As a play tester of Oathsworn, here is some added perspective on the points you've made: 1. When picking characters, abilities are good to know and understand but all characters and combinations are viable together. All combinations of full characters and companions combinations are also viable. We tested all iterations to ensure this. That said, don't feel like you need to fulfill some holy trinity or balance everything out with "the right mix" or something like that. 2. Gear diversity is a really good way to look at things. We specifically tested running groups of full plate, full leather, and full cloth. The challenge when you do this is being able to properly keep everyone geared and worse yet when you get those unique items people will naturally fight over them. This isn't to say you can't do it with everyone using the same gear type, but it just requires that you plan things out effectively since your gear will naturally break over time. 3. When doing the story side of the game you will need to balance things out less around clues and more around the time you spend in the story. Clues are important, but they aren't in half of the chapters so understanding how to manage your time is a better thing to focus on. Knowing how to process through the story to a sufficient degree that you can enter combat properly while also maximizing bonuses on your time track is really good. You can spend a lot of time in town and miss out on the extra bonuses if you do this, so just make sure you are trading those bonuses off for a good reason. 4. When determining when to sell or buy gear, my suggestion would be to keep a spare in your backpack. Remember, each character must destroy 1 item at the end of each fight. In addition to that, if your character is knocked unconscious then they destroy a 2nd piece of gear. This can be pretty rough if you don't have several back up gear items for 1-2 characters to stock up with. 5. HP is definitely your most valuable resource, which is why the harder modes start you with less HP at max haha. That being said, I would highly encourage people to also look at using the little blue shield tokens when your character would drop damage overall by 1. This can extend the life of your party significantly when you learn to use those tokens at the right time. 6. Use the cards! I know you love dice...use the cards anyway. You'll thank me later once you get the hang of stacking the odds in your favor so you can pull off that big attack or huge heal. You can reset the might decks when they get skewed out of your favor and knowing when to reset them is also important. 7. AoE, while problematic doesn't guarantee that you'll be safe by spreading out. Wave attacks and Chain Attacks are also available in boss fights and these arguably are worse than AoEs. It is probably a good bet to just assume that all bosses have AoEs, Wave attacks, and Chain Attacks so you can plan accordingly and be pleasantly surprised when you don't run into them. 8. AI changing behavior is one of the most beautiful things about combat. It's so good. 9. Planning together is crucial. You mentioned a really important one about planning to break body parts and setting that up. Here is another critical one, plan who is going to tank the enemy attack when it comes up. If you can reliably spread the damage out to the appropriate people you'll have greater odds of surviving. A good way to monitor who should tank a hit is to card count the enemy might decks - know the likelihood of a large vs small attack coming your way. The game ramps up in difficulty, so learn how to do this early on. When we were balancing the fights, we tuned them to a difficulty such that the normal group of players should have 1-2 Oathsworn die each fight. You should still be able to win, but it's not likely you'll walk away with everyone standing up - if you manage to then they probably all have like 1...maybe 2 HP if you're good.
I had the opposite reaction. Hearing this makes me begin to question why I backed this at all. I was suspicious right away when a "choice" was being offered of cards or dice, and now here's a playtester telling us that you don't really have a choice, since the game was tuned for cards, with dice as an afterthought, since it will now be too hard to have fun with unless you become a casino card counter and turn the epic boss fight into an accounting session, yet another layer of complexity I didn't want, with monster decks AND player dice decks to track. 1-2 deaths per fight, eh? So we need to be finding lots of backup gear to replace broken stuff all the time, since ko'ed players get punished doubly. I hope this isn't going to be a slog, but this info isn't sounding good.
@@steelbeard151 You certainly don't need to use any cards or plan on counting cards at all. I'm simply pointing out that cards offer that benefit vs the dice. When I did my initial testing runs I used purely dice and it was fine. My preference is the cards when I want to min-max the game. Yes, you'll need a lot of extra gear. Oathsworn was never meant to be an easy game; it just isn't meant to be a brutal experience either (on normal difficulty). You can survive the fights with everyone alive if you play smartly and roll well. This just isn't likely to be the case all the time...or even most of the time.
@@anthonynelson8397 Ok thank you, that makes me feel better. My group isn't min maxers and they'll see the gaming of the cards as cheating, so I need to know the game is doable just with the dice. We're looking for challenge, but not brutal. Too many games like this have been scrapped because even the 'tutorial' or opener was so punishing no one wanted to continue.
Hello, we are about to start playing the game for the first time and are now wondering which character to pick. So far we are Priest, Exile, Witch and now I have to pick. I am wavering between Penitent, Warden and Ursus Tank. Actually Penitent sounds cooler from the text but just because Warden seems to have a synergy with the Witch's AOE it sounds like he would be the better pick to not get shot away by the Witch's Friendly AOE. Which one of the 3 Oathsworn would be the best to pick in this group? Or better a completely different one?
Thanks for the tips, we can't wait to get started with Oathsworn! Also I see a sneaky Middara in the background, curious how you're liking it so far. It blew me away and went from a game I didn't even back, to top 5 on my list with all the expansions on the way!
Tip for the first boss from playtesting. Use the witch to place lava tokens in front of you and use the Ai movement to have the minions run into the lava
Gear diversity would have been a good tip to put in the rulebook! My group of Warden, Warbear, and Priest (and Cur) keep fighting over the heavier armors.
@@TheKingofAverage mauled by rats, doing a test game with bear full hero, witch, warden and priest as companions. Down three outsworn and 4 Allies. Think I'm going go switch to cards for my real playthrough 💀 she's still got two locations at 4 hp, just healed one up from 1.
Great thanks for the review. I’m waiting on mine. I cannot decide yet if this game will be next or if we will play stars of akarios first to change things up. We are playing chronicals of Drunagor right now. And with army painter speedpaints. They look really good.
Very easy! There's a hole where they go on the miniature you can easily glue a magnet in, and then simply remove the post on the arm, drill the hole and put in the matching magnet on there (or some metal). There's a few more advance like the Ursus two handed has an arm that then the weapon slots into so will need to add an extra magnet for that.
Hello, we are about to start playing the game for the first time and are now wondering which character to pick. So far we are Priest, Exile, Witch and now I have to pick. I am wavering between Penitent, Warden and Ursus Tank. Actually Penitent sounds cooler from the text but just because Warden seems to have a synergy with the Witch's AOE it sounds like he would be the better pick to not get shot away by the Witch's Friendly AOE. Which one of the 3 Oathsworn would be the best to pick in this group? Or better a completely different one?
Warden is indeed a very solid choice. Witch, even with a good player, can accidently lead to poor situations on the map thanks to those AOE's (or gloriously great ones) and so indeed having the Warden not make a bad situation worse, especially early on is very nice.
The armoury's nice but it's a painter's nightmare. Pity we couldn't add some extra hero bodies so we could assemble a few different versions of each hero and paint them.
The painting issue is more with the joints on certain models like the Huntress where there's a removable part of her coat tails. I'll see how it goes 'though.
What that!!!!! Even it a old video from a couple month ago!! Don't mean it not useful.... it oathsworn!!!! Get ready not to suck on my first walk-through of oathsworn... ooooaattthhsswwoòrrnn
There was a lot of hype as well over new mechanics in Bloodborne, unfortunately a disorganized manual somewhat killed it. Gladly this is not the case here - There should be a User Manual Writers Guild for standards ! (sounds like a deep roar: UMWG !) lol
Why does everyone keep saying not to use cars because you have to card count. This is unequivocally false information. You can always quickly look through the discard pile of your might cards. It's really easy to do!
Seeing the title, I thought it was highlighting how good SBG has been to thier backers and how they're an example to the boardgame industry as how to not suck at making boardgames! Hey, there's the next video for you! 😄
Don't even need to card count. Discard are open knowledge which is very nice. E: Pff. Imagine getting swarmed. My friend and I were on point for killing those rats. Would have been nasty otherwise.
As a play tester of Oathsworn, here is some added perspective on the points you've made:
1. When picking characters, abilities are good to know and understand but all characters and combinations are viable together. All combinations of full characters and companions combinations are also viable. We tested all iterations to ensure this. That said, don't feel like you need to fulfill some holy trinity or balance everything out with "the right mix" or something like that.
2. Gear diversity is a really good way to look at things. We specifically tested running groups of full plate, full leather, and full cloth. The challenge when you do this is being able to properly keep everyone geared and worse yet when you get those unique items people will naturally fight over them. This isn't to say you can't do it with everyone using the same gear type, but it just requires that you plan things out effectively since your gear will naturally break over time.
3. When doing the story side of the game you will need to balance things out less around clues and more around the time you spend in the story. Clues are important, but they aren't in half of the chapters so understanding how to manage your time is a better thing to focus on. Knowing how to process through the story to a sufficient degree that you can enter combat properly while also maximizing bonuses on your time track is really good. You can spend a lot of time in town and miss out on the extra bonuses if you do this, so just make sure you are trading those bonuses off for a good reason.
4. When determining when to sell or buy gear, my suggestion would be to keep a spare in your backpack. Remember, each character must destroy 1 item at the end of each fight. In addition to that, if your character is knocked unconscious then they destroy a 2nd piece of gear. This can be pretty rough if you don't have several back up gear items for 1-2 characters to stock up with.
5. HP is definitely your most valuable resource, which is why the harder modes start you with less HP at max haha. That being said, I would highly encourage people to also look at using the little blue shield tokens when your character would drop damage overall by 1. This can extend the life of your party significantly when you learn to use those tokens at the right time.
6. Use the cards! I know you love dice...use the cards anyway. You'll thank me later once you get the hang of stacking the odds in your favor so you can pull off that big attack or huge heal. You can reset the might decks when they get skewed out of your favor and knowing when to reset them is also important.
7. AoE, while problematic doesn't guarantee that you'll be safe by spreading out. Wave attacks and Chain Attacks are also available in boss fights and these arguably are worse than AoEs. It is probably a good bet to just assume that all bosses have AoEs, Wave attacks, and Chain Attacks so you can plan accordingly and be pleasantly surprised when you don't run into them.
8. AI changing behavior is one of the most beautiful things about combat. It's so good.
9. Planning together is crucial. You mentioned a really important one about planning to break body parts and setting that up. Here is another critical one, plan who is going to tank the enemy attack when it comes up. If you can reliably spread the damage out to the appropriate people you'll have greater odds of surviving. A good way to monitor who should tank a hit is to card count the enemy might decks - know the likelihood of a large vs small attack coming your way. The game ramps up in difficulty, so learn how to do this early on.
When we were balancing the fights, we tuned them to a difficulty such that the normal group of players should have 1-2 Oathsworn die each fight. You should still be able to win, but it's not likely you'll walk away with everyone standing up - if you manage to then they probably all have like 1...maybe 2 HP if you're good.
LOVE this thanks for sharing!
I had the opposite reaction. Hearing this makes me begin to question why I backed this at all. I was suspicious right away when a "choice" was being offered of cards or dice, and now here's a playtester telling us that you don't really have a choice, since the game was tuned for cards, with dice as an afterthought, since it will now be too hard to have fun with unless you become a casino card counter and turn the epic boss fight into an accounting session, yet another layer of complexity I didn't want, with monster decks AND player dice decks to track. 1-2 deaths per fight, eh? So we need to be finding lots of backup gear to replace broken stuff all the time, since ko'ed players get punished doubly. I hope this isn't going to be a slog, but this info isn't sounding good.
@@steelbeard151 You certainly don't need to use any cards or plan on counting cards at all. I'm simply pointing out that cards offer that benefit vs the dice. When I did my initial testing runs I used purely dice and it was fine. My preference is the cards when I want to min-max the game.
Yes, you'll need a lot of extra gear. Oathsworn was never meant to be an easy game; it just isn't meant to be a brutal experience either (on normal difficulty). You can survive the fights with everyone alive if you play smartly and roll well. This just isn't likely to be the case all the time...or even most of the time.
@@anthonynelson8397 Ok thank you, that makes me feel better. My group isn't min maxers and they'll see the gaming of the cards as cheating, so I need to know the game is doable just with the dice. We're looking for challenge, but not brutal. Too many games like this have been scrapped because even the 'tutorial' or opener was so punishing no one wanted to continue.
Hello, we are about to start playing the game for the first time and are now wondering which character to pick. So far we are Priest, Exile, Witch and now I have to pick. I am wavering between Penitent, Warden and Ursus Tank. Actually Penitent sounds cooler from the text but just because Warden seems to have a synergy with the Witch's AOE it sounds like he would be the better pick to not get shot away by the Witch's Friendly AOE. Which one of the 3 Oathsworn would be the best to pick in this group? Or better a completely different one?
I just got my copy today. Can’t wait to jump in.
Just in time for delivery tomorrow, cheers!
oooooh enjoy!
Good tips! Generally different kinds of advice from the rest of the internet, too!
Thanks for the tips, we can't wait to get started with Oathsworn! Also I see a sneaky Middara in the background, curious how you're liking it so far. It blew me away and went from a game I didn't even back, to top 5 on my list with all the expansions on the way!
Ooooh exciting! Will share some thoughts as I get further in :)
Tip for the first boss from playtesting.
Use the witch to place lava tokens in front of you and use the Ai movement to have the minions run into the lava
ooooh I've not tried that, I like it!
So Good! Thank you for the advice!
You are quite welcome - good luck!
Gear diversity would have been a good tip to put in the rulebook! My group of Warden, Warbear, and Priest (and Cur) keep fighting over the heavier armors.
hehe yeah it's not super loot heavy, AND you have to keep destroying them so it becomes a pretty finite resource for sure.
