Queen of Shadows – Part 1

Liz Davidson, 4 May 2025

Hey gamers! This is Liz Davidson of Beyond Solitaire, but today I’m writing in my capacity as Solo Games Specialist at Leder Games. Richard Wilkins (a.k.a. Ricky Royal) and I are hard at work on something special–something you will get a first look at! While we’ve been working on Oath bots for over a year now, we have finally gotten back to what we wanted all along: Oath co-op.

Our original dream for Oath was to create a cooperative opponent called the Queen of Shadows. Now, at the very end of our design process, she is reborn, and I’m going to show you how she works. Please pardon the prototype graphics and TTS screenshots–this series is going to be part session report and part design diary, since you’re seeing work that is very much in development right now.

This is the current episode in a new running playthrough of Oath from Leder Gamers; you can find the links to all published episodes at the end of article, with new installments each Sunday

For those of you who have not played Oath, or haven’t thought about it in a while, it’s a game designed by Cole Wehrle that is essentially about history–players impact the world of the game, and the locations (sites) and people (denizen cards) who are present for the players to interact with will shift over time. The game’s victory conditions can also shift–in competitive Oath, there is always a Chancellor who must keep a specific oath to maintain their seat. But the other players are either Citizens, hoping to meet the successor condition and snipe the Chancellor’s seat, or Exiles who want to either usurp the Chancellor or discover Visions that will bring about their victory and a new Empire. To make the game cooperative, Ricky and I ditched the role of Chancellor, installed the Queen of Shadows as someone who has taken over the world, and given players the mission to bring her down.

Our game will take place in the world of base Oath, but I have also been adapting the cooperative mode to work with the New Foundations expansion, so don’t worry–you’ll be able to play it how you want. In order to win this game, the Adventurers need to do two things:

1. Each of them needs to fulfill the requirements of a Title card and flip it to its victory side. Title cards either match Visions from the world deck or involve becoming Usurper by stealing the Oathkeeper title from the Queen of Shadows.
2. They need to work together to remove all prisoners from the map. Those are the cards with the chains on them.

most images can click to enlarge

Here is the Queen of Shadows all set up and ready to confront the red and blue Adventurers (using Exile boards). I’ll creatively refer to them as “Red” and “Blue.” The Queen has no pawn, but she is present wherever her minions are–and she is going to make a lot of denizens into her prisoners. Note that she begins with both banners, a relic, and the most sites. She is very mean. You should also note that each site has a numbered priority token on it. In cooperative mode, these are used to show where the QoS attempts to take her actions.

 

Round 1

The Red goes first–but before they can go, the Queen of Shadows gets to take a turn. This involves playing the rightmost card on her board. (You can always see one card ahead, just like in a COIN game.) This card tells us that the Queen of Spies will:

• Attempt to gain a secret at site #2. Fortunately, she does not rule this site, so nothing happens.
• Spread her minions at site #3. She already rules this site, so she will simply place a minion from her player board here to shore up her defenses. If there were denizens at this site, she would place a prisoner token on each of them. But the denizen is at this site is already a prisoner. Nothing new happens.
• Attempt to gain a favor at site #7. Fortunately, she does not rule this site, so nothing happens.
• Swap priority tokens 8 and 4.

 

So far, so good, but she will heat up–quite literally. If the Adventurers win this game, two of the cool blue-bordered cards from her deck will be replaced by hot red-bordered cards.

Now it’s time for our Adventurer to take a turn. First, they decide to search the world deck. The players need to find and fulfill some Visions, and they also need to get their economy going. Red kept an Order adviser at the start of the game, and just drew an Order card–Relic Hunter. It’s an obvious keeper, and they play it to their site for 1 favor and for some future trade possibilities. They also reveal their facedown adviser, which is Shield Wall.

The current Oathkeeper goal is to rule the most sites, so with that in mind, Red decides to muster and then campaign to take their current site. Although warbands are lost in the struggle, they win handily. The Queen of Shadows is losing ground! Red spends their final supply of the turn to Search again. They draw 2 denizen cards and a Vision–the Vision of Conquest! They decide to grab it and play it–they are already feeling like taking over a lot of sites, and this could help them achieve a Victory condition just a little bit faster.

