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.
@equaton that is the trick with #oath. I have a small group of 3 for our Saturday game nights and one of them is my middle son (his copy of the game, from Christmas last year) and even after about 7 games in the last 3 months we are still figuring it out.
This session hinged on the use of the Vision of Conspiracy, which has been used before just never with such devastating results... so, now it's something I'll be watching for.
Other sessions have just been chaotic with us figuring out the implications of certain advisor/denizen/relic/vision combos in real-time ("So... does that mean... maybe... google says... okay.")
My suggestion would be if you can find a group of players who are more interested in the journey than win/lose that's a good start and then maybe running through the 4 player example they provide in the rulebook to see each of the actions in play would help and then resetting the board.
We found the first game a bit more straight forward with the goal just being get and hold as many territories as possible so it is a good place to start (probably why they set it up that way).
But the more games we play the more complexity and intrigue comes into play and a lot of it is about adapting to the situation at hand with very short windows ("they are going to win at the beginning of their next turn unless we... yes, I know I stabbed you in the back last round... unless we stop them.") and moments of "ooh" and "aah" when a plan comes together (even if you are on the receiving end of it).
@rpfennig thank you so much for this insights! Oath is a game I’d like to bring on the table more often but the rules are definitely being an obstacle. We tried to go though the tutorial, but it wasn’t as straightforward as the group imagined and the use of very complicated terms frustrated the group and quickly abandoned the tutorial. The approach I’d like to try is a simplified version of the game more focused on territory control, removing some mechanic and see how we go from there 😅
@equaton
I think we referenced the tutorial but didn't go through it other than as a bit of read through. It feels a bit like Root where there's a lot of concepts coming at you and once you get the feel for one part there's a whole other piece to learn... and another... and another.
Oath is definitely an interesting game in part because it's not just one type of experience. When area control is the goal it's a very different game than when it's about favour or secrets or who has the most stuff plus any of those sub elements can pop to the surface if a player successfully executes it as a vision.
The Visions are probably the piece that can throw the most uncertainty in. Without them you could have game where you knew what the goal was at the beginning and it would still be the goal at the end of the game. Even if you played with the Visions card to understand how they affect the supply cost for drawing from the World Deck but then just had an agreement that no one would play them it might be an easier introduction. The flip side of that is that the Chancellor would be in a stronger position since they start with more areas under their control in the first scenario.
With the Visions in play, some rules become more or less important during each game and once you add in new cards and take out some that might have been core to some learned strategies it... it has a life of its own. There's just a lot going on in any given game.
Right now our version of Oath is still a world in flux (we've only had one game where the Chancellor stayed in power) so the locations are constantly getting reset so there's probably a bit more chaos than if it started to settle with one of us maintaining the role of Chancellor and having a stronger position game over game.
@rpfennig that’s amazing! Do you have any recommendations on how to learn / teach the game? I have a copy and tried to bring it with a group but people felt overwhelmed very quickly by the rules and very complicated names (eg. Muster instead of just Training 😅) and had to drop the session.