Oath Could Be 2021's First Big Board Game

Leder Games has launched a Kickstarter for Oath, an innovative game about the rise and fall of empires. Leder Games is the maker of innovative and challenging board games like Root and Vast: The Mysterious Manor, both of which focus on competitive assymetric gameplay. Earlier today, Leder Games launched its new Kickstarter for Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile, an innovative game that builds a shared history over multiple game sessions. Designed by Cole Wehrle, the lead designer of Root, Oath is a 1-6 player game about maintaining control or toppling the status quo. Players will begin the game as either Exiles looking to fulfill a new vision for their kingdom or the Chancellor in charge of keeping the kingdom intact.

Each player's turn in Oath consists of three phases - an Influence Phase in which players collect resources, an Action Phase in which players can take two or three actions, and a Cleanup Phase. While the Chancellor can only win by having the most Victory Points, the Exiles can win by accumulating Vision Cards that offer alternative win scenarios. Player draw and play cards with different abilities, and can choose to keep them in their three card "cohort" or play them on a location, which opens the card's ability to whoever controls that location.

At the end of each game of Oath, players will use a final Chronicle phase to re-center the game's board around the winner's locations and then add cards to the deck based on how the previous game was won. New victory conditions might also be introduced for the next round of play. When the Chronicle phase is over, players pack up the game into the box to allow for a quick set-up using whatever alterations were made during the last game. While this sounds similar to a Legacy game, it's a bit different, as players can choose to reset Oath at any time and no pieces are altered or destroyed during rounds of play.

Leder Games anticipates that Oath will be released in early 2021, so sadly players can't get their hands on the game this year. However, given how popular Root is, this should be one the most anticipated games for 2021.

You can check out the Kickstarter for Oath here. There's only one pledge level, with a cost of $90 to get the game. The Kickstarter for Oath will remain open until February 4th and has already met its initial $50,000 funding goal.