Do I understand it correctly that we can take our actions during our oathsworn phase in any order we desire as long as we have animus?

No spoilers here: are we allowed to send a runner in chapter 3 up until the encounter?

Yes

For RAW, yes. But I would say it is a spoilery question.

Yeah, just checking. We are super-power-gaming the encounters with my extreme neckbeard friend (Warbear, priest, ranger, harbinger) and we sometimes feel guilty for doing extremely well in encounters. We never had a downed character so far, so we are afraid we are not doing something properly 🙂

Well, it's entirely possible that you are doing something incorrectly...but it's equally possible that you guys are good at the game and I hope it continues that way for you...which isn't likely.

I bet you end up having some KOs fairly soon 😛

I am glad to hear that, the rulebook is fantastic, and everything is just clicking very well for us, and we strategize a lot. We do have a few hundred other games behind us, and we metagame the living hell out of everything with the augury of Harbinger, using taunts and reactions excessively well!

Enjoy it. The Harbinger is getting nerfed for that very reason...and others but that's a really big one.

Reasonable, it eliminates an insane amount of randomness. You can basically tactics around the full information you are getting. It is extremely satisfying, but we do feel guilty for being this awesome 😄

Being able to see the upcoming abilities isn't the abusive part as the Ranger can also do this. The abusive part is that several groups build their entire round-by-round strategy around 1-2 cards of the Avi. This is problematic from a metagame design perspective. The Priest actually has a similar challenge that we are trying to solve, but for a different reason.

If your team is properly using reactions then you're on a good path. Groups that tend to struggle through Oathsworn tend to not utilize the reactions to help each other out.

We do pay attention to the priests +3 🛡️ reaction, the bears combat card ignore and the rangers combat card ignore interrupts, yeah

And we also try to "bait" the boss on the first round so he wastes his turn and we can buff with the priest (I assume the 4-ish tokens at the beginning are a big deal too), Avi buffs with heal and looks into the deck.

The tokens from the story?

No, the blessing card (can't remember the card name) from the priest that gives 🔁 🛡️ ⏫ ×2 to nearby characters in range 4, that is a godsend at the beginning

2 tokens per card, but you can battleflow it so you can cast it again

Ah, I presumed you were on lower chapters based on your question above. How far in has your group gotten?

We defeated chapter 9 two days ago

(Also, holy crap the size of the "minis" is still astonishing :D)

How do reactions work when the stage card is revealed? Do you draw a new one, then return to the revealed one on the next monster turn?

Priest/Avi is a survival team. But you're probably cheating

U use the revealed card for reaction, I.e. drawing it. An then reveal the next after finishing the reaction.

That is what we are trying to figure out, it is not out of question that we are doing something wrong. - We optimize our positioning and use of animus - We alphastrike as much as we can and we try to get the boss to phase 2 as soon as possible. - Knowing what it does we can strategically soak damage by choosing which character removes the health die - Breaking important locations (jaws, tails, core, claws, etc) we mitigate the damage further. - We liberally burn cards for extra 🛡️ s to minimize boss damage. - We always keep in mind the N-NW rule. - Arguably I use dice for damage (Priest, Ranger) my friend uses the deck for better probability calculation (Ursus, Avi), and I can dish out serious damage with good rolls.

@Uruwiel "Burn cardS for defense" - still only one defense card for each attack, correct?

Yes

Have you guys thought about bumping up the difficulty to something like Grim or Dread Company?

Yes, we might do that. But honestly, the difficulty feels spot on. If it gets tougher after scenario 9+, I'm okay with the regular difficulty, being KOd does not give any extra satisfaction to us, but the tighter HP pool might. And honestly, our insecurities regarding our skill level comes from Etherfields and Tainted grail, which are just abysmal when it comes to their rules and rulebooks.

Lol, that's fair. If you're enjoying normal then keep at it. Glad to hear you're enjoying the game.

Yeah, the game is just fantastic, I can not really say anything negative after 9 scenarios. It is inevitable to have it compared to Gloomhaven, Etherfields, Tainted grail, as those are the "large scale narrative mini heavy grimdark" games (just to toss a few buzzwords around) and so far Oathsworn sits on the top for us. Best KS investment ever, I will replay it with different characters and different group of mine for sure. Same can not be said for the other games btw.