I finally got Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile to the table in circumstances unintended. I had planned the first game to be a three player game to get the main players in my group up to speed with what has turned out to be my favourite game of the year so far. Yet, with Covid app pings encircling me, I had to isolate, cancelling those plans.
And so, my first games of Oath were against the Clockwork Prince – an AI with a spaghetti junction of a flowchart of intention. In a very simple ‘do this, if that’ pathway through the flowchart, players can get the approximation of a strong(ish) player (infinitely better as chancellor) to play against. This isn’t the best way to play Oath, and the Clockwork Prince is really no replacement for the joy of this impossibly enjoyable semi-abstract sort-of-wargame with other human beings.