Do you have the Oath: The Chronicle of Empire and Exile board game but only have two players to play with?
Playing Oath with two players limits the number of victory conditions. Only one player takes the role of Exile, and therefore provides limitless victory conditions for the player who becomes the Chancellor.
How do you play Oath board game with 2 players? In a two players game, the player who becomes the Chancellor focuses on maintaining the Oath condition, which makes the player the Oath Keeper.
The player who takes the responsibility of the Exile, becomes the citizen and focuses on the successor conditions. However, the play style is a bit challenging, especially in regards to the card flow.
The scarcity of players in the game reduces the number of cards played. For most of the game, the two players take a lot of their time trying to find the right card for themselves depending on the great powers or the suit cards.
In Oath, the integral part concerns the fishing of cards from the economy, a two-player mode that becomes a challenge because it takes more rounds to discard from the economy.
As a result, it gives the player who plays as a chancellor limitless winning victory, which makes the player who acts as an Exile depend on luck to win. The Chancellor counters all the moves done by the exiled player since that player draws the Darkest secret card even before the player does it.
The two-player mode for Oath is played either human vs. human or can be human vs. Bot in a solo Oath game. For fairness, players should rotate their roles to alternate chancellor vs. exile mode for every game, or they can decide to play as exile vs. exile to ensure no player has an added advantage over the other to make the game more of skill as opposed to luck.
In this article, we are going to share gameplay strategies, rules and tips to play Oath board game for two players. Answered below are frequently asked questions to prevent from any difficulty such as lack of chance to win and limitation on the number of cards.
Can you play oath with two players?
Yes, you can play Oath with two players. In fact, Oath has a two-player mode that can be human vs. human or human vs. Bot (an automatic computer player).
The two players may take different roles, but players should exchange the roles after every turn for fairness purposes. Otherwise, they can play both as an Exile to have equal powers in the game.
The player who takes Chancellor responsibility in a round has four winning conditions. In addition, the Chancellor player still wins through die roll of war exhaustion.
Note, the chancellor has limitless winning conditions over the Exiled player in a two player situation.
Oath board game rules for 2 players
The two-player Oath board game mode revolves around two elementals: victory condition or card economy. The number of players does not change the Oath game rules, instead the game flow may be different than 4 to 6 people.
In two player mode, the chancellor role has limitless victory conditions, while the player who takes the exile position is restricted to winning chances.
The chancellor becomes the Oath Keeper and the exiled player becomes the Citizen, the custodian role for successor conditions remains the same.
Furthermore, the two players can introduce the Bot player as a third player to tweak the card economy for easy drawing and discarding during the game.
However, a bot may not be necessary if the partner player can depend on luck instead of skill, especially when the player is confronted with the higher player count.
The Exile can choose three prestiges who became the citizen immediately, giving the player three actions per turn.
On the other side, the Chancellor has a prestige number advantage and gives the player a chance to have five prestiges.
When the Chancellor player loses for long, the player’s heir is lost, reducing the number of prestige to 2/3 in favor of the citizen player. The chancellor player has a possibility of winning the game even when the player loses the prestige war.
Dicing in the Oath game for two-player gives the player who takes the Chancellor role more victory conditions and makes the game luck-based instead of focused on skill.
Tips for playing Oath board game with 2 players
Due to limitation on number of players, 2 player game may become challenging to win against the Chancellor. As a result, gameplay may take longer time to find the right power and suit cards.
In order to prevent this from happening, here are useful tips to consider when playing Oath board game for 2 players:
- Don’t dice for two players in order to minimize the chances of the Chancellor winning the game, making the game significantly luck-based game for the Exile.
- Players should exchange their roles after every game for each player to have equal chances of winning. Alternatively, both players can play as an exile to improve odds and playability.
- A bot is introduced as a third player to give the game a three-dimension mode for easy drawing and discarding from the economy, since it provides a large player count in the game.
- Exile player can win the game by releasing the powerful combo, which gives the player a chance for a couple of turns. Hence the player can have time to build up forces to use to counteract the Chancellor’s moves.
- Exiled player should combine pressure and apply it in Chancellor’s front until the Chancellor can’t fight the threat any longer.
- Chancellor can win a neutral game by discarding everything and making sure the exiled player doesn’t hold it for the whole round.
How to play Oath board game with two players
To play Oath board game with two players, start by selecting the Chancellor and Exile roles, same way as when you play with 4 or more players.
One player earns the Chancellor role, becoming the ruling player of the game. The Chancellor can be determined by who won the last game or took the Exile role in the previous game.
The other player takes the role of an Exile, who immediately becomes the citizen joining the Chancellor to form the empire. Still, the player takes successor rights.
The Chancellor player takes the Oath-Keeping role, owning most of the sites and holding the game powers, which lasts eight rounds in total.
In every game round, the exiled player takes three actions, and the chancellor takes two actions. Anytime a player takes action, the player spends an effort.
The active player in a round gains coin from the other player, represented in the game by suit cards.
As the player plays, its pawn is at the site, and if a card is present in that site that matches the suit card the player has already played, the player gets two coins or a magic token.
If there are none matching, the player receives no coin.
The Chancellor has four victory conditions through die rolling, war exhaustion, or a neutral game. The Exile only wins after getting a powerful combo in the game.
Two Player Oath Board Game: Conclusion
There are pros and cons to play Oath board game with 2 players. Generally, the game is suitable for 4 to 6 players, and may take about 45 to 60 minutes depending on the experience of each player.
For an oath game with two players, the game should take about 20 minutes for each round.
Whether the Oath game is played by 2 or more players, the setup, rules, and gameplay does not change.
However, the two player game tends to cause the Chancellor to win. Additionally, it takes a longer time with more rounds for players to get the right cards to play with.
Instead, a Bot can be introduced in a two-player Oath game to give a three-dimensional mode to make it easier to fish cards by providing large player counts. In the instance, the Bot plays automatically as the Chancellor and both human players are Exiles.
The main goal is that the Citizen or Exile players can attempt to bolster the player’s powers who takes the Chancellor role to ruin the kingdom. As a result, playing with a Bot is the best way to play Oath with two players.