First Oath board game expansion will give losers a fighting chance

The first expansion for Oath: Chronicles of Empire & Exile will give losers more agency.

Cole Wehrle, the designer behind Oath, revealed more details about the upcoming board game expansion: which he initially announced via an update on the game’s Kickstarter campaign page earlier this year. Though yet to receive an official name, the expansion will provide players with new ways to interact with Oath’s chronicle system, which enables players to record the results of every game they play in order to decide the starting parametres of the next one.

Though the chronicle system of the base game affects who is in the role of chancellor – the most powerful starting position – as well as who has been exiled, alongside which areas of the board feature the most bountiful resources, the new expansion will feature even more options. Wehrle confirmed that the first Oath expansion will provide more agency to players who haven’t succeeded in becoming or holding on to the position of chancellor. Further details on the nature of the new agency are yet to be revealed, but Wehrle noted that the changes introduced by the expansion could lead to the very victory conditions themselves being altered.

Besides altering the chronicle system in the legacy-style board game, the new expansion will reportedly also feature a brand-new deck of cards for players to either add into their existing deck or use to replace it entirely. According to Wehrle, the fresh deck will feature a collection of new areas = that will include “wilder” abilities and effects for players to implement into their strategies. Though the additional areas will be more chaotic than those included in the core game, Wehrle wanted to ensure that the expansion wouldn’t make Oath any more complicated.

Oath is a board game that was released in 2021, after a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign ran in 2020. Supporting from one to six players, Oath takes place in a fictional kingdom inspired by medieval history, with players taking the role of either the chancellor – who has the power to enact the monarch’s bidding – or rival leaders. Depending on their starting role, players will either want to maintain their position as the chancellor or want to take it from their opponent in one of several different ways.

Throughout the game, players will be moving between different locations on a board, each of which is represented by area cards that have unique effects. On their turn, players will be gathering resources, amassing armies or securing allies in their attempts to maintain or gain power. The state of the board and whoever is in power by the end of the game will directly alter the starting state of the next game players experience. In his review of Oath, Matt stated that Oath is “as much a game explicitly about stories as it is a game that inspires stories among its players.”

Besides Oath, Wehrle is responsible for creating Root and John Company: Second Edition. Leder Games – the studio behind Root, as well as titles like Fort and Ahoy – is the publisher responsible for releasing Oath.

There is yet to be a confirmed release date or retail price for the upcoming Oath expansion.