Oath: New Foundations

Covers, Storage Box Detail, and Pledge Manager Info!
29 days ago – Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 01:54:51 PM

Dear Backers,

We have an exciting update for y’all! 

Over the past month, we have been busy here at Buried Giant. Though we’ve all worked together for a long time, a new company means setting up a lot of new accounts, reorganizing our workflows just a bit here and there, and, of course, taking New Foundations across the finish line. This all takes time, and, happily, it hasn’t caused any major delays. After a few weeks, I’m happy to report that we are running basically at full capacity. 

There’s some big things to share with you all today. Most importantly, we have a final date for closing the pledge manager and for charging cards. The pledge manager will close and all payments will be processed February 26th. That’s in just 2 weeks! Reminders to finalize your pledge will be sent out on February 24th for everyone to review their pledge items. We’re still a few months away from confirming shipping addresses, so while it’s extremely helpful to have your address on file, you’ll have another chance to confirm your delivery info before fulfillment starts. We plan to confirm all addresses when production is complete in (we're estimating June) and when the games are ready to be fulfilled in your region. This will occur on a rolling basis from July-September. More info on our fulfillment timelines by region once production is underway.

I am also happy to share that we have updated all of our entries on BackerKit with the final cover designs as well as better product descriptions. The entries were first written shortly after the campaign and hadn’t reflected the final state of the design. I’m glad to say that, outside of a couple minor details, all of the add-on information is now locked. The biggest adjustment from what was originally presented on the KS campaign is that we moved the new player colors into New Foundations along with the bandits from the Deluxe Component II add-on. This gave us room to offer new (and nicer) x3 metal coins with Deluxe Components II and made a lot more sense from a packaging standpoint. We hadn’t known that we would want these coins at all initially, but during development we encountered some really interesting high-favor chronicle states that were worth supporting. We've shared pictures of these coins throughout production, but wanted to make sure you saw the final samples which are a little thicker and more legible than some of the earlier samples. And yes, they do stack with the singles! 

Okay, let’s talk about the storage box. Storage boxes are not things that we do lightly. The Blighted Reach box took months of work to get right, and Oath’s storage box is no different. I think the best storage boxes are those that aid in the set up and tear down of a game. Period. I don’t want a flashy insert with lots of cool trays if those trays make the game harder to actually set up! In many cases, I’m much happier with a handful of player bags than something elaborate. But, for certain games, good storage can be a godsend. Can you imagine setting up (or even just playing) Feast for Odin without those trays? 

With this in mind, we’ve done our best to create a box whose biggest priority is helping you all play more Oath. This was a real team effort and major props are owed to Megan and Alita for spearheading the months of iteration as well as Andrea, Anne, and Cardner. Critically, this is a team that also has a very deep knowledge of Oath. We wanted the box to be designed by the same folks who had played the game the most over the course of development. Alright, let’s take a look at how it works!

We’ll start with the cover and size. We all love Oath’s original cover, and, when we talked to Kyle about the art for the storage box, we wanted to find something that didn’t stray too far from it. Covers are the first and last thing you see when you are getting ready to play a game or pack it up, and so I loved his choice to adopt a sunrise/sunset palette. Also, as you can see from the render, the box is basically the same size as Blighted Reach. 

Originally, we had planned on doing a vacuform plastic tray (similar to Arcs). However, because the storage box’s design primarily used rectangular storage areas, it seemed like a cardboard tray would be basically as strong and a lot more space efficient. This excellent suggestion came from Cardner, our production specialist at Buried Giant. Cardner has a lot of  experience working on game productions like this, and boy was it helpful! 

The other day, I went over to Matt's house to shoot a quick video about the insert. Because we wanted to get this update out quickly, we didn't have time to do something more elaborate, but hopefully it will give you a sense of what's to come! We're looking forward to doing a lot more behind-the-scenes videos like this in the future. 

As I mentioned in the video, one of the troubles with cardboard inserts is that sometimes the dividers can be a little flimsy. Thankfully, the factory was able to engineer these little “winged” dividers that can withstand a lot of force. This is one sturdy tray.

The trays will come fully built. And, don’t worry. This won’t be a fully white insert. Kyle is working on some beautiful artwork that will be printed on the tray. A printed tray also lets our graphics team put reminders about which elements go into which areas.

Here’s how it all works. On the base layer, players will store all of the game material across the four columns. You can see here that I'm using the tray from the original game. The storage box will come with new trays that are a little narrower than the originals (so they fit a bit better). 

