Alright, y’all knew it was coming. I just can’t help myself. We are seventeen games into our Oath Chronicle. SEVENTEEN. How did that happen?? (It’s a game that draws you back to it, that’s how). It seemed like a good time to get into the stats of the game and take a deeper dive into what was happening in the game.
Is this an unbiased sample? Absolutely not. There are two players that have been in every game while multiple others joined. We’ve had new players and players who started playing while the game was still being playtested. There is definitely a meta within our group but I was surprised because the data actually showed me something different then I was expecting. So let’s get into it!
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Welcome to the Empire
One of the things I was curious about was the site locations. In Oath, the sites ruled by the winning player will carry over into the next game – so it seemed worth looking at. I mainly was curious if we had a favorite site.
I consider the top most site in the Cradle to be the capital city. (Not sure if that’s the official name but I do know it is the Center of the Empire). During our campaign, the Shrouded Wood has the longest tenure. That was an Empire that lasted centuries.
The revealed sites at the beginning of the game are those that are carried over from the previous game (generally). I will say, I was surprised that the Standing Stones were extremely popular while never once being a capital city.
The Random sites are just those that were put face down into the game. I will say the Tribunal and the Wastes really want to stay in the game. But only the wastes was successful at sticking around once.
Looking at how much each site was used over the course of the Chronicle, I was surprised to see a fair even distribution. While some sites were a little more favored than others, the sites showed up a relatively similar amount of times to each other.
Changes in the World Deck
The composition of the world deck is what I find most interesting. I think it’s funny that each time we see a suit spike, or grow, within the world deck – someone does they’re best to destroy that suit. Unfortunately, the most suppressed suit (hearth) is only just coming back to life.
Exiles or Citizens?
I’m not sure if this information is interesting or not but I wanted to include it. The charts to the left show the make up of Exiles and Citizens among the players and the beginning of each game as well as at the end of the game.
Game 4 is actually marked as Game 1 because of some missing information. But I love what Game 2 (Actually 5) shows. We started the game with 66% of the table being citizens and by the end, the Chancellor had kicked everyone out.
I find it very rare that a citizen will leave of their own volition.
But Who Won? And How?
One of the biggest questions in my mind was what is our favorite Oathkeeper goal? And, as I thought, our group tends to lean towards the Oath of Supremacy. Not only is this the starting Oathkeeper goal, there is one player who will always choose this goal if able.
I was surprised that the Oathkeeper of Devotion and the Oathkeeper of the People were basically tied in popularity. It makes sense considering they are both banners but their approach can feel so different, I kind of expected a more visible separation. I was also sad to see the Oathkeeper of Protection (my favorite goal) was the one least used.
Looking at who won, the Exiles lead the way. And I don’t know if this was unexpected. As this campaign has gone on over a year, sometimes only the most recent win is freshest in memory.
Something I was curious about it how the Exiles chose to win (i.e. what was the their objective at the end of the game). This one actually caught me off guard. I didn’t think that 32% of Exiles would end the game without a vision – effectively having the Oathkeeper goal as their win condition. I was surprised that the Citizen path to succession was the second most popular path to victory. But the love of Faith and Secrets holds no surprise.
I also wanted to look at how the player won. I don’t know if we have any instances of a Usurper but it could also be in the stats of the games I lost. This reflects the the “Who Won?” chart above in more detail. I was quite sad to see we have never had a winner from Vision of Protection or Successor of Conquest.
Successor Goals (I used a short hand):
- Protection – Holds the Most Relics an Banners
- Faith – Holds the Darkest Secret
- People – Holds the People’s Favor
- Conquest – Holds the Grand Scepter
Popular Actions
I did get the request to look into which of the major actions were the most popular. I did my best to record the actions used in our latest game but I haven’t had time to go back and watch the (what I’m assuming is) thirty hours of content. So this is a first pass but more on that later!!
