Oath: Chronicles of Empire & Exile

How Oath works

Oath is played over up to eight rounds. Each player takes a full turn consisting of a Wake Phase, Act Phase and Rest Phase.

During the Act Phase, you spend Supply on major actions such as searching for cards, recruiting warbands, trading, recovering relics or banners, campaigning against rivals and travelling between sites.

Unlike a conventional area-control game, controlling territory is only one possible route to legitimacy. The current Oath may instead revolve around the People’s Favor, relics and banners, or the Darkest Secret.

Roles also matter. The Chancellor defends the existing order, Exiles pursue independent victories, and some Exiles may become Citizens inside the Empire.

Chancellor, Exiles and Citizens

Every game begins with one Chancellor. The Chancellor rules the imperial warbands and begins inside the existing political order.

Other human players normally begin as Exiles. Exiles command their own warbands and can pursue independent victory through the Oathkeeper/Usurper system or through Visions.

An Exile may become a Citizen if citizenship is offered and accepted. Citizens join the Empire and use imperial purple warbands, but they also gain a different political problem: they can no longer pursue ordinary Exile Vision victories while they remain Citizens.

The three phases of a turn

1. Wake — resolve Wake powers and check certain immediate victory conditions.
2. Act — take major actions, minor actions and card powers in any legal order.
3. Rest — return temporary Favor/Secrets and refresh Supply based on your role and remaining warbands.

The Act Phase is intentionally open-ended. You are not limited to two or three actions; instead your total activity is constrained by Supply and card-specific costs.

How Supply works

Supply is your core action economy.

When an action costs Supply, move your Supply marker to the right by the amount spent. During Rest, Supply refreshes according to your role and warband position.

This creates a recurring military/economic tension: keeping more warbands available can affect future Supply efficiency, while aggressive campaigning may consume both Supply and troops.

Editorial strategy principle: plan your expensive Travel, Search and Campaign actions before spending Supply on low-impact activity.

The six major actions

Search

Search draws cards from the world deck or a regional discard pile. Normally you draw up to three cards, keep one and discard the rest. The retained card can be played to a site, added as an adviser or, for eligible Exiles, revealed as a Vision.

Muster

Muster normally costs 1 Supply and places Favor on an eligible denizen or intact edifice at your site to gain two warbands.

Trade

Trade converts access to particular suits into Favor or Secrets. Because those resources come from suit-specific banks, the economic health of each suit changes during play.

Recover

Recover is used to claim relics and the two major banners under their special bidding/holding rules.

Campaign

Campaign is the conflict action. You can target sites, relics, banners, pawns and Favor depending on the situation, then roll attack and defense dice and resolve losses.

Travel

Travel moves your pawn between sites. Cost depends on regional distance and other effects, so the physical geography of Cradle, Provinces and Hinterland matters to action efficiency.

Why Search gets more expensive

Search from a regional discard pile has a fixed Supply cost, but searching the world deck becomes more expensive as more Visions are drawn.

That means the information structure of the game changes over time. Early turns can explore the deck relatively cheaply; late searches become a larger commitment.

Discard piles are public regional resources, so tracking which powerful cards have been discarded can be as important as drawing blindly from the deck.

Sites, denizens and advisers

Cards can live in different parts of the game world.

Denizens played at sites become part of the shared landscape. Other players can potentially use or interact with them depending on control and card text.

Advisers sit beside your player board and form your personal political circle. You can normally have up to three advisers.

This means the same card can have different strategic value depending on whether it strengthens your private engine or reshapes a public site.

The six suits

Oath’s denizen cards belong to six suits:

• Order
• Hearth
• Beast
• Nomad
• Arcane
• Discord

Suit matters for Favor banks, Secrets, card powers, adviser identity and later Chronicle changes.

Because Favor is stored in suit banks rather than an unlimited supply, repeated trading and card use can make a suit temporarily rich or poor.

How Favor and Secrets differ

Favor is the game’s circulating political currency. It moves into suit banks, onto cards and between players.

Secrets are rarer and often represent deeper institutional or magical knowledge. They can be committed to cards and later returned during Rest under normal circumstances.

The two resources therefore behave differently: Favor is more fluid, while Secrets often support repeated use of powerful effects.

The People’s Favor and Darkest Secret

Oath has two special banners:

• People’s Favor — represents popular legitimacy and is tied to Favor.
• Darkest Secret — represents hidden knowledge and is tied to Secrets.

Both can matter directly for Oathkeeper and Vision conditions, and both provide additional powers while held.

Because they are visible, transferable political objects rather than abstract score markers, holding one can make you the immediate target of several opponents.

How Campaign combat works

Campaign lets the attacker declare one or more legal targets.

The defender builds a defense pool from targeted sites, warbands and other effects. The attacker rolls separately and may suffer casualties from skull results.

If the attacker wins, they can take rule of targeted sites, seize targeted relics or banners and potentially banish a pawn or burn Favor.