Then, above that, you can add the plastic storage tray that comes in Clockwork if you are a solo/coop player as well as the player boards on the right. This creates a nice natural lock. Finally, above that there’s ample space for rulebooks, journals, and other things that you might want to include with your copy of Oath. 

The individual player boxes are done in a thick card stock with a glossy finish. They will come preassembled and should be pretty tough. The atlas box on the other hand will have 2mm thick walls and close with a magnet. 

Most of the pictures above are from factory white samples. There are a number of small adjustments that we’ll be making over the next month, but we’re hoping to get production underway in March. Once that happens, we’ll update you all again with our best guess for when the game will ship. 

Now, all that said, you can still pack up the game in the regular Oath box. We’ll have some guides to that end later. Especially if you don’t sleeve cards, there are a number of approaches that may suit you just fine. In fact,  even with sleeved cards you can get all of New Foundations in the base box without any box lift. 

In order to do this, you take out the old insert and arrange things as above. Obviously you'd want to put the relics and legacy/setup cards in a bag, but I wanted to make sure, they photographed clearly here. Then, in the remaining cavity, you can put the bags with the lineages. (Note that the world box here has a little booster box below it so it takes up the same space as the new atlas box--New Foundations comes with a cardstock variant of the more deluxe one found in the Storage Box.) If you want to fit in the Clockwork materials with a sleeved set, you either need to tolerate a bit of box lift or take some of the player colors out (perhaps storing them in the NF or Clockwork box). And, if you don’t sleeve your game, you’ll have extra space you can use in a number of ways.

In short, yup, it’ll all fit and fit well. However, we really have found the storage box to be a much nicer way of organizing the game with a lot more room to grow. If you want a box that makes set up and teardown as seamless as possible, the storage box is about as close to an ideal solution as we could get. 

The Non-Box Stuff

While we’re still several months away from fulfillment, if you’re itching to play or talk about Oath, you should check the new Buried Giant discord server here: there’s a ton of great discussion going on and lots of games of Oath: New Foundations.

If you cannot find your pledge or the link to your pledge, please go here.

If you have other questions, please visit the FAQ here.

If you need direct help with your pledge, you always can email [email protected].

If you are just pumped about more Oath, give a like and leave a comment.

An Important Update about the Future of Oath
about 2 months ago – Tue, Jan 13, 2026 at 01:10:00 PM

Dear Backers,

I have some important news for you all. Kyle and I will be leaving Leder Games and starting a new company, Buried Giant Studios. This separation is amicable, and we wish the best of luck to our friends at Leder Games.

If you’d like to read more about the separation, check out my statement. You can check our new company’s website here.

As part of this separation, Buried Giant Studios has purchased both Arcs and Oath from Leder Games. This purchase includes the fulfillment and remaining management of the New Foundations Kickstarter. While this may cause some small delays as we coordinate the transfer, it should not impact the campaign’s fulfillment significantly. The design is finished, the production is nearly ready to get underway, and our new company is well-equipped to complete the campaign. 

In the coming weeks, we’ll be posting more about the new studio and taking you all through the final stages of the production process. In the short term, we’re happy to answer any questions you might have regarding the campaign in the comments or you can send a message to [email protected]

On the production front, I’m happy to report that nearly all of the files for both New Foundations and the Clockwork Adversaries are ready for prepress. We are still waiting on a couple elements for the storage box before that project is likewise ready. In order to not delay things, we’ll be initiating the prepress process for the main game files first and hope to have files approved in the coming weeks.

Finally, I want to say a world of personal thanks to the remaining team at Leder Games for their flexibility and kindness as we work through this transition. As you might imagine, the transfer of a property like this is complex and involves the goodwill and understanding of many people in order to make the result as seamless as possible. It has been a real joy to be able to work on both Oath and Arcs and we are thrilled that we will be able to continue to support both games in the future.

Best,
Cole

Rulebooks!
3 months ago – Thu, Dec 18, 2025 at 12:53:24 PM

Dear Backers,

I hope this finds you all well. We've already had a busy, snowy winter here in Saint Paul. I'm happy to report that we've made a lot of progress on tying up the final elements of Oath: New Foundations.

We are still waiting on a few production samples, but basically all of the print files are ready for the pre-press process. 

If you'd like to read the (near final) rulebooks, you can find them in their final form here.

