Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile Board Game Review

By all accounts, Leder Games makes fantastic board game experiences. The other thing I’ve heard about Leder Games is that you get out of their games as much as you are willing to put in, and Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile is the perfect example of this! Oath requires a certain group of people to play to make it as exciting as possible, and I had the pleasure of playing with good and bad players. Regardless, though, the investment of time and energy was well worth the payout as Oath is one of my favourite games I’ve played in 2024. And yes, I know I’m late to the party.

We won’t be talking about components or art in this review. For that, please read our components overview article now! (Oath – Components Overview and Impressions – GamesReviews.com)

Oath is a bit of a hard game to write about. I’ve sat here and wrote draft after draft of this review, and I never seem to catch the essence of the game. Oath is not the only confusing (in a good way!) game from Leder Games, but it’s definitely the hardest to explain. In the shallowest of terms, you win by completing your objective. For the chancellor, that could be supremacy over the land, controlling a bit of everything long enough to fulfill win conditions and be crowned…well the Chancellor. The thing is, other players are also attempting to complete things, and what those things are, well, you probably don’t know.

Version 1.0.0

And so complicated relationships begin to form, and Oath quickly dissolves into a complex game of relationships and politics. And this is exactly where I think Leder Games wants you to get to. To be clear, Oath does have strict turn orders and sequences and players will be using their available actions to do a variety of different things, many of which are influenced by the game’s many-many cards. Players will spend money, search for items, move around the board, muster troops, fight, defend, and so much more, all in an effort to complete Oaths or Visions and win. 

When prepping for my own plays of Oath, I watched a few reviewers, and one in particular caught my eye – the video by Shut Up & SIt Down highlighted at length the stories players can create with each other as they play, and that description of Oath is so accurate. The twists within the game are enough to keep everyone engaged because Oath is one of the few games where even when things feel pretty bleak, you are never out of the running to win. There are enough twists within the game to open windows for you to crawl back into contention, and I absolutely love that chaos.

What’s really intriguing about Oath, and what makes it an experience you can play for a long time without feeling like you are repeating sequences from previous games. While not a traditional legacy experience, the game of Oath changes from game to game. The promise needing to be kept – the Oath or the Visions – changes from game-to-game based on whomever won the previous game. Certain aspects of the central board remain intact for the next game, again depending on who won and how they won. The winner will also get to choose sets of cards to add into the game for the next play, which brings about new strategies and new opportunities. This runs out eventually, but it’s unlikely to run out before you’ve had your fill of Oath.

The turn-to-turn game of Oath isn’t actually all that complicated, and I think it flows really well. Experience board game players will pick this up pretty easily and have an easy go of the various mechanics at play here. What sucks is that I have friends who would kill at the strategic thinking of the game, but have a hard time getting over the moment-to-moment actions and options. And that’s why I will reiterate again that Oath is a game you need to have the right group of folks to play.

See, Oath isn’t the most balanced experience. There is nothing “fair” about trying to rule a kingdom, and that extends to how this game plays out. The game relies heavily on the cards you will be obtaining, and depending on the game and the situation, those cards could be wildly beneficial, or woefully ineffective. And it’s something you as the player just need to deal with, and think, “How do I get back into this game? How do I turn the tables? How can I create some chaos if victory is going to elude me?” 

You can’t play this with someone who gets frustrated when things stack against them. You can’t play this with someone who isn’t willing to put in the effort required to get the ideal Oath experience. As Shut Up & Sit Down stated in their video, this game is about the stories you create as players. There is no flavour text in the manual or on the beautiful cards to explain what’s going on. That’s up to you.

Oath is not going to be for everyone, but for those willing to put in the work, the reward is phenomenal. Oath is a game I will continue to play with the right people at the table, and while it’s not a legacy game persay, it’s still a game that changes with the decisions you and your fellow players make. Oath is phenomenal, but one of the deepest and most complex board games I’ve played in a long while. If that’s your thing, and world building is something you enjoy, Oath will pay you back in spades if you give it a chance.