Battle Plans can alter the conflict dramatically, which means judging a campaign only by visible warband counts is dangerous.

What is the Oathkeeper?

The current Oath defines one public legitimacy condition.

The player who currently satisfies that condition holds the Oathkeeper title. The title can move during play when another player overtakes the holder under the relevant goal.

For Exiles, keeping that title long enough can flip it to its Usurper side and open an immediate Wake-phase victory route.

For the Empire, holding the Oathkeeper title helps the Chancellor survive until the regime can become stable.

The four possible Oaths

There are four broad Oath goals:

• Oath of Supremacy — tied to ruling the most sites.
• Oath of the People — tied to the People’s Favor.
• Oath of Protection — tied to relics and banners.
• Oath of Devotion — tied to the Darkest Secret.

The Chronicle winner determines which Oath will define the next game, so the central public victory criterion can change from one generation to the next.

How Vision victories work

Exiles can reveal special Vision cards after enough Visions have entered circulation.

The four Vision goals parallel the game’s major legitimacy conditions:

• Conquest — rule the most sites.
• Rebellion — hold the People’s Favor.
• Sanctuary — hold the most relics and banners.
• Faith — hold the Darkest Secret.

A revealed Vision announces what you are trying to do, which can immediately reorganize alliances around the table.

The four ways Oath can end

Oath does not use a standard VP race.

The official Law of Oath provides four broad ending routes:

1. Usurper Win — an Exile begins their Wake Phase as the Usurper.
2. Visionary Win — an Exile begins Wake with a revealed Vision whose goal is fulfilled.
3. Stable Regime Win — after rounds 5–7, the Empire may win on an increasingly favorable die roll if the Chancellor or a Citizen holds the Oathkeeper title.
4. War Exhaustion — the game ends automatically after round 8 and resolves the listed victory priorities.

This creates escalating pressure. The longer the Chancellor maintains legitimacy, the more likely the regime is to survive without reaching the eighth round.

How the Stable Regime roll escalates

If an Imperial player is Oathkeeper at the end of the relevant round, the game may end:

This means Exiles cannot assume they have eight full rounds to build a perfect Vision position.

How citizenship changes the game

The Chancellor can invite an Exile into the Empire through the citizenship system.

A Citizen shares imperial warbands and gains access to the protection and infrastructure of the Empire, but loses the normal freedom of an Exile.

Citizens can instead pursue Successor conditions that may let them take the win from the Chancellor if the Empire succeeds.

This is why a citizenship offer can be both alliance and trap: the Exile gains safety and power now but accepts a different route to victory.

What is a Successor victory?

If the Chancellor would win through a stable regime or at final resolution, an eligible Citizen can win instead by satisfying the Successor condition tied to the current Oath.

The exact Successor goal depends on which Oath is active.

This prevents citizenship from turning Citizens into passive helpers. They remain competitors inside the Empire and may intentionally support imperial stability while positioning themselves to inherit it.

How the Chronicle changes the next game

After a winner is determined, the table resolves the Chronicle.

The Chronicle can:

• Choose the Oath for the next game.
• Offer or remove citizenship.
• Preserve parts of the winner’s controlled map.
• Build or repair an Edifice.
• Add cards associated with the winner’s political identity to the world deck.
• Move other cards into the Dispossessed deck.
• Rebuild the world deck and map for the next generation.

The winner’s most common adviser suit helps determine which suits gain new cards, so your private tableau can literally reshape the future card pool.

Is Oath a legacy game?

Not in the usual disposable sense.

There are no required stickers, destroyed cards or irreversible component changes.

The world changes through setup and card movement, and the game can be reset to its original deck order using the official deck-order resource.

It is better described as a persistent chronicle: previous sessions influence future ones, but the system remains replayable and reversible.

Do you need the same group every game?

No.

Oath’s original campaign description explicitly states that it does not require the same play group from game to game.

Returning players benefit from knowing the table’s political history, but new players can enter a Chronicle later because the persistent state is stored in the components rather than in private character sheets or campaign records.

How solo Oath works

The base game includes an official automated opponent commonly known as the Clockwork Prince.

Buried Giant’s current Oath resources page continues to host the Clockwork Prince rules and mind map alongside the base-game Law of Oath.

The bot attempts to recreate the Chancellor’s pressure through a procedural system rather than turning Oath into a simple beat-your-score puzzle.

Solo works, but the game’s strongest feature — negotiation among humans with conflicting victory paths — is naturally reduced.

What is the best player count?

The official range is 1–6 players. BoardGameGeek community voting currently favors four players, with 3–5 broadly considered the strongest range.

At two, politics becomes more binary. At three, citizenship and alliance structures begin to become interesting. Four and five create the widest space for shifting coalitions without the full downtime of six.

Solo is supported but should be viewed as a procedural alternative rather than the definitive Oath experience.

What is Oath: New Foundations?

New Foundations is the major expansion/revision project for Oath.

Its crowdfunding campaign raised $906,263 from 10,526 backers.

Cole Wehrle’s development diaries describe it as unusually ambitious: instead of merely adding a small set of new cards, the project was allowed to revise or reprint base-game components where necessary to help Oath better realize its original design goals.

That makes New Foundations closer to a systemic expansion than a conventional “more cards and factions” add-on.

New Foundations status in October 2026

The latest public Kickstarter update is dated October 2, 2026 and titled “Freight, Fulfillment, and Videos Incoming.”

An earlier 2026 update reported that mass production had been completed.

Accordingly, this guide treats New Foundations as being in the freight/fulfillment stage rather than assuming universal retail availability.

Backers and prospective buyers should check the current campaign/support pages before relying on older estimated delivery dates.

Who supports Oath now?

Oath was originally published by Leder Games.

In January 2026, Cole Wehrle announced that Leder Games had agreed to sell ownership of Oath and Arcs to the new Buried Giant Studios.

Buried Giant now hosts Oath’s current rulebook, Playbook, Reference Sheet, Chronicle Aid, Clockwork Prince files, deck-order file and card database.

For current rules/support questions, Buried Giant is therefore the most relevant official source.

Oath vs Root

Oath vs Pax Pamir: Second Edition

Oath vs John Company: Second Edition

John Company: Second Edition is even more explicit about negotiation and promises, but it operates inside a shared historical corporation with fixed procedural phases.

Oath is more spatial and fantastical, with freer turns and multiple legitimacy conditions.

Choose John Company if you want bargaining embedded in bureaucracy; choose Oath if you want bargaining embedded in war, citizenship and changing victory conditions.

Eight strategy principles for new players

• Know the current Oath before evaluating anything else. A powerful relic engine can be strategically irrelevant if the table is racing over territory.
• Preserve Supply for decisive actions. Spending cheaply early can leave you unable to Travel or Campaign when the board finally opens.
• Track suit-bank wealth. A suit with no Favor left can cripple an otherwise attractive Trade plan.
• Use citizenship as a victory decision, not a friendship gesture. Accept only if the Successor route improves your actual winning chances.
• Do not reveal a Vision too early unless you can defend it. Revealed goals tell the entire table exactly what must be stopped.
• Remember the Stable Regime clock. After round 5, the Chancellor may not need to survive until round 8.
• Campaign only when the political prize is worth the casualties. Warbands lost today also affect tomorrow’s action economy and defense.
• Think one game ahead when possible. Winning advisers and map position can alter what the next Chronicle looks like.

Eight things to know before buying

• Oath is very heavy. BGG complexity is above 4/5.
• The rules are learnable, but the strategy is intentionally opaque at first.
• Negotiation matters. Groups that refuse to bargain can make the game feel flatter.
• There is no conventional VP track. Victory is positional and role-dependent.
• The world changes between games but can be reset.
• You do not need the same players for every session.
• Solo is official but removes much of the human political tension.
• New Foundations is currently in fulfillment-stage status. Check current availability rather than assuming it is already a normal retail expansion everywhere.

Oath FAQ

How many players?

1–6 players.

How long does it take?

BoardGameGeek lists roughly 45–150 minutes.

Who designed Oath?

Cole Wehrle, with art by Kyle Ferrin.

How many rounds?

Up to eight rounds.

What are the six major actions?

Search, Muster, Trade, Recover, Campaign and Travel.

What are the four Oaths?

Supremacy, the People, Protection and Devotion.

What are the four Visions?

Conquest, Rebellion, Sanctuary and Faith.

Is Oath a legacy game?

It has persistent Chronicle changes but does not require destroying or permanently altering components, and the official deck-order resource allows a reset.

Can you play Oath solo?

Yes. The official Clockwork Prince system is still hosted by Buried Giant.

Do you need the same group every game?

No.

What is New Foundations?

A major Oath expansion/revision project designed to deepen and revise the existing system rather than merely add a small set of cards.

Who owns/supports Oath now?

Oath was originally published by Leder Games; current ownership/support moved to Buried Giant Studios in 2026.

Sources and scope

• Buried Giant Studios: current Oath rulebook, Playbook, Chronicle Aid, Clockwork Prince, card database and support resources
• Law of Oath rules text: turn structure, six major actions, victory, citizenship, Campaign and resource rules
• Official Chronicle Aid: next-Oath choice, citizenship, persistent map cleanup, world-deck changes and reset procedure
• Leder Games: original Oath campaign description and persistent-world design
• Cole Wehrle / Leder Games: 2026 ownership transition of Oath and Arcs to Buried Giant
• Oath: New Foundations Kickstarter: $906,263, 10,526 backers and current campaign updates
• BoardGameGeek: current ratings, rank, player count, complexity and play time

Checked October 10, 2026. Oath’s support/ownership changed during 2026, so current official rule and support links use Buried Giant where appropriate. New Foundations is treated as fulfillment-stage content, not assumed retail stock. Strategy and buyer guidance are original editorial analysis; no firsthand review or playtest is claimed. Editorial policy and corrections.