Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood

[YellowKing]

Ok, made it through Chapter 1 on my second attempt at the game, and thought I'd compare and contrast now that I'm A) playing the rules correctly, B) using cards instead of dice, C) playing 4 full characters instead of 2 full, 2 companions.

- I'm not finding four full characters operationally much harder than playing 2, which is good. I think I mentioned it before, but one thing I like about this game compared to Gloomhaven is that you can typically skim through your available ability cards at a glance and determine which are useful based on the board state and which are not. And since you typically have cards at various states of cooldown, chances are you're not even skimming through a full hand of 7, but maybe just 2 or 3.

- Four full characters does take more time, but I think the time addition is more from strategy consideration than fiddliness. Even though what I said above still holds true, companions are always going to be faster just because of their limitations. Full characters require spending Aenima for each movement point, for instance, whereas a companion just spends 1 Aenima and moves their full movement range. Those little decisions add up to a bigger time investment.

- That said, I've found the strategic experience MUCH richer with four full characters. Having to think about abilities and how characters interact with each other has made the battle feel much more epic and engaging. I'm not saying playing 2 companions was a bad experience in any way - it was a total blast. But if you don't mind the slower pace, I'd highly recommend experiencing a party of full characters.

- Unsurprisingly, battleflow, and managing battleflow, makes a LOT more sense when you're actually flowing things in the right direction. You really have to think about whether or not to burn a card for defense that you may need in the next round. Or you might seize the opportunity to play a reaction card you don't really need to play just to battleflow two cards that are more critical. It has become much more apparent to me this time around that this is a game of ebb and flow, prep turns and big turns, based on how you manage your hand.

- Cards vs dice. Here's where I think I felt the biggest difference. Now I know the game is balanced for both - the designers have reiterated that both methods were baked into the game design from the start. However, there is no question in my mind that cards add another strategic layer on top of the gameplay. You really have to think about probabilities and when to press the attack, when to hold off, when to burn Aenima to reset your decks. I can't say that I've found cards make things *easier* but I can say I definitely feel more in control. And cards also make you think about how much you really want to commit to an attack. With dice, I'd grab a handful and chuck 'em. But with cards, you have to think about whether you're committing too many cards and overkilling your target, thereby depleting big hits and crits out of your deck unnecessarily. The designers recommend using cards for the bosses to reduce swinginess and provide a more consistent and predictable experience, and I can say firsthand that it absolutely applies to your characters as well. You may not get as many "holy shit multiple exploding dice" ridiculous moments, but you're also not as prone to head-bangingly frustrating runs of bad rolls.

It's important to note that according to the rules of the game, you are free to use dice and cards interchangeably. So in theory, if you have two white cards left, and you know they're both misses, you can just roll two dice instead. However, the OCD side of my brain hates that concept, so I've committed to sticking to just cards.

- Finally, don't be scared of the Witch. She's actually much simpler in practice than I realized. To help you wrap your head around her, they do force you to use only one element (fire or water) for the first chapter. She feels pretty damn powerful right from the start, and placing and managing the tiles that constitute her spell power is fun. I don't think it's any wonder she's one of the most popular Oathsworn to play according to the BGG polls. I'll have to say I'm also enjoying the Warden a lot. He is absolutely a true tank (much more so than the Penitent or Warbear). The downside of course is he kind of sucks at attacking, but having him pull a boss while the rest of your team beats up on it from behind MMO raid-style is super fun.

[baelthazar]

Thanks for this - I hope to start up a game this week and this helps me make decisions. I am looking at this like Kingdom Death Monster and - with that - you play four full characters (well, if you have that many in camp). So if that is a similar experience, then it should be great. Nice to also know that I should pick the cards - I was thinking that would be the case since they make a big deal about the trays.

[Smoove_B]

Was excited for my delivery today...until I saw it was a terrain box. Still no movement on the actual game and it's been almost two weeks since the label was generated. I'm beginning to think I won't see the game until November.

Regardless, still enjoying hearing your collective impressions, so keep them coming.

[hepcat]

Wow, they sent the terrain box separately? That's ridiculous.

...sounds like someone needs a fire to cheer them up!

[Fardaza]

I played the first story chapter and encounter over the last couple days. I found out I was doing a couple things wrong, but was able to backtrack and correct my mistakes. The rules are pretty dense like all big box campaign games. I only found out about my biggest mistake after posting on BGG. A few posters were kind enough to alert me to my error.

It's been a lot of fun! The fearless Oathsworn defeated the big bad mama rat without any knockouts. In fact she went down after only 2 of my 4 characters acted in the second round!

I hope to finish the second story today.

[hepcat]

My two mistakes so far are:

1) Forgetting about the Determination rule

2) Forgetting that when you add cards from leveling up, you still only take 7 cards into your encounter.

[Fardaza]

Amazingly, I haven't had any misses yet!! All my attacks in the first encounter were either adjusted by rerolls or were great in the first place! So I haven't had a chance to forget the determination rule. Not really expecting this to go on forever, but it sure made the first battle almost laughably easy. (I'm using dice for everything, so totally random.)

I've added the new level 2 ability cards to my hands, but am waiting to see what the second boss is before I take 2 cards out of the stack.

[hepcat]

I would recommend reconsidering the dice. There are abilities on cards as you level up that manipulate the card decks that you'll be missing out on. I know they've said it's balanced for both, but I feel like I'd be missing out on the intended experience if I went all dice.

[YellowKing]

This may sound like blasphemy to some, but I really wish Oathsworn had a helper app like Gloomhaven to handle the card shuffling. I like using the cards but they are a pain in the ass to keep shuffling every 5 minutes. That would truly be the best of both worlds.

[hepcat]

I played two player with two characters each on Saturday for around 10 hours and the cards really didn't bother us. We weren't shuffling that often, and when we did it was pretty quick.

[EzeKieL]

How far did you get in 10 hours of play?

[hepcat]

2 chapters. There was actually about an hour for lunch, but I also subtracted about 2 hours of rules teaching and rules checking. But I would say 90 minutes for the story section, then a good 3 to 3 1/2 hours for the encounter for each chapter.

[YellowKing]

Sounds about right. Playing solo I tend to take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour for story chapters, and a good 2 hours for boss encounters. I do like the pacing because I will generally play story encounter one night, then boss encounter the next. Makes it easy to pick back up between sessions.

[hepcat]

I’m sure I could get the time down in future chapters now that we’ve got the rules worked out.

One thing I want it mention is that the first story encounter was great, but the second felt a bit out of the loop and confusing. I’m hoping the story gets back on track with chapter 3.

[Fardaza]

I would recommend reconsidering the dice. There are abilities on cards as you level up that manipulate the card decks that you'll be missing out on. I know they've said it's balanced for both, but I feel like I'd be missing out on the intended experience if I went all dice.

This may sound like blasphemy to some, but I really wish Oathsworn had a helper app like Gloomhaven to handle the card shuffling. I like using the cards but they are a pain in the ass to keep shuffling every 5 minutes. That would truly be the best of both worlds.

Then use the dice!

I'm going to stick to dice for 2 reasons. 1) I spent money to get the cool dice, and 2) it will give me one less thing to have to use an ability card for. (One less thing to worry about, and hopefully I can use it for a better purpose.)