There is one rulebook that still needs a bit of graphics work: Liz and Ricky's base game servant rulebook is still in final layout. We should have it ready soon (though perhaps after the holidays). However, if you have any questions about how the servant works, the New Foundations servant rulebook will give you a very good sense of just that.

Closed for the Holidays

As usual, the office will be closed for the final two weeks of the month. Things will reopen on January 5th. If you reach out during that time, please give us a little grace upon our return to respond. We appreciate your patience!

Support Questions

As always, if you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact [email protected]. Please don’t use the Kickstarter messaging system.
 

Final Layout Progress and New Samples Arrive
4 months ago – Tue, Nov 04, 2025 at 07:36:19 AM

Dear Backers

We have a short update for you all today. Over the past several weeks, the team has been busy finalizing the design and moving all of the assets through the final layout process. We are on schedule to have all of the files finished by the end of this month and in the prepress process.

We are also taking the rules through their final usability pass in the next couple of weeks. If you want to see where the rulebooks have landed, you can find the Returning to Oath playbook here.

The full Oath rules (with New Foundations included) can be found here.

In terms of physical samples, there are a few things that we are still waiting on, mostly relating to the Storage Box. Thankfully, this won’t delay work on the expansion and we have plenty to do while we wait for samples and make the necessary adjustments. 

As you can see, we've got little removable trays in the base of each storage box now. These little trays are also used to keep your warbands nice and organized when you pack up your lineage in its box.

We also got a wood sample for all of the materials in the Clockwork Adversaries expansion. They look great! We’ve got some small color adjustments to make and will be making the minion pieces a little less thick, but we love how the metallic purple turned out.

Finally, we’ve approved some revisions to the higher denomination coin and secret pieces.  We've looked at a few variants of the secret over this project, but have decided to go with the red design similar to the one we had on the initial campaign page. We've also made some adjustments to the x3 coin to better emphasize the number.

That’s it for now. By our next update, I hope to be able to share the final rulebooks and reveal the final box designs. I’ll also be putting together a capstone development diary sometime this month to cover all of the adjustments to the game and share more about this project’s journey. 

Support Questions

As always, if you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact [email protected]. Please don’t use the Kickstarter messaging system.

Schedule and Development Update
6 months ago – Thu, Sep 11, 2025 at 08:22:07 AM

Hello Backers,

We’ve got a big update for you all today. 

If you don’t have time to read this, know that the project is in great shape. We’re in the final weeks of development and hope to deliver files to the factory in October. This translates into a likely Spring 2026 fulfillment. This is a few months later than our original schedule, but the extra time has allowed us to build a lot of content. 

Because we still have a bit of time before the project is finalized, the pledge manager will remain open for the rest of the year.

What You’re Getting

During development, we often juggle elements of the expansion across the core product and the free products. In the case of New Foundations, there were some additional questions around the project’s budget and if certain elements should be included in the New Foundations box or the second Deluxe Components box. And, to this there’s always the question of what we should do with some of the new elements which we didn’t even know we’d want to add back during the Kickstarter campaign.

Oath: New Foundations

The New Foundations expansion includes two additional player colors, 30 legacy cards, a dual layered Foundation Board, new banners, 30 edifices, a set of chronicle task cards, and a set of bandit warbands. In addition, we’re including quite a few revised components that will replace or upgrade components from the base game. This includes an expanded relic deck (with over twice as many relics), a revised set of sites with some UI improvements, 30 adjusted denizen cards, and a new set of player boards and aids. 

To help you navigate through all of this, we’re also providing two rulebooks. The first is a short “Returning to Oath” rulebook which is directed at experienced Oath players and will guide them through just the new content. The second is a dramatically expanded Oath rulebook done in the style of the Arcs rulebook. This book is meant to replace both the playbook and law from the original game and is meant to serve as a comprehensive rulebook for new and old players alike. We know that there will be many players whose first experience with Oath will include New Foundations, and we wanted to make the learning process as smooth as possible. 

Here's the shorter, Returning to Oath rulebook.

And here's the comprehensive rulebook.

Denizen Pack

Backers will also be getting a new set of 60 denizens (10 of each suit). These denizens can be mixed into the archive or you can start a new chronicle using all of these cards as the starting world deck. 

Deluxe Components II

For the deluxe components box, we’ve moved things around just a bit. The kit still includes extra dice (4 blue and 6 orange), but we’ve changed the resin secrets to x3s instead of x5s. This was mostly because, in testing, we found the x5s were just seldom needed whereas the x3s had pretty broad utility. Finally, by moving the player colors and bandits to New Foundations, we had room in the budget to introduce a new denomination of metal favor. Like the secrets, they are in a x3 denomination and can be really handy in those high favor games, and, like the original favor, they are fully stackable with either denomination!  
 

Oath: Clockwork Adversaries

The Clockwork Adversaries box has a new name to better reflect its content. It’s now called Oath: Clockwork Adversaries and the Queen of Shadows. This name reflects the fact that backers are getting two things. The first is a new, fully-featured bot, the Servant. This bot can serve as Chancellor, Citizen, or Exile. In addition, it’s easy to clone the bot if you want to include more than one in a game. And, as a gift to our backers, Liz and Ricky have also created an amazing cooperative mode where players square off against the Queen of Shadows. If you want to learn more about this mode, take a look at our most recent studio stream:

As you can see from the video, the Queen of Shadows also requires some extra wood and some additional art. Here's her character design along with some of the wooden pieces she'll need.
 

Storage Box

We’ve talked quite a bit about the storage box in a previous update. We’re still waiting on a few samples from the factory before we share any images. But, as we noted back then, this box will be the size of the Arcs: Blighted Reach expansion box and include custom player boxes for all player colors and the Chancellor as well as a few fun usability aids like warband trackers and an improved box for storing your world and empire. 

Development Update: Tightening the Foundations

From the start of the project, one of our primary goals with this expansion was to keep it as simple and as accessible as possible. We know that expansions are fundamentally additive and even excellent expansions can add a lot of extra complexity that can push a game past its limits. Oath certainly didn’t need any extra rules! This goal was informed by the game’s release. While Oath had done quite well, we also knew that it had missed many folks who wanted to love the game. New Foundations offered us the possibility of giving the game a second introduction, something in-between a patch and a second edition. To meet that challenge, we spent months on an extended investigation into the core game and looked for the places where the game’s initial goals were not met and where a few careful cuts and adjustments could result in a substantially more interesting game that would also be easier to teach and easier to expand. We wanted, quite literary, to build a new foundation for Oath. 

I should note that this is exactly the sort of development strategy that would never have received a green-light at another studio. Part of the advantage of working on an expansion is that they have far less development liability. By this I mean that expansions often take less time to design and to develop than new games. This means that it’s easier for a team to build a schedule around an expansion and this can free up studio resources to pursue new projects. Thankfully this was not asked of New Foundations. Heck, we spent the first 6 months of development looking for every liability we could find! Each core action in the game and system was interrogated. More than once I had folks ask me why we were bothering to do all of this work on a game we had already published. It was a fair question.

Now that we’ve close to the finish line, I think it’s pretty clear how much has been gained. During Gen Con I had the chance to teach a lot of new players and, as we’ve taken the game through usability testing in the weeks since, we’ve found that Oath has never been easier to teach or to play—and that includes all of the new concepts we introduced in New Foundations. In basically every case, the adjustments we made to the core game have allowed us to fold in the new systems in a way that is completely organic. These changes have also brightened some of the game’s existing dynamics. 

To illustrate this, I want to talk about a couple alterations to a core system in Oath: the favor economy. For the last six months or so, Oath has adjusted how much favor was in the game based on the number of denizens in the world. During setup, players would stock each bank with 2 or 3 favor, depending on the player count. Then, players add 1 additional favor for every denizen at a site to the matching card. This means that big empires will have “richer” games and small bandit kingdoms will have a more constricted economy. It also means that if one suit is dominant, that suit will have more favor in its bank, which will stop it from just getting zapped during the first round of play. 

While the favor economy was looking good, I started looking towards the flow of secrets in the game. This actually had been a persistent irritation for me. The core issue, I felt, really came when you had two players with the same strong portfolio (say heavily invested in the Arcane suit) generating piles of secrets. Usually, between these players, there was enough favor that they could just keep cycling favor in and out of their shared banks as needed while their secrets piled up. In a game of such limited actions and with so many good hydraulic gameplay systems, it didn’t seem right that the most sacred and mysterious of resources should be so abundant. 

Even back in the days of the base game development, I wanted secrets to be suited or limited in some way. Throughout the development of New Foundations, I made several attempts, including looking into a limited bank of secrets (say 3 per suit) or suiting the secrets themselves. Surely secrets should be proprietary! I even spent a while looking at secret carrying limits or other ways that they could generate supply liability. Each time it felt like any improvement came at the expense of some other part of the design. For instance, supply made the most sense when tied to warbands.

Last month, while going through the final design review, I decided to make one more attempt. This time I thought about the issue from the perspective of the flow of favor and how closed the favor loop was. When players with the same suit position were generating secrets, they were essentially creating a semi-closed favor system. As long as there was enough favor for each player to “pump” the system, secrets would flow without end. The game was designed to have this flow interrupted, and, when it did (say with Memory of Home) the results could be quite interesting. However, the system needed those card effects in order to work. Something foundational needed to be done. 

With this in mind, the solution actually became very obvious. Instead of costing 2 favor to trade for secrets, it should cost 1 favor and 1 favor burn. This adjustment worked almost instantly. Now heavy secret games would have a real effect on the game’s favor economy. Two or three players pulling from the same bank would gradually erode the favor in circulation between them and that specific bank. In order to get it to work properly, we had to boost the favor in each bank by 1 (which, fortunately, put us at exactly the same numbers that happen to be printed on Oath’s map). 

In many games, this dynamic is not felt too strongly, but in tight races for the Darkest Secret it can start to warp things in interesting ways in the mid- and late-game. It also gives an added sting to high favor burn games or games where favor is in short supply. And, even though they are unchanged, cards like Tutor,  Elders, and Old Oak gain a richer resonance because they provide ways of getting around this favor burn. While not set in stone yet, I've been really happy with how this change has subtly adjusted the shape of the game. 

Speaking of denizen powers. I suppose now is a good time to look at some of the cards we’ve adjusted. We have a couple dozen or so edits that we are putting into the existing cards. In about half of these, the edits are simply for consistency of language and rules. (For instance, the Recover action is now called the Challenge action when getting banners.) However, for the remainder of the edits, we looked at a number of cards whose effects were not nearly as interesting as their art or names promised. 

For instance, the original version of Salt the Earth as a “when played” sorta misses the fact that its effect should follow some climatic defeat. Relic Thief is now cast, more correctly as a cousin to a card like Gambling Hall. And, most recently, Python has been transformed into something more monstrous. 

Finally, I want to talk just a bit about the legacies (formerly called traits). This has been one of the most difficult elements of the game’s design. At various points they have been closer to side-quests or alternate victory conditions. Their present incarnation is both the simplest and, I think, the most smoothly integrated. At the start of each game, players draw 2 legacies. They choose one to become dormant and the other is discarded. At the end of the game, players examine their dormant legacies. If they meet the requirement, it becomes active, otherwise it’s discarded. 

Legacies allow players to do things that no other card in Oath could allow. They can alter the setup or give them huge, game-changing powers. A lot of the game’s modular foundations from previous drafts slowly morphed into legacies because it was just such a robust class of card. 

For instance, Seer becomes active if a player ends the game with the Darkest Secret. Now, that player will construct the world deck each game, and has full knowledge of the position of the Vision cards. Royal Line requires ending the game with the Scepter. If that player is an imperial, it gives them full control over succession! 

Unlike the old trait system, legacies do not need to be maintained. If you earn Seer, you will keep Seer. There are a couple important exceptions. First, you can only have three active legacies. If you earn a 4th, you have to discard one of your others. Second, when an exile wins the game, all imperial players have their legacies go dormant. This can be reversed if one of those former Imperials is offered citizenship in the new empire, but otherwise it might take a generation or more for them to rebuild their legacies. This creates a really interesting dynamic where some of Oath’s most game-changing powers are linked to the political status of the game. The game can produce a highly articulated empire with lots of interesting privileges. When that empire collapses, those legacies will go dormant, dramatically changing the character of the game. 

The suit icon on the cards also informs a player’s loyalties to the game’s suits. The winner scores points for their active legacies, scoring 1 point for each matching card they rule. This helps create a big strategic space for multi-game strategic play and can make the play of each and every card have all the more impact.

There is so much more to write about. The revised Chronicle tasks, new relics, altered banners, and different foundations really widen the game’s horizons. Once we get the game into pre-press properly, I’ll do my best to put together a video covering all of the new content in the game and we might even put together a recording of a studio stream or two.

Support Questions

As always, if you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact [email protected]. Please don’t use the Kickstarter messaging system.