Oathen: An Esports-Inspired Tactics Card Game

Complete control of your deck

Oathen is a class-based arena combat card game, designed around the same balance mechanics you find in competitive esports. It does away with the lucky drawing and shuffling of yesteryear. Instead, you choose the exact cards you want to play every round.

No more winning or losing because of good draws, stacked hands, or fighting for resources. Oathen determines victory through outwitting, outmaneuvering, and outplaying your opponents.

An Oathen duel set up: the 5 by 5 arena of hidden tiles, a hero miniature at each starting gate, and each player's cooldown track from 5 down to 1

How to play

How a round works

Try it: Nyxa’s first round

Pick the four highlighted cards from Nyxa’s Skillbook: a Prep, a Battle, an Enhancement and a Blitz. Then lock in your plan.

Hand 0 of 4 chosen

Skillbook

The arena

The arena is built from randomized tiles: a 5×5 grid for a duel, or 6×6 for three to six players. The tiles start hidden, like fog of war. Step into a hidden space and it’s revealed for the rest of the game, for everyone to use.

About half the arena is Barrens. The rest is temples, shrines and armories, traps like war camps and swamps, and treasure chests. Push an enemy into a pit trap and the arena does the work for you.

The six heroes in the box

Every game starts with each player choosing a character. Each one has a deck of 20 cards made up of their own unique abilities.

Assassin Nyxa The Assassin · Melee

Nyxa is a melee mage class who can manipulate the shadows around her.

Berserker Bravus Agnarsson · Melee

Bravus is a highly mobile melee hero that specializes in getting up close and personal with his targets, dealing damage to multiple enemies, and dishing out piercing damage attacks.

Reaper Sgrian The Reaper · Melee

Sgrian is a spike damage dealing character who relies on his minion, called the Haunt. When playing abilities, he can play them from his body's locations, or his Haunt's position. When performing his standard abilities, he starts to apply