![]() Oath's gameplay takes a relatively approachable core loop, with players moving their character between places in the world and trading in favours and secrets to amass power and wealth, and deepens it with the sheer variety of cards that can spring up. There's no set number of games before the cardboard credits roll - Oath's narrative and mechanical remixing can last as long as its players' interest. Cards are never permanently altered or destroyed, instead being - at worst - cast from the world deck for several generations with the chance to reappear a number of sessions - and in-game centuries - later. Unlike legacy board games, such as Pandemic Legacy and Gloomhaven, Oath avoids a hard stop to the evolution of the world. It's all very Game of Thrones, except it sticks the landing. Alliances are possible but flimsy as exiles try to hold onto their winning claim for a full round, or even throw in with the chancellor by pledging their service as a citizen - as long as it benefits them, anyway. This goes for the players too, with one player beginning the game as the ruling chancellor of the land, while the others typically start as upstart exiles hoping to build up their threat to the throne and oust the chancellor from power by fulfilling the given win condition, which is defined by the previous winner's victory (Did they win via military might? The support of the people? Or more nefarious subterfuge?) and can change as the game rolls on. A video in which I explain, and show, what Oath: Chronicles of Empire & Exile is. ![]() The outcome of each game affects the setup of the next, with places and inhabitants of the world - represented by cards on the board that players visit to gain their unique benefits - developing, vanishing and shifting to offer a distinctly different experience the next time around. The key lies in the "Chronicles" of Oath's subtitle, realised in the Chronicle system devised by Wehrle that chains together every session into a constantly evolving timeline. ![]() While the game presents itself on the surface as a deeply strategic game of commanding armies and maintaining a tight grip of regions - and make no mistake, that's all in here - it's at heart a hugely accomplished storytelling machine, primed to allow players the space to weave their own tales of victory and defeat, alliance and rivalry, ascension and inevitable fall. The latest release from darling strategy designer Cole Wehrle - best known for his asymmetric masterpiece Root, in which players control animal factions scrapping over a woodland - Oath is a highly ambitious board game that attempts to chart the rise and fall of empires, their rulers and those attempting to seize power from them over countless generations. Oath: Chronicles of Empire & Exile is perhaps the first board game to make the description "generic fantasy" a glowing compliment. Dicebreaker Recommends is a series of monthly board game, RPG and other tabletop recommendations from our friends at our sibling site, Dicebreaker. ![]()
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