how bigger if your army is real big you have less supplies It's harder to move around and you got to feed all these freaking soldiers or whatever If your army is real small then you got more supplies you can do more stuff, right? You're not hanging around with a big crowd again narratives that make sense with the mechanic, right? So you just do this and There's every game There's gonna be this victory condition the oath and whoever is currently leading is gonna have the oath keeper banner the Chancellor always starts with it because they're always in the strong position at the start of the game and They just have it because they're you know, they're no matter what at the start of the game The board will be in such a state that the chant the the starting Chancellor is meeting the victory condition more than anyone else No matter that but as soon as the game goes on someone else, right could take that away from them It's possible And if they do and they hold on to that oath if they keep that oath long enough and you think oh Well, how are they gonna do this? Right well the Chancellor just naturally loses power as the game goes on it's just structured in that way So if the game goes on too long the Chancellor is gonna get weak The Chancellor can get strength by getting people to become citizens and join their team if they weren't citizens at the start But if a non-citizen holds that oath for too long I think two laps around the table then they went right because the Chancellor lost the their oath another way to win if Somebody is not the Chancellor. They're an exile. There's visions and if they they have a vision, right? I had a vision of a of an empire, right? And then you fulfill the vision somehow Right, well, there are gonna be nine small mushrooms in a row. This I so decree Right, you have if you have if you're an exile and you have a vision and you bring it about It's like that's such a tremendous thing, right? You're a visionary figure in the society All right, and it came true. Well, then you beat that's it you win But to just to make a vision happen It's like you have to play the vision so everyone sees it on your turn And then it has to go all the way around the board and at the start of your turn The vision has to be fulfilled still and that's difficult to do because everyone sees it and tries to mess it up Sort of like Dune where it's like I'm winning on my turn. Who's gonna stop me? The game very much becomes one or more players will win if the game gets back around to them And the game becomes really like not to get into the details of the mechanics again It would just take too much time and it would also be too hard to explain without visual aids But what I would say is the way you're engaging with the game is You were trying to prevent the person who is currently winning from actually winning when it gets around to them while Posturing to be ready to be the person who will win after they have failed Yep, and the last thing is if the chancellor just holds on to the oath, right? They may they stay strong They remain the oath keeper that of halfway through the game the game can only ever be eight rounds long After the fifth round, I think they get to roll a d6 Yeah, yeah, they do they do any get to roll that d6 If it comes up on a six exactly they win But if they get it if they get to go another round Let's say they make it to the sixth round and there's still the oath keeper Now they win on like a five or a six and basically the odds of them winning keep increasing If they're managed to hold on to the oath, right as the game nears the eighth round If they're holding on to it at the eighth round They just win if not there's like a list of things that happen So the but the fun part about that it really gives this feeling of like you've got to take your shot or they're like They are just too powerful and then the final thing is if the chancellor does win But one of these citizens has met the successor goal They win instead of the chancellor so it's like the chancellor wants to win But it's like is someone else has that's on your team is meeting this successor goal It's like you have to find some way to like bring them down without hurting the team because otherwise, you know Yeah, like all the outcasts to a degree of the exiles have to sort of work together At least like I wouldn't antagonize a fellow exile early in the game necessarily unless I had some reason to like a vision in my hand that I need to set myself up for later So the game ends up simulating this feeling of court intrigue pretty well Hmm and I guess the last the last thing is that you know nothing in the game It's like you know is like you think oh the chancellor is like special It's like they're a little special, but really it's unlike root. It's very symmetrical Everyone does the same things on their turn the same actions the same supply thing basically For example the chancellor has this like scepter like this royal scepter thing. It's a relic. It's just a relic like any other relic I can steal it You could just steal it and if you have the scepter you have Control of the royal, you know reliquary and you can you know you can make people into Citizens you can grant them citizenship because you're holding the scepter or you can exile people who are citizens And it's like the chancellor starts with it But anyone else can come and fucking imagine the chancellor He gives Joy Joy Shabbatou citizenship and then I steal the scepter and exile Joe Joe Joe Shabbatou How fun is that right? It's it's hard to do but you can do it, you know You can all kind all these things are possible like they're nothing in the game is like special in any kind of ways Like you interact with all the things in ways that make sense narratively within the context of the actions And I guess really get really creative with your solutions The mechanics I would situations I would call out on a high level without getting too deep into the details are that one The the economy of the game is interesting in that it is a closed economy Like if you do things favor goes out onto the board and Favor only comes back from that same board and some things you do just destroy favor like you could shrink the actual full Economy of the game in the course of the game Another commodity the secrets those books They're a resource that you can just use over and over and over again They're like a recharging resource, but you can also burn them to almost supercharge yourself But as I learned if you burn all your books, you're uh, you're not a great position in the mid game Right, well, you can also just get more books, right? There's like a there's an infinite supply of books, but they're very difficult to get so that mean while the favors are easier to get but They're they're literally is here some game Yeah, the favors are in this sort of closed economy But not only are there a limited number of them, but based on this suits on the different cards We're not gonna get into that but yeah, basically there's different piles of favor So maybe there's a huge pile of favor on like the hearth bank So you can doing hearth things like you can go get favors from hearth peoples But maybe the discord bank could be empty. Maybe someone