I’d call yesterday’s game night a success. After a couple of hands of The Crew: Mission Deep Sea – a failure, and then success at the same mission – we played a six-player game of Monikers. This is the best party game, in my opinion: a perfect mixture of roaring laughter and quick thinking.

The deck we created for the game was surprisingly heavy of animals, particularly horses. The deck included the cards “Dead horse” (and boy did we beat that), “The Centaur”, “Reverse Centaur”, “One hundred duck-sized horses”, “A horse-sized duck”, and also “Ceiling cat”, “Nyan Cat” and “Schrödinger’s Cat”.

The team split wasn’t perfect – the game was somewhat lopsided, our team scored about 80 points of the 126 possible. Oops. But it was funny, so never mind.

Our play of Oath saw a tyrant rise, create a mafia state controlled by the secret police and policed by bandit thugs. There was military resistance, and the Chancellor didn’t have free reins to dominate the countryside, even though he spread his influence wide around the land. Among the pockets of resistance, a rebellious hero rose, carrying the banner of people’s favour.

Alas, the rebellion wasn’t to succeed. First, the Chancellor bought it out, tossing favours around to bribe the people to complacency. The revolution fought back, but arguing mobs broke down the rebellion. Eventually, it gathered itself and managed to get the banners flying high again. Still, at that point, the people of the land were tired and suppressed by the mafia surveillance state, and the Chancellor was able to cement his tyranny.

This was a quick game; it was over by the first Chancellor die roll. That was fine, we were running out of time anyway, but it was good to have the Chancellor player actually roll that six. Oath hasn’t been a universal success in my game group, but it has enough support that getting four players isn’t hard. The narratives the game generates please many players, myself included. The rest don’t see the narratives interesting enough to compensate for the messy, vague game play. I accept that; Oath is that kind of game.

For me, Oath is one of the most exciting games at the moment.