Thanks so much for the great, succinct tips video! 👍😄👍
You are quite welcome :)
Thank you for sharing. I'm a backer, but don't have a shipment confirmation yet. Hopefully it ship soon.
I'm sure it's just a matter of time :D
Got it in today, your promo card is so cool :D
If I die I want to hear how it happened!
@@TheKingofAverage mauled by rats, doing a test game with bear full hero, witch, warden and priest as companions. Down three outsworn and 4 Allies. Think I'm going go switch to cards for my real playthrough 💀 she's still got two locations at 4 hp, just healed one up from 1.
Great thanks for the review.
I’m waiting on mine.
I cannot decide yet if this game will be next or if we will play stars of akarios first to change things up.
We are playing chronicals of Drunagor right now. And with army painter speedpaints. They look really good.
"Don't forget the minions... Don't get Swarmed... They will win"
Fact
:D I have first-hand experience with that lol
Thanks for the tips King 😃. Oo Middara.
haha yeah you spotted it ;)
I see middara playmat + items on table. Thanks for tips for oathsworn
Yessir! Gota few more sessions of it before I get into Oathsworn and such :D
@@TheKingofAverage which character are u playing ?
Mine just arrived today. Wow huge sexy box!
I haven't received my copy yet. How easy would it be to magnetize the weapons?
Very easy! There's a hole where they go on the miniature you can easily glue a magnet in, and then simply remove the post on the arm, drill the hole and put in the matching magnet on there (or some metal).
There's a few more advance like the Ursus two handed has an arm that then the weapon slots into so will need to add an extra magnet for that.
Great video, Mike. Did you get my email the other day?
Yes! I've just not read it yet >.< Finally have a day off today so I will :)
Hello, we are about to start playing the game for the first time and are now wondering which character to pick. So far we are Priest, Exile, Witch and now I have to pick. I am wavering between Penitent, Warden and Ursus Tank. Actually Penitent sounds cooler from the text but just because Warden seems to have a synergy with the Witch's AOE it sounds like he would be the better pick to not get shot away by the Witch's Friendly AOE. Which one of the 3 Oathsworn would be the best to pick in this group? Or better a completely different one?
Warden is indeed a very solid choice.
Witch, even with a good player, can accidently lead to poor situations on the map thanks to those AOE's (or gloriously great ones) and so indeed having the Warden not make a bad situation worse, especially early on is very nice.
Now that you've played the officially released Oathsworn game, has your opinion on this changed when comparing it to the upcoming Primal?
What drives me crazy is that, sometimes, the game goes directly against the clues you obtain. Makes it hard to feel rewarded for paying attention.
So hyped for this experience, got the standee add on set so I can play and learn while still painting. Just waiting on the shipping notification.
oh that's a smart move!
The armoury's nice but it's a painter's nightmare. Pity we couldn't add some extra hero bodies so we could assemble a few different versions of each hero and paint them.
eh doesn't seem so bad to paint. I like this more than the armor sprues for KDM actually, a nice kind of middle ground for customization versus price.
That being said, it'd be a nice add-on!
The painting issue is more with the joints on certain models like the Huntress where there's a removable part of her coat tails. I'll see how it goes 'though.
What that!!!!! Even it a old video from a couple month ago!! Don't mean it not useful.... it oathsworn!!!! Get ready not to suck on my first walk-through of oathsworn... ooooaattthhsswwoòrrnn
There was a lot of hype as well over new mechanics in Bloodborne, unfortunately a disorganized manual somewhat killed it. Gladly this is not the case here - There should be a User Manual Writers Guild for standards ! (sounds like a deep roar: UMWG !) lol
Why does everyone keep saying not to use cars because you have to card count. This is unequivocally false information. You can always quickly look through the discard pile of your might cards. It's really easy to do!
Seeing the title, I thought it was highlighting how good SBG has been to thier backers and how they're an example to the boardgame industry as how to not suck at making boardgames! Hey, there's the next video for you! 😄
oh yeah I can see that!
Don't even need to card count. Discard are open knowledge which is very nice.
E: Pff. Imagine getting swarmed. My friend and I were on point for killing those rats. Would have been nasty otherwise.
It gets VERY nasty with them ignored :D
Blah blah MIDDARA! blah blah :) Awesome - we are 20 sessions in!
hah! :D
These are way too many spoilers!!! Ha, ha, ha! Can´t watch but will leave a like, still waiting for mine.
Hmm, don't believe I spoiled anything here :) Sorry if I did!
@@TheKingofAverage Just kidding, won´t watch anything from Oathsworn until I get mine LOL!