emptied it on purpose Yeah, like, you know if you're if you're playing a big discord game You have discord advisors and stuff and it's like why you want to get some favor It's like what you can't the discord people have no favors to give they've already given all their favors Yeah, you know, they don't they're too busy or they're spent right and that's what it's it's again Narratively representing like yeah, you kept going to ask favors from the old people They don't have any more favors to do give anymore. They gave me all their heart candy Right people kept giving favors to the to the order, you know clan It's like so now you can go and ask the order clan for favors because they're doing great They got plenty of time to help you out join your army. Whatever you want them to do Yeah, mmm, so I guess the other interesting mechanic is the way combat works is the dice have a whole thing going on But basically if I'm attacking Scott I list out all the things Scott has that I want to attack and It turns into one big pool and I either win it all or I win nothing so you can literally go big or go home with this game And that's a really you there's a lot of nuance and detail to that But you can attack people you can attack their relics. I could be like I'm just gonna see you banners Which you didn't even talk about the banners. Yeah, like I might say I'm just gonna take that relic from you Or I might say I'm gonna knock you out of these four places and I'm stealing your favor And I'm taking that relic and then you you're like well, I have a giant army. I'm the chancellor. What the fuck do you have? There's all kinds of stuff you get really creative with what you're gonna do Yeah, and then basically the attacker, you know the defender rolls dice and sets the bar, right? It's like this is how high you have to jump if you want to win then the attacker jumps And if the attacker doesn't meet the bar or exceed it They can kill their own guys to jump higher or just accept the loss Yep, so that's how the combat works and then yeah, like rim said the attacker either wins in which case they take all the things that they were Attacking or they lose and they just lose half their dudes who are in the attack So I guess should you buy it or not is an interesting question because I would say If you're the first play it once maybe before you buy it just to make sure the mechanics jive with you You can play it on TTS. You can read the rules online. The PDF is just on their website Yeah, there's no official tabletop simulator like scripted version. You can just open and play But try it out. I don't know. I don't know how you preserve the legacy aspect I don't think yes, there might be a way there probably is a way But you're probably just gonna you know use it to test and play the first game with this Distarting setup internalized that your first game especially for teaching game will take about twice as long as a game Once everyone knows the deal like literally about twice as long Also, except the fact that you're gonna get this off. So there are some fiddly rules The biggest rule we keep getting wrong is the protection This will make no sense to anyone, but you can only Reclaim this the banner of the darkest secret if The person who has it is at a site Where one of the advisors at the site at least does not match One of the denizens at the site does not match the suit of any of the person's advisors It's like there has to they have to be in a place where someone lives who is not friendly with them, right? Narratively it makes sense. It's like yeah, you want to steal the the banner of the darkest secret from someone They have to be standing in a place where there are unfriendly people's that you can convince to help you steal the banner If they're standing among friends or standing among no one who's there to steal it, right? But it's a really hard rule to remember and parse when you read the English of it Yeah, so when you're teaching this game spend a lot of time on all the proper nouns and defining them It'll save you a lot of grief But if you if you like it like you feel like you can engage with it I'd also say only buy it if you are confident You will get it to the table a bunch of times not necessarily with the same people But this game does not shine unless you play it many times Yep, I mean some people out there. I know are like I'm gonna play it only with this one group and that's it That's a real fun way to go Yeah, it's a fun way to go my I'm like all right I'm gonna be the one who I'm playing it with whoever is gonna play it right I don't need the same people to be in the same seat all the time So like we met with we met with the person who was the chancellor in the game before the game We played and we could tell the story like hey Scott the steward of your empire kept it together. He's still chancellor Yeah, it's like so like because I Narratively right if the red exile wins in game one in game two The chancellor at the start of game two there might be a different red exile in game two But the chancellor in game one is that same person who was the red exile in the previous game because they want right? Yeah So you can you can carry it forward that way if you keep playing with the same human beings like you can really be the character But you don't have to right? It's like it doesn't matter it works out. Yeah, so try it out before you buy it and Really like if you like it commit to it or you probably don't want to buy it Because playing one iteration of this game without interacting with that longer term like hey What kind of stories did we create? It's fun, but it's not like That much fun without like engaging with all these other long-term mechanics Yeah, if you just keep playing like the starting setup over and over like you're gonna get real board Yeah, it's not it's not that fancy, right? At least you know it is fancy I guess we had a lot of fun with it But if you did it over and over again, it's like you're seeing the same cards Yeah, you don't have any like ruins and other edifices that can end up on the board There's these other all these other things going on when you play several times More powerful relics coming out, you know different sites like we had you know, like I said that sunken city That sunken city was Narratively we went there and we dug up but had three relics. It's like a place full of relics So we traveled there and we all you know competed it almost like an Indiana Jones kind of yeah They're gonna dig up all the relics there, right? And it's like that thing won't be in your first game ever It's not possible. It's not in the starting setup and you know to experience that you're gonna have to play You know a few games, right? So I'd say it's a pretty elegant ambitious and fairly unique game like this is almost There have been legacy games before but this is the first one that I think is doing something really interesting and novel And I think games like this will start to come based on people's experiences with this game I think there'll be another game like oath in the coming three or four years That will eclipse it but there's nothing like this out there right now Other than oath And I do want to play it more. I did enjoy it