Stepping Into Oathsworn for a Lesson in Campaigns
Experience a chapter-based campaign as a band of determined fighters in the dark and mysterious world of Oathsworn.
It was a few years ago that I found myself in possession of a copy of Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood. The system always intrigued me, and I never found the time to learn it. Well, no longer! Despite this being a heavy box, I managed to maneuver it single-handedly to my solo table so I could dig in. To the first chapter and town for a world of adventures!
Spoiler Alert
This post includes major spoilers for the chapter 1 story and encounter. These are pretty well-known at this point, and serve more as an introduction to the game world and system. I also touch on the overall campaign in very vague terms. If you prefer to keep everything entirely secret and a surprise, best to skip this post until you’ve had a chance to play!
Game Overview
Game Name: Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood
Publication Year: 2022
Designer: Jamie Jolly
Artists: F. Baerald, V. Buchyk, S. Jackson, D. Lu, & D. Lu
Publisher: Shadowborne Games
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game (Cooperative)
Across paragraph-based chapters and larger boss encounters, a party of adventurers goes deeper into a story filled with mystery. There are interesting ways to play that can help reduce the overhead of managing 4 characters. There is a lot to understand and quite a time commitment!
First Play
September 13, 2026
Complexity
3
Latest Play
September 19, 2026
Expansions
0
Setup Time
15 Minutes
Lifetime Plays
2
Play Time
1 Hour
High Score
N/A
Game Area
48" x 32"
Low Score
N/A
Setting Up a Party
Every campaign requires 4 characters, but this is handled in a neat way! Each one can either be a full character, or a companion. The latter is a much more simplified version.
I decided to keep things as easy as possible with everyone in companion mode. Not that I was locked in: Swapping between these modes and characters is easy enough to do!
The rules didn’t seem to be all that complex, although there were a lot of components to prepare and lay out.
But I was excited to get started! The fact that the world was dark didn’t quite sink in until I started to read the story.
A Sassy Party
One of my biggest issues was with the miniatures. I understand making it easy to swap out limbs, but half of my characters fell apart at the slightest touch… Or even breath!
To represent my party on the story map, I chose a meeple that hasn’t made it to my table in awhile. Pretty sure an extra dose of sass is absolutely required to survive here. Ha!
I was intrigued by the setting, although the details were pretty unfortunate from the start. Quite a dark world.
That’s not to say I couldn’t like this setting: I often try out new games, and I can often discover a hopeful perspective.
Broodmother Attack!
Most chapters, from what I understand, culminate with the start of an encounter in a giant boss battle. This was a neat way to split up the action, although the story felt extra long.
Luckily, there is the option to use instant action to distill the story into about a page and then move onto the encounter.
While I appreciated this, it almost felt like there wasn’t a good middle ground… A chapter could either be very short, or possibly extremely wordy with all of the entries.
And hope… There wasn’t any. This is definitely a dark and depressing setting! Still, I moved onto the first encounter.
Making Use of Abilities
Rather than managing cards for everyone, the companion mode gave me just a handful of actions to use for each of the characters in play. I liked it at first as I made cool choices!
Oh, but the rules. They seemed easy on the surface, yet I ran into so many edge cases right away. With the standees, I had a circular base that needed to translate into a hex diagram.
Which way was the broodmother facing? I could almost see it working out, yet I struggled to find the rhythm of play.
The encounter is billed as taking 2-3 hours. This first one was about half as long for me, but still felt like it dragged on.
The Struggles of Getting Into a Campaign Game
With a lot of the larger box campaign games, I find myself feeling hemmed in by a specific storyline with lots and lots of rules to remember. Calculate this value, remember how to play cards, and keep track of lots of details. I know that all reflects back on myself and my preferences. It’s just interesting how much I struggle with larger campaigns these days.
The time commitment can be a lot, and as I’ve seen with my solo RPGs, I dislike having this looming requirement to come back to play. So maybe campaign board games aren’t quite the right fit. I still enjoy some, though, and think the other element that didn’t work out well here is the dark and grim atmosphere. Some later chapters felt quite unsettling, too.
I’m fortunate in that I picked up this copy at no cost, which I’m very thankful and grateful for! My husband is interested in trying out the first chapter together at some point, and then I plan to pass this along to someone else. There are definitely positive aspects to it, and I wanted to like it much more than I did. But maybe I simply need to be realistic about campaigns!
It’s Just a Flesh Wound
Possibly my favorite part of the encounter was the failure of the miniatures to stay together. I kept laughing as arms fell off each time I moved some of the characters around. Ha ha!
Literally… “It’s just a flesh wound!” However, I wasn’t really enjoying the battle. The different stages were neat and I saw some fun challenges, yet there was a lot of frustration.
It was neat to be able to choose between drawing cards or rolling dice, but the dice turned out to be easier very quickly.
When the battle was over, I was more relieved than anything. So many rules questions, and only in chapter 1.
Encroaching Darkness
Perhaps it’s obvious enough that this game didn’t work for me. I’ll put that on myself: I was interested in it a few years ago and let it languish on my shelf for way too long!
Setting aside my issues with the components and rules, the main thing missing was that sense of hope. Everything was dark and dismal, with no hope for the characters.
I went ahead and read through most of the other chapters and encounters. That all would have crushed me as a player.
There’s a neat campaign system that is likely going to be great for the right person. I got to try it out, and onward I go!
Session Overview
Play Number: 1 & 2
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game (Cooperative)
Play Details: Chapter 1 Story & Encounter
Outcome: 2 Wins
So much table space! It didn’t feel like there was an excessive amount of tokens and cards, yet it all spread out in a way that made setup a bit of work. I can only imagine what it would be like to clean this up and set it up again for other chapters regularly. Although it didn’t work out, I still enjoyed some of the glimmers of greatness and learned lessons about dark settings and limbless miniatures!
%
1 Play
Affordability
Price & Value
5
Functionality
Challenges & Mechanics
7
Originality
Design & Theme
7
Quality
Components & Rules
6
Reusability
Achievement & Enjoyment
5
Variability
Distinctness & Randomness
4
+ Pros (Positives)
- Characters can be set up in a couple of different ways to tailor how in-depth card play is during the encounters.
- The writing is very descriptive and draws players into the world with little bits of lore and clues to a greater mystery.
- Chapter stories may be enjoyed in paragraph format, or skipped over with the optional instant action mode.
- Unlocking content and opening mystery envelopes is quite fun with the new aspects to uncover and experience.
- Exploring a map during the story portion is a great time, and the time track helps keep everything moving along.
- Although the miniatures look amazing, the standee version offers a full experience with much less required space.
– Cons (Negatives)
- The character miniatures are rather disappointing with limbs that fall off far too easily, leading to frustrating moves.
- Despite fairly short rulebooks, a lot of elements of encounters aren’t very clear and there are a lot of edge cases.
- There are a fair amount of components and other aspects to keep track of, both in the story and encounter sections.
- Setup and cleanup utilize a nice save feature, yet a lot of work is required if the campaign isn’t finished all at once.
Victory Conditions
Complete the Story or Encounter
- Overall Goal Progress 100%
Goals and Milestones
Complete the chapter 1 story.
Complete the chapter 1 encounter.
Continue the Conversation
What do you enjoy about Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood? Have you completed the campaign once, or even multiple times? The obvious lesson here is that I’m not in the target audience, so I don’t want to harp on the negatives too much! I had hoped to find something more enjoyable, yet I felt rather frustrated most of the time. No worries: Onto something else!
0 Comments