Oath: Chronicles of Empire & Exile Review

Designed by Root’s Cole Wehrle, Oath is a 1-6 player open ended world building game of political machinations and generational conflict, and wow, what a beast of a game it is to learn!

I first received my Kickstarter copy of Oath: Chronicles of Empire & Exile in early 2021. I eagerly opened it, looked at all the lavish, lovingly designed components, unrolled the colouful, finely stitched neoprene play mat, set out the wooden pawns, opened the rule book and began to read. Then I quietly closed the rule book, packed everything neatly away and placed Oath on my shelf next to my unplayed collection of Root.

Let’s go!

Fast forward a year to 2022 and I found my gaze once more turning back to this big beautiful beasty boy squatting on my shelf of shame. I couldn’t just let it sit there unplayed any longer (shut up Root, or I’ll put you on the bottom shelf with your brother, Vast!) So I did what any respectable gamer in my position would do. I turned to YouTube to solve my problems. This time I wouldn’t be beaten. This time I’d do whatever it took to finally learn this game and learn it well enough not just to play it, but to teach it with confidence. Tales of my Oathy prowess would spread from Hamilton to just south of Hamilton and perhaps beyond. Gamers would flock to me and beg me to teach them, and I would whisper back “wait, I need to look that up”.

A foxy faction!

So now, after many hours of viewing how-to-plays on YouTube, scrolling though BoardGameGeek forums and reading the rule book really, really, super-hard I can say I finally managed to play several games of this feat of board game design and now feel confident enough to share my findings with the you good folks in the gaming community.

Yellow occupies the Hinterland in the early game

Before in get into the weeds, I’ll attempt to explain what kind of game Oath actually is. I’ve seen many reviewers attempt to describe it and all hit the mark in their own way. Here’s my take on it. Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile takes place in a world of military campaigns, uprisings, and rebellions detailing the ebb and flow of different political eras. Now, before your eyes glaze over at the mention of politics, this is the fun kind where your decisions actually make a difference.

The Chancellor and his war bands.

Each player chooses a faction to play, with one being the Chancellor, who is the current power in the land, and the others playing Exiles. The Chancellor and the Exiles are all vying for power by controlling regions on the map, recovering powerful relics, winning martial campaigns with their war bands, or fulfilling one of several Visions, alternative win conditions which can come into play during a game, throwing a spanner in the works of even the most carefully laid plans. In the beginning of this review, I made light of Oath’s complexity; it’s no secret the game can be a lot to get one’s head around. However, I feel this view is a disservice to the game and seems to be more a case of the game’s reputation getting ahead of itself. Certainly the overall concept is difficult to pigeonhole as it doesn’t fit neatly into the known categories. It’s part worker placement, part troops-on-a-map, part hand management, part open world legacy game. It’s a war game, it’s a political strategy game, it’s a whimsical adventure game. All of these can be used to describe elements of Oath.

Perhaps taking advice from an Errand Boy is where he went wrong?

What we have here is a case where, when you strip away all the rumour and fear surrounding Oath, underneath lays an approachable, clean and easy to understand interconnecting system of familiar game mechanics. Once I sat down and began moving the pieces around, all of my misconceptions began to melt away and by the end of the second round I was playing with such ease that I began to wonder if I’d missed something. So I stopped, re-read portions of the rulebook and this time, with my added experience, everything suddenly clicked! I’d done it! I’d learned to play Oath and it was no more complex than a game of Everdell or Viticulture, popular games which are themselves not exactly simple, but have seldom put off players.

A run down of the available actions.

Most turns in Oath result in players taking one of several clean, simple actions; move here or there, recruit them, roll those, flip this, collect that. Before you know it, you’ve used up all your supply for the round (Oath’s take on action points), you reset your supply counter for the next round and the turn moves on to the next player. The game lasts a maximum of 8 rounds but can be over much sooner than that, in fact my first game, thanks to a series of fortunate card draws, ended after the 4th round!

Victory is mine!

Component quality is excellent, with the beautifully rendered neoprene mat displaying gradients of greens blues and reds and the cards are all wonderfully illustrated in Kyle Ferrin’s instantly recognisable style. The faction pawns are thick and chunky, and the dice are plentiful (for the most part, a few more would have been nice). If you’re lucky enough to find a Kickstarter version, then the cardboard tokens for Favor (money essentially) and Secrets are replaced with metal coins and resin tokens respectively as well as a leatherette Chronicle book in which to detail your groups’ adventures after each game creating a memorable collective narrative. Even if you don’t have these shiny extras, the retail version of Oath is of exceptional quality.

Resin Secrets included in the Kickstarter version.

Ferrin’s gorgeous art work can lull players in to thinking this is a cutesy game of cartoony storybook nonsense, but the truth is, Oath is a serious strategic game, sure there are many elements that can end up being silly or comical, but this is due largely to the way the narrative emerges from the gameplay itself. “Oh yes, while all of you big warrior factions were busy running around with your war bands, campaigning and attempting to take each other out, my quiet little faction with one region to their name quietly stole the win by playing a Vision at just the right moment”. Indeed, it was played in such a way that I made sure the other players saw the end coming an entire round ahead and were completely powerless to stop it. I can’t describe the utter joy of seeing them scramble, flipping through their cards and scrutinising their player boards desperate for a way out. Moments like these define the most satisfying experiences Oath has to offer. Victory does not always go the the most powerful or the most deserving, and that can be a hard pill to swallow for some. Players who are more experienced with the game will likely have an advantage over new comers, but the same can be said for most strategy games.

The Chancellor’s player board.

Exploring new regions, flipping them over to see if they contain a rare relic or an action that will benefit your faction’s play style is extremely rewarding. The open ended nature of the game means that the end state of the last game dictates the set up and balance of power in the next. This pseudo-legacy approach means each copy of Oath around the world will be completely unique after the first game, but as there are no permanent changes made to the board or components, at any time players can decide to pack it all in, completely reset the game and start all over again. I doubt many would want to though as they’d lose the individual touches their group had added to their copy of the game, every decision becomes incorporated into Oath’s DNA and the consequences of each decision may not become apparent for several game sessions.

The strategy unfolds in the mid-game.

As to its perceived overcomplexity, I suspect Oath is a product of its own success in many ways. Think of all those times some new scary movie gets released and suddenly there are news reports of patrons fainting in the aisles or fleeing the cinema in terror. It’s all smoke and mirrors and only serves to peak people’s interest and entice them to the theatre to see what all the fuss was about, but then you get there and realise, hey, this isn’t so bad, in fact, it’s quite good. After all, there are few things more enticing than forbidden fruit, and Oath is the juicy apple hanging at players fingertips, you just have to be brave enough to reach out and grasp it.

A bird’s eye view of the world.

Have you had any experience with Oath? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below or you can contact me or join our Above Board Facebook group to be part of a great gaming community and keep up to date with future content releases. Hope to see you there!

You can purchase your own copy Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile here and doing so will help keep the lights on here at Above Board! Thank you.