Rudi Pfenniger @rpfennig@qoto.org

Another #boardgame Saturday night game of #oath and finally back to one where it felt like everyone was competitive in their own way. Ended up being a citizen win after he played a card to gain citizenship and have the darkest secret when the Chancellor won on a roll of 5-6 with the people's favor. I knew I wasn't going to win in that match up and managed to pick up the vision that would have allowed me to win with most artifacts and banners and been in a position to have that the next round. Though I'm sure some other wrinkle would have arisen.

Chancellor was in a position to exile the citizen but having drawn down on the mob version of the people's favour wouldn't have been able to hold on to it. An interesting twist was having the Hall of Mockery in play so that after the first time the People's Favor was recovered it flipped to the mob side and was stuck there.

We've had a few other games of #oath over the last month but this one stood out as a bit more competitive as the board starts to solidify a bit.

#chatgpt Jack Ryan fan fiction

Fixed it.

#JohnMastodon #boardgames

Another #boardgame Saturday and another chance to play #oath with the focus on getting as much stuff as possible (relics, banners, and such) and a Citizen who would win with the People's Favour (the ever popular VP position with a long knife).

Managed to become the usurper at round 4 with a relic that let me get other relics and ended up having 5 to the Chancellor's 3 items. Of course, as tradition would have it this simply set me up for the painful position of getting my lunch money stolen from me and the Chancellor ended up flipping it to 5 items for them and 3 for me.

We had two round where the Citizen had the People's Favour and if the Chancellor had rolled 5 or higher and then 3 or higher (rolls of 2 both times) they would have won.

Had an unexpected round where the Chancellor campaigned against the Citizen for the People's Favour successfully... "But he's your Citizen and you... <flipping through rules> 'If you are the Chancellor attacking a Citizen, that Citizen is not an Imperial player during this Campaign'... that's just mean..."

I sacrificed one of my remaining relics for extra supply in the final round for an ill fated Campaign ("Huh... 20 defence you say... most of that information was available to me before I declared and I should have noticed that...") and the Citizen needed one more supply to Recover the People's Favour in the final round so, for the 2nd time in 8 games the Chancellor managed to win.

Next game it's punchy-punchy with the Oath of Supremacy but the Chancellor is starting with only 3 Sites (like the intro game) so it's competitive.

Will probably be switching over to #frosthaven in the new year but for now still having a good time with #oath.

Finally had a chance to get back to #oath this #boardgame Saturday and as always, completely different experience from the previous play.

Last time it was a chaotic frenzy of competing visions and goals, flipping and flopping from player to player each round until it all came to an end and we had to determine who won, but didn't win because of the successor goal so "Yeah, I won."

As Chancellor this time, I thought I had a pretty solid lock on the Banner of the Darkest Secrets with an advisor who let me load up a bunch of secrets on it early, a relic that meant it couldn't be targeted directly by any campaigns and a bordering on paranoid unwillingness to travel from the Cradle where my advisors and denizens matched protecting my precious secrets even more.

However, while I clung so dearly to my rolodex of secrets, I was also sowing the seeds of my own demise. Running through the World Deck with reckless abandonment (it's only ever 2 supply with the banner), bringing out Visions and piling on an assortment of advisors with cool abilities.

In the end, it was the man with red string that outfoxed me like a cute and cuddly woodland creature who had a false Vision of Conspiracy, a secret to burn and a couple advisors that matched the suits of mine... I'm looking at you Mr. Raccoon.

He ran into the Cradle, booped me and ran away to the Hinterlands where I could at best, based on my reduced supply, chase after him and then take a moment to catch my breath and do nothing else.

There was a last minute attempt to forge some sort of attempt to stop him with the other player but it proved unsuccessful and so instead of a chaotic frenzy of competing visions and goals, flipping and flopping from player to player each round this time around it was "I've got this... oh, no I don't." And it was over in 4 rounds.

The board at the end, winner in lower corner, I'm up at the top making a last minute trade with the other player at the Tinker's Fair hoping he could get one more secret on his own and get out a mismatched advisor in the lower corner and recover... yeah, that didn't happen.

Another #boardgame Saturday with a first chance to try #frostpunk which is... a bit of a lot. It's good but we only had a 3 hr window (monthly board game night at our co-op) for play with 2 of us and between set up and tear down made it to the beginning of round 6 of the first scenario.

Felt like we had a good handle on things the first few rounds but could start to feel things slipping away a bit at this point (first real round of sickness and food was starting to be a struggle plus the weather cards really did a number on the generator).

Need more time and a bigger table for this one.

Six books to get to know me better (based on the number of times I've read/re-read/bought a new copy after binding on old copy fell apart/bought a new copy with a new cover):

1. Neverwhere by @neilhimself
2. Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson
3. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
4. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
5. Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
6. The Ivanhoe Gambit by Simon Hawke

#bookstodon #books #bookstadon

That last one is the first book in the Time Wars series by Simon Hawke and the cover captured my imagination as a teenage D&D playing #scifi geek like no other and left a lasting impression:

Just finished a #boardgame of "Oath". Still figuring it out after seven plays with most games being a roller coaster of "I've got this...", "No... no, I do not...". Tonight was no exception, with an early usurper, me agreeing to become a citizen to give us a couple rounds of breathing space, a secret vision, more crazy dice rolls and the final "the Chancellor wins, so I win and he loses" based on the number of relics I had collected as a Citizen. So far it's been a very unstable history over seven games with only one of us managing to hold onto the Chancellor role from one game to the next.

Board at beginning of tonight's game: