This is the first time I'd heard of Oathsworn, and I decided to check out BGG and other places about it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is a miniatures-filled game that has been consistently highly rated *after* it's release by hundreds of people. Most of the time such high ratings just come from people being overhyped on Kickstarters and rating a 10 pre-emptively, or rating a 10 to "counter" the people rating a 1 pre-emptively (who are doing it mostly to counter those rating a 10 pre-emptively--a vicious circle and why I usually ignore 1 and 10 ratings). Seeing so many people speak highly of Oathsworn has me curious, excited and tempted. I won't though. I have barely dug into Gloomhaven and Mansions of Madness, and there are other mini-filled games that I've already played and love that I want my own copy of. ...also I have gotten into the habit of watching TH-cam videos at x1.5 or even x2 speed and this is probably the only channel that I never do that with. I tried it out on this video, but it was too fast. Hilarious though. :')
Following my "dont buy it" advice, if you still want to dig into those games, probably hold off on this one as its another serious time commitment. Even though i rate it, its still a lot of time and stuff
A couple of things. First, i tried a weird "matrix pan shot" of the boss fight with about 40 static photos, it didn't quite work but i left it in anyway. Secondly, i played up to game 5 solo and game 3 with a full group, so have not finished the campaign, played enough to get a good feel for it though. Thirdly, try to keep spoilers to a minimum in the comments, i mentioned the chapter 3 thing being awesome, it is, but folks should find out for themselves why thats such a cool chapter, and finally, YES, i appreciate the irony of posting a love letter to a 4 box game a month after my "dont buy it" video, i was all primed to look down on this game and if anything, the sheer size of it acted as a bias against it to start with, but it won me over and its the most fun i've had playing a new game this year with the possible exception of Unsettled. Which also has really good writing. I really didn't want to like this game, and yet, here we are. Oh, and yes, gold medal game. It pops up on the screen but i thought the chocolate cake line was funnier
Oh, and its going on kickstarter for a rerun a few days after this vid goes live. www.kickstarter.com/projects/shadowborne-games/oathsworn-into-the-deepwood-second-printing?ref=clipboard-prelaunch
Re. the irony, I understood from your "don't buy it" video that a person shouldn't let predatory marketing and fomo steer their purchases. It doesn't make much sense to continue collecting tens/hundreds of games that barely (if ever) get played. On the other hand, I think it makes perfect sense to have a huge game if it gets to the table and is fully appreciated. As far as time played-money spent value is concerned, Gloomhaven is one of the cheapest games I own. That said, Oathsworn looks great, but not one I'll be getting. I don't think I'll be able to fully appreciate it. Thanks for the review. :)
A very level headed comment James, much appreciated. Oddly enough, following another rule in my "dont buy it vid", i have gifted the game to one of my players who paints models with far higher frequency than i do. We game at his every 2nd week, so will continue to play the campaign there.
@@3MBG would you say the mini version and the terrain box added significantly to your immersion and enjoyment of the game? or would a standee version work just as well?
When the boss fight is a surprise until you open the box and play, you would then always play with unpainted minis. Sounds like it is taking away some of the fun.
Can confirm that chapter 3 is very, very fun. Overall I found the fiddle factor too high on this one and the gameplay never really felt like more than the sum of its parts (it lacks the surprise and obfuscation of each card flip in Gloomhaven for example; something I didn't realise added so much to the experience). The open information between players made it a little too easy / clinical. The writing is really excellent, though I'd probably prefer to just read a book for story. Taken as a whole it gave me the feeling of a D&D GM who was determined to tell a story and the players happened to be there to see it through, rather than the players telling a story set in the world/scene the GM established. I don't remember Chapter 9's boss last month let alone how we killed it, but I do remember that time my friend's cultist-obsessed Tinkerer blew up half the group going after the last cultist. Etc. That all said, I'm clearly in the minority with these views and it's awesome to hear how much fun people are having with it. And my god is there a lot of it to play through and enjoy! It's deeply impressive that a game of such scope, executed to an extremely high level, has come from a first-time publisher.
Yea, I think this one is a good game, but a tad overrated. I also think the art is a little trite and contrived. going to pass, I already have Frosthaven coming.
Ranking is a clumsy tool, as they all do different things. I've played gloomhaven by far the most of them, and its core card system is really neat. It's weak spot is the writing is pretty weak and some of the scenarios don't seem that well thought out or fun. Tainted Grail, has good and interesting writing, but i find the core systems a bit naff. I feel like playing that one almost purely as a narrative game and not caring for the gameplay much Oathsworn is somewhere in between. It's combat systems aren't as clever and interesting as gloomhavens, they are fine and enjoyable, but the card play isn't close to as interesting. But its writing is excellent and the narrative strong enough to make me play it just for the story. But when you get to a fight, unlike tainted grail, im still keen.
Sounds like I'd dig this game. Why is that? *begins referencing Gloomhaven* Ah.. now it all makes sense. My game of choice: difficult to teach but the solo mode means I don't really need to.
My only two complaints about the game so far: I wish there was a way to scale the difficulty with only 3 people using 3 characters only. I also wish the monster(s) used Hex aligned bases instead of round. Everything else is fantastic. The battleflow system took some getting used to in the beginning since it doesn't have any innate(passive) cool down/cycle for battleflow, but once you understand the flow and how/when abilities can be used it feels a lot more natural.
For whatever reason this doesn't get me overly excited. What did excite me was finding a copy of Vlaada Chvatil's "Prophecy" at a used book store last week. The box had a couple of dings but the cards hadn't even been opened yet. It's an older game that I understand has it's problems yet I find that it holds a certain charm. Maybe I'm just getting old?
Like [Townsfolk Tussle] or [Aeon Tresspass: Odyssey] this is one of those Boss Battler games that came in the waterway of [Kingdom Death: Monster]. Since I own KD:M already - have limited shelf space and very much dislike Legacy Games Which I assume is a mechanism of Oathsworn - this wouldn't be a game I'd add to my collection. Btw, I'd love to see a 3-Minute-Board-Games review of yours of [Kingdom Death: Monster], if that would be possible in the future, as I am really interested in your opinion about that particular - ehm - Boutique Luxury Board Game (with its boutique luxury price range). Keep up the good work. Cheers!
I've had a look at a copy of KDM and it really didn't grab me at all. the rules seemed overwrought, the campaign very "mess up once and restart" and the miniatures were some of the fuggliests attempts at edgelordness I've ever seen. Like, clearly the guy who designed them is really scared of vaginas, boobs and babies. I have no plans to cover it due to an overall lack of interest from me combined with the work it would take to make the video.
@@3MBG Thank you for your honest opinion on this. It's appreciated. 🙂 I myself can relate to that (partially), in that I find the more "explicitly" detailed miniatures borderline pretentious, though one can't deny a very archaic antedulivian feel to them (hence them fitting into the setting) - or them being simply just excessive BERSERK-weebism. Nevertheless, the range of the games' expansions is wide enough to skip the ones that are "bathed" in human sexual organs (of which the dreadful "Wet Nurse" is none) , and to go for more conservative ones without these features, and still have a reasonably broad choice of variation - what I did, for basically the same reasons you stated. Also, none of the coreboxes' miniatures express any of these infamous design characteristics, mind. What I, myself, am more offended about, is the designers penchant for bodily excretions (mildly said: "forced childish gross-outs") and his downright Nihilism, which I find very demotivating for the players to deal with - at least whenever Poots is writing a campaign himself. ;-) Ruleswise the game reminds one very much of the Firaxis-XCOM-series - which I have seen you like quite a bit. 😌It has a particularly nicely thought-out and fitting Monster A.I. going on, the random settlement, hunt and scripted story events deliver quite some nice challenge (or annoyance) to the players (and one can mitigate the danger of random catastrophies popping up reasonably fine), the gear puzzle and tech progression leaves open some ways for experimentation. While a strain of bad dice roles and events _can_ kill off your early campaign pretty fast, there is room for enduring damage to your tribe, a recovery manageable from a couple of blows and still a good possibility to make it to the middle or end game properly. The RPG bureaucracy with tables, pen and paper though, is nevertheless quite a cumbersome old fashioned feature to deal with, and will put off quite a bit of players. Same goes with the price. And their editing needs a lot of supervision, I find. However, you can squeeze out quite some entertaining hours (100 hrs is the average) out of this game once you make it past... Lantern-Year 6, or so... before expanding, which is pretty good for any Core game these days, I find. That said, while I got this game with a collectors' intention in mind during the last KS (with a proper discount), given its' aforemented stylistic drawbacks and the designers very narcissistic attitude on running his campaign, it wouldn't find a way into my collection anymore, if I'd had to buy it nowadays (or any item of his company beyond that). And I do comprehend the motions of people being repelled from trying to play it, all right. 😏Again, that's just my thoughts on that semi-related off-topic item. As always, thank you for your time spent, and keep up the good work, Jarrod! 👋😎 Cheers
I remember pointing out in your earlier video about how ridiculous this game is. It is the epitome of 'you don't need this. No seriously'. Yet it holds its ground. On a mass consensus it is a brilliant game. I'm definitely backing it when it comes back on KS. I still don't think people 'need' to have it. It's a lot. There are serious criticisms like the minis are questionable in quality according to some, just check Dice Tower's review. The Terrain is unnecessary and awful looking. Do you really need to swap the weapons on the minis? It is definitely neat but overdone. You gotta hand it to the developers: the mechanics look and play so well. Oathsworn is so conflicting and as it continues to take over BGG ranking, any criticism of it will get squashed. It might be the next just owning it will grant you opulence and smug points status that KDM has. At least it delivers a great experience, unlike some other big investment games. I'm looking at you Bardsung and Etherfields rotting on my shelf. Oct 18 I'll be going you in the Deep wood my friend.
Ha, yeah, not a huge fan of the terrain but my group loves it. And we did swap weapons around, which was silly fun. I think the digs at the mini quality are frankly bizarre though. They are fine, im not sure what people at the dice tower expect, but the DT isn't known for having a consistent viewpoint anyway.
@@machstrange7872 Yeah it's the same artist, her name is Francesca Baerald. She's super talented, I'd recommend checking her website out, some great stuff on there.
*don't consider Tainted Grail. Imo Tainted Grail just has a really bad game design. The game is badly balanced and is basically a solo game with a 2 player option. Trust me, you don't want to play tainted grail with more than 2 players.
Finished the first original campaign as part of 3 player group. Had lots of fun, though the "survival" mechanics got old after a time and closer to the end we were mostly interested in seeing the story unravel, as it was quite unique and interesting.
Just play a computer RPG. As much as I love board games I will never understand this genre. Who wants to keep track of all of that information and moving parts by hand?
My point is its a lot less work than it looks with 4 people playing and keeping track of stuff. But also, actually sharing space with other humans and not playing games online is also a plus. My friends live close by though.
I work at a screen for 10 hours a day, not to mention the sun damage to my eyes from living at the beach all throughout my youth. At the end of the day, when it’s all said and done the last thing I need is MORE screen time. Not including the 3 hours on my phone each day.
I love the kind of review that quickly let's me know whether or not a,game is or isn't for me.
Cheers!
“Four metric Gloomhavens” 😂
This is the first time I'd heard of Oathsworn, and I decided to check out BGG and other places about it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is a miniatures-filled game that has been consistently highly rated *after* it's release by hundreds of people. Most of the time such high ratings just come from people being overhyped on Kickstarters and rating a 10 pre-emptively, or rating a 10 to "counter" the people rating a 1 pre-emptively (who are doing it mostly to counter those rating a 10 pre-emptively--a vicious circle and why I usually ignore 1 and 10 ratings).
Seeing so many people speak highly of Oathsworn has me curious, excited and tempted. I won't though. I have barely dug into Gloomhaven and Mansions of Madness, and there are other mini-filled games that I've already played and love that I want my own copy of.
...also I have gotten into the habit of watching TH-cam videos at x1.5 or even x2 speed and this is probably the only channel that I never do that with. I tried it out on this video, but it was too fast. Hilarious though. :')
Following my "dont buy it" advice, if you still want to dig into those games, probably hold off on this one as its another serious time commitment. Even though i rate it, its still a lot of time and stuff
Excellent description. My favorite for the year and one of my overall favs.
I've finished ch16 today, still very happy with the story and the encounters.
This game is actually pretty effing good
Definitely a must play
A couple of things. First, i tried a weird "matrix pan shot" of the boss fight with about 40 static photos, it didn't quite work but i left it in anyway. Secondly, i played up to game 5 solo and game 3 with a full group, so have not finished the campaign, played enough to get a good feel for it though. Thirdly, try to keep spoilers to a minimum in the comments, i mentioned the chapter 3 thing being awesome, it is, but folks should find out for themselves why thats such a cool chapter, and finally, YES, i appreciate the irony of posting a love letter to a 4 box game a month after my "dont buy it" video, i was all primed to look down on this game and if anything, the sheer size of it acted as a bias against it to start with, but it won me over and its the most fun i've had playing a new game this year with the possible exception of Unsettled. Which also has really good writing. I really didn't want to like this game, and yet, here we are.
Oh, and yes, gold medal game. It pops up on the screen but i thought the chocolate cake line was funnier
Oh, and its going on kickstarter for a rerun a few days after this vid goes live. www.kickstarter.com/projects/shadowborne-games/oathsworn-into-the-deepwood-second-printing?ref=clipboard-prelaunch
Gold medal? Chocolate cake? Clearly I need to watch this again after I've slept.
Re. the irony, I understood from your "don't buy it" video that a person shouldn't let predatory marketing and fomo steer their purchases. It doesn't make much sense to continue collecting tens/hundreds of games that barely (if ever) get played. On the other hand, I think it makes perfect sense to have a huge game if it gets to the table and is fully appreciated. As far as time played-money spent value is concerned, Gloomhaven is one of the cheapest games I own.
That said, Oathsworn looks great, but not one I'll be getting. I don't think I'll be able to fully appreciate it. Thanks for the review. :)
A very level headed comment James, much appreciated. Oddly enough, following another rule in my "dont buy it vid", i have gifted the game to one of my players who paints models with far higher frequency than i do. We game at his every 2nd week, so will continue to play the campaign there.
@@3MBG would you say the mini version and the terrain box added significantly to your immersion and enjoyment of the game? or would a standee version work just as well?
Damn, now I'm going to have to seriously consider backing the re-print...
Oh heeey this looks like my absolute jam. Thanks for covering this one
Oh god the ones on eBay are £500 arg.
New kickstarter for it in a few days time. Screw the scalpers
@@3MBG oh hey good shout, thanks!
Yeah, main reason this vid is out right now is to catch the 2nd campaign interest. I hope all those scalpers sets go onsold as well.
YOU ARE AWESOME! ❤❤❤
"Where you beat the boss or get eaten." Doesn't sound like there's much room for interpretation on the scenario resolution, huh?
To be fair, some of the bosses will probably not eat you to start with, they may just lay eggs in your chest. Yeah, it's grim.
Looks and sounds great, we just have too many games at this time, So will have to wait until we pass a few on and play a few more.
Fair call, this one is a serious time and space commitment as well
Can't wait for this to hit retail !
Not sure if this ever will hit retail. I think your best shot is going for the 2nd kickstarter.
When the boss fight is a surprise until you open the box and play, you would then always play with unpainted minis. Sounds like it is taking away some of the fun.
Only the painter needs to see them before hand.
One of these days I'll find time to get it to the table. 😢
Can confirm that chapter 3 is very, very fun.
Overall I found the fiddle factor too high on this one and the gameplay never really felt like more than the sum of its parts (it lacks the surprise and obfuscation of each card flip in Gloomhaven for example; something I didn't realise added so much to the experience). The open information between players made it a little too easy / clinical. The writing is really excellent, though I'd probably prefer to just read a book for story. Taken as a whole it gave me the feeling of a D&D GM who was determined to tell a story and the players happened to be there to see it through, rather than the players telling a story set in the world/scene the GM established. I don't remember Chapter 9's boss last month let alone how we killed it, but I do remember that time my friend's cultist-obsessed Tinkerer blew up half the group going after the last cultist. Etc.
That all said, I'm clearly in the minority with these views and it's awesome to hear how much fun people are having with it. And my god is there a lot of it to play through and enjoy! It's deeply impressive that a game of such scope, executed to an extremely high level, has come from a first-time publisher.
I can totally get where you are coming from though.
Yea, I think this one is a good game, but a tad overrated. I also think the art is a little trite and contrived. going to pass, I already have Frosthaven coming.
How would you rank Oathsworn, Tainted Grail and Gloomhaven?
Ranking is a clumsy tool, as they all do different things. I've played gloomhaven by far the most of them, and its core card system is really neat. It's weak spot is the writing is pretty weak and some of the scenarios don't seem that well thought out or fun. Tainted Grail, has good and interesting writing, but i find the core systems a bit naff. I feel like playing that one almost purely as a narrative game and not caring for the gameplay much
Oathsworn is somewhere in between. It's combat systems aren't as clever and interesting as gloomhavens, they are fine and enjoyable, but the card play isn't close to as interesting. But its writing is excellent and the narrative strong enough to make me play it just for the story. But when you get to a fight, unlike tainted grail, im still keen.
I like the matrix 360!!!
Cheers. It didn't work out perfectly as i was doing it all manually, but i thought it would be a fun thing to try out.
Thanks
Sounds like I'd dig this game. Why is that? *begins referencing Gloomhaven* Ah.. now it all makes sense.
My game of choice: difficult to teach but the solo mode means I don't really need to.
How do you know how big or small your boardgame is? You measure it in metric Gloomhavens. Pandemic? 1 centigloomhaven.
Ha! And yes, i think Pandemic is about 1 centigloomhaven.
My only two complaints about the game so far: I wish there was a way to scale the difficulty with only 3 people using 3 characters only. I also wish the monster(s) used Hex aligned bases instead of round. Everything else is fantastic. The battleflow system took some getting used to in the beginning since it doesn't have any innate(passive) cool down/cycle for battleflow, but once you understand the flow and how/when abilities can be used it feels a lot more natural.
Oathsworn or Frosthaven for game of the year?
I haven't played frosthaven yet, so no idea.
My current front runners are Unsettled, Roll Camera and Oathsworrn though
For whatever reason this doesn't get me overly excited. What did excite me was finding a copy of Vlaada Chvatil's "Prophecy" at a used book store last week. The box had a couple of dings but the cards hadn't even been opened yet. It's an older game that I understand has it's problems yet I find that it holds a certain charm. Maybe I'm just getting old?
All you ready need for this game is the core box.
100% true. Which is why i said "if you get all the stuff its 4 gloomhavens", one does not need all of it.
Like [Townsfolk Tussle] or [Aeon Tresspass: Odyssey] this is one of those Boss Battler games that came in the waterway of [Kingdom Death: Monster]. Since I own KD:M already - have limited shelf space and very much dislike Legacy Games Which I assume is a mechanism of Oathsworn - this wouldn't be a game I'd add to my collection.
Btw, I'd love to see a 3-Minute-Board-Games review of yours of [Kingdom Death: Monster], if that would be possible in the future, as I am really interested in your opinion about that particular - ehm - Boutique Luxury Board Game (with its boutique luxury price range). Keep up the good work. Cheers!
I've had a look at a copy of KDM and it really didn't grab me at all. the rules seemed overwrought, the campaign very "mess up once and restart" and the miniatures were some of the fuggliests attempts at edgelordness I've ever seen. Like, clearly the guy who designed them is really scared of vaginas, boobs and babies. I have no plans to cover it due to an overall lack of interest from me combined with the work it would take to make the video.
@@3MBG Thank you for your honest opinion on this. It's appreciated. 🙂 I myself can relate to that (partially), in that I find the more "explicitly" detailed miniatures borderline pretentious, though one can't deny a very archaic antedulivian feel to them (hence them fitting into the setting) - or them being simply just excessive BERSERK-weebism. Nevertheless, the range of the games' expansions is wide enough to skip the ones that are "bathed" in human sexual organs (of which the dreadful "Wet Nurse" is none) , and to go for more conservative ones without these features, and still have a reasonably broad choice of variation - what I did, for basically the same reasons you stated. Also, none of the coreboxes' miniatures express any of these infamous design characteristics, mind. What I, myself, am more offended about, is the designers penchant for bodily excretions (mildly said: "forced childish gross-outs") and his downright Nihilism, which I find very demotivating for the players to deal with - at least whenever Poots is writing a campaign himself. ;-) Ruleswise the game reminds one very much of the Firaxis-XCOM-series - which I have seen you like quite a bit. 😌It has a particularly nicely thought-out and fitting Monster A.I. going on, the random settlement, hunt and scripted story events deliver quite some nice challenge (or annoyance) to the players (and one can mitigate the danger of random catastrophies popping up reasonably fine), the gear puzzle and tech progression leaves open some ways for experimentation. While a strain of bad dice roles and events _can_ kill off your early campaign pretty fast, there is room for enduring damage to your tribe, a recovery manageable from a couple of blows and still a good possibility to make it to the middle or end game properly. The RPG bureaucracy with tables, pen and paper though, is nevertheless quite a cumbersome old fashioned feature to deal with, and will put off quite a bit of players. Same goes with the price. And their editing needs a lot of supervision, I find. However, you can squeeze out quite some entertaining hours (100 hrs is the average) out of this game once you make it past... Lantern-Year 6, or so... before expanding, which is pretty good for any Core game these days, I find. That said, while I got this game with a collectors' intention in mind during the last KS (with a proper discount), given its' aforemented stylistic drawbacks and the designers very narcissistic attitude on running his campaign, it wouldn't find a way into my collection anymore, if I'd had to buy it nowadays (or any item of his company beyond that). And I do comprehend the motions of people being repelled from trying to play it, all right. 😏Again, that's just my thoughts on that semi-related off-topic item. As always, thank you for your time spent, and keep up the good work, Jarrod! 👋😎 Cheers
I remember pointing out in your earlier video about how ridiculous this game is. It is the epitome of 'you don't need this. No seriously'. Yet it holds its ground. On a mass consensus it is a brilliant game. I'm definitely backing it when it comes back on KS. I still don't think people 'need' to have it. It's a lot. There are serious criticisms like the minis are questionable in quality according to some, just check Dice Tower's review. The Terrain is unnecessary and awful looking. Do you really need to swap the weapons on the minis? It is definitely neat but overdone. You gotta hand it to the developers: the mechanics look and play so well. Oathsworn is so conflicting and as it continues to take over BGG ranking, any criticism of it will get squashed. It might be the next just owning it will grant you opulence and smug points status that KDM has. At least it delivers a great experience, unlike some other big investment games. I'm looking at you Bardsung and Etherfields rotting on my shelf. Oct 18 I'll be going you in the Deep wood my friend.
Ha, yeah, not a huge fan of the terrain but my group loves it. And we did swap weapons around, which was silly fun. I think the digs at the mini quality are frankly bizarre though. They are fine, im not sure what people at the dice tower expect, but the DT isn't known for having a consistent viewpoint anyway.
The map looks awfully familiar with the map of Gloomhaven
Functionally quite different, and that's only map 1
@@3MBG Yup I dont mean that as a bad thing. I'm just wondering if they have the same artist.
@@machstrange7872 Yeah it's the same artist, her name is Francesca Baerald. She's super talented, I'd recommend checking her website out, some great stuff on there.
I do like decadent chocolate though….
Medium play time? With 3 players we are averaging 3-4 hours per chapter.
Interesting, we were doing 90-120 mins. Which is the upper end of my medium bracket
@@3MBG I guess my party is the exception lolz - we are just WAY too methodical.
*don't consider Tainted Grail.
Imo Tainted Grail just has a really bad game design. The game is badly balanced and is basically a solo game with a 2 player option. Trust me, you don't want to play tainted grail with more than 2 players.
See my other comment where someone asked me to rank the games. But yeah
Does this opinion reflect the changes the did in the current kickstarter ?
Finished the first original campaign as part of 3 player group. Had lots of fun, though the "survival" mechanics got old after a time and closer to the end we were mostly interested in seeing the story unravel, as it was quite unique and interesting.
Just play a computer RPG. As much as I love board games I will never understand this genre. Who wants to keep track of all of that information and moving parts by hand?
People with friends?
@@3MBG Online games? :)
My point is its a lot less work than it looks with 4 people playing and keeping track of stuff. But also, actually sharing space with other humans and not playing games online is also a plus. My friends live close by though.
I work at a screen for 10 hours a day, not to mention the sun damage to my eyes from living at the beach all throughout my youth. At the end of the day, when it’s all said and done the last thing I need is MORE screen time. Not including the 3 hours on my phone each day.
Me! Please shut up!