Cole Wehrle and Patrick Leder who have done some stunning work in the past for Leder Games on Root are back with another innovative sounding board game for one-to-six players called Oath: Chronicles Of Empire And Exile.

The core focus of the game is that decisions that you make during your different playthroughs will echo through into later games. Decisions made and paths taken could completely change the way that Oath plays in future adventures.

As it stands, the core rules are rather simple...

"Players will spend their turns adventuring within the Chancellor's realm and the lands that surround it. They will gather support, recruit warbands, and discover dark and dangerous secrets. Over the course of the game, players will collectively populate the world with a cast of strange and wonderful characters and institutions. This world is essentially a shared tableau, which every player can interact with and seek to control."

Many players will start the game as what is called an Exile, a powerful figure who lives on the edge of society. An Exile will win the game by challenging the Chancellor's power and attempting to fulfil their new vision for the world.

Check Out The Rules Here

The Chancellor, by comparison, wins by maintaining their grip on the empire they have founded. This means that they could try and make offers to other players whereby they help them maintain control but at every turn, the Citizens and Exiles are threats to their power and could succeed them. You might find moments to work together but only one player will ever win a given game.

Telling A Story

The game itself is not a typical Legacy fame that you might have seen in the past. Instead, during the Chronicle Phase, you will see what happened during a game, make a note of the victory conditions which were achieved and then adjust the game, introducing or removing cards for your future games.

The game also saves your progress but this means that you don't need the same people to sit down each time to play the game. You could introduce new people into the mix across sessions of play and they could drastically change things before vanishing off into obscurity.

Games take around forty-five minutes to play with a quick set-up and pack-up time which is neat. It means you could play a number of games of Oath during an evening! I also like that you could play the game with your regular group, then take it away and play solo to see what happens and bring back a different-looking game when you next sit down to play!

Knowing the effort and thought put into Root, I can see this being just as luxurious a game to play on the tabletop. Root was also a game which doesn't appeal to everyone and I could see Oath following a similar thread in that regard too. I would certainly give this game a go though given the chance!

What do you think?