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Hey everyone! Josh here, designer of the Homeland Expansion. We’re getting close to the end of development, so I wanted to release another Print and Play. This will be the last one before release. This one is content-complete—it includes everything in the Homeland Expansion, the Squires & Disciples Deck, and the Homeland Hirelings Pack.

Compared to the previous Print and Play, it now includes The Gorge Map, Marsh Map, new Landmarks, and new Vagabonds. That said, it’s still missing some art, and there’s a touch of development left to do, which I’ll talk about later in this diary. Notably, even though the art on the Gorge Map looks done, it’s not—it’s still the original placeholder art from when Sam was developing it. Kyle is working on it right now.

So with that, let’s dig into the state of the factions!

Like many of our peers, we produce the vast majority of our games and accessory products in China and then ship them throughout the world. For us, the United States represents well over half of all of our business. The current tariff levels, if they hold steady or increase, will represent a significant barrier to our ability to operate our business as we have done in the past, just as it will for everyone in any industry that engages in international manufacturing, shipping, and sales.

In the previous development diary, I talked a bit about how my desire for system expressiveness led me astray during the game’s design and development. Figuring this out took months of work. As I mentioned in that piece, I spent a lot of time reading playtest reports, teaching the game, and trying to figure out why on earth the many little systems that seemed so robust and interactive in isolation were proving to be less than the sum of their parts.

I think part of my trouble is that I didn’t really have the vocabulary I needed to describe the problem. If you think “expressivity” is an excellent design goal, then it’s hard to make the argument to cut it. That’s really the core of what made the first month or so of cuts so vexing. I was cutting out stuff I liked without any deeper understanding of where those cuts might get me in the end.

Here is the first part of two-part development diary that is long overdue. Be warned, I’m going to really get into the weeds of New Foundation’s development and try to describe what we’ve been tangling with. This post is going to get pretty detailed and most of it is going to be about a system I ended throwing away. So, be warned: a darling is going to be killed at the end of this book.

For all of the new features that we are building into New Foundations, the expansion boils down to a pretty simple realignment of the game. Previously, most players would direct their entire attention towards winning. Each game culminates with a gigantic scrum, or, what folks sometimes call a “crab bucket.” I have no idea if this term is used affectionately, but I’ve often liked the image. Certainly the end of a game of Oath can feel like you are trapped with a bucket of pointy little creatures trying climb over each other in a mad scramble to get to the top.

Hello everyone! Josh here, designer of the Homeland Expansion. Today we’re releasing the third print-and-play, including some stuff that you haven’t seen yet: the three new Hirelings and all of the Captains for the Knaves of the Deepwood. You’ll find all of that here.

All in all, the project is right on schedule. On the design side, I expect a couple more months of serious development. I’ll release one more Print-and-Play when we’re all done, which will include the maps, landmarks, and three new Vagabonds. On the production side, we’ve received and approved samples for almost all of our hard components. Here’s a (literal) handful of them, including the three new Captains.

Today we’re releasing a massive print-and-play kit for Oath: New Foundations. Just about every element seen in the previous kit has received some polish, and, if you haven’t paid attention to the expansion since the Kickstarter, this is a pretty good time to take a look at how the design is shaping up.

Today, I’d like to talk about how the factions’ development has come along, highlighting what we learned from the first print-and-play release and further playtesting, and giving a sense of how I feel about their current state and where we need to go next.

It's our pleasure to share with you all the official development kit for Arcs. Pretty much every icon and card template in the game (and the campaign game) can be constructed with the assets in this kit. If you've ever wanted to make some custom art for your favorite guild card or try your hand at crafting a plotline, you'll find everything you need here. In addition, we've included an InDesign file features most of the game's paragraph styles and a PDF that explains how to put the files together.