 

Now it’s Blue’s turn, but once again, the Queen of Shadows is going to butt in. This time, she’ll try to collect a favor from site #5–but she can’t! Red just took it over from her! She’ll try to take a secret from 6, but no luck there, either. Site #7 and site #2 will swap, and then she’ll place an additional minion at site #8. A slow start for the Queen–but the Adventurers will take their good fortune while they can!

Blue is also going to start with a world deck Search. Only 1 Vision is out, and no one can fulfil the requirements of a Vision unless 3 have been revealed. They draw 2 cards, then have to stop because the second one is… a Vision! The Vision of Rebellion, to be exact. Blue might like to keep this–it would involve going after the People’s Favor–but they decide not to. The other card they drew is Plague Engines, an Arcane card that matches their Arcane facedown adviser. They play it to their site, the Great Slums, and discard the Vision to the Hinterland… for now. Blue then decides to trade with Plague Engines, giving the card 2 favor for 1 secret–something that will definitely come in handy later. They then search the World Deck one more time, just to see what is in there. This time, they draw Roving Terror, Way Station, and Special Envoy.

Special Envoy has a travel power that allows its user to spend no Supply for a Travel action–as long as they end their turn afterwards. Blue is already out of Supply, so they play Special Envoy as an adviser, discard the other 2 cards, and travel to explore a new site in the Hinterland. They reveal the Barren Coast, and end their turn there.

 

Round 2

Our Adventurers are off to a decent start, but the Queen of Shadows has plenty of tricks up her sleeve. This time, she attempts to take a relic at site #1 but can’t. Then, she places an Altar at site #2. Altars are a way to help players get secrets while playing cooperative Oath. They are unable to trade with prisoners, and they also need secrets to set them free (as well as to get the Darkest Secret). Since Blue is currently at site #2, we’ll use this Altar on their next turn so you can see one in action. Next, sites #6 and #8 will swap, no big deal…

And then the Queen of Spies grabs site #7 for herself. When she explores a site or focuses her attentions on a site ruled by bandits, she immediately takes over. She flips the site card to reveal the Drowned City, places a warband there, draws a denizen from the world deck, and makes that card her prisoner. Poor Herald! However, the Drowned City has a lot of secrets, so our Adventurers may want to head that way.

Red starts their turn by mustering 2 more warbands. The conquest must continue! They then move to the Drowned City and Campaign against the Queen of Shadows there. Fortunately, her defense rolls are terrible, and Red wins handily! They place 1 warband on the site and end their turn, banking 1 Supply so that they start their next one off strong.

The Queen of Shadows will now take her second turn of the round. This time, she places an altar on site #1, tries and fails to grab a secret at site #2 since she doesn’t rule it, and swaps sites #5 and #7. Then she automatically snatches a relic–Brass Horse–at site #7, and makes a move to conquer site #8. Since the site is unexplored, she will explore it, place a warband there, and once again take a prisoner. The poor Scryer is now trapped in the Marshes!

 

The Adventurers will have to start rescuing people soon, but for now, Blue is off in the Hinterland. They decide to use the Altar of Labor at the site. This allows them to spend 3 Supply to take a secret–not a bad deal, given that they have no money and no denizens to trade for secrets with.

After use, the Altar goes back to the draw bag and may reemerge at another point during the game. Blue then spends 2 Supply to search the discard pile. They sent a site-locked Nomad card here that would work very well with their adviser. They play Way Station and take a favor from Nomad, then bank 1 Supply so they can be at full Supply for their next turn.

Will our Adventurers succeed? We will find out soon.

 

---

Oath AAR – Queen of Shadows
PART 1 ~ PART 2 ~ PART 3 ~ PART 4 ~ PART 5

---

Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.
Rather than list a bunch of social media links, the easiest thing to do is to check out our LinkTree, which connects you to all of our various locales around the web.
You can also support The Armchair Dragoons through our Patreon, and find us at a variety of conventions and other events.
Feel free to talk back to us either in our discussion forum, or in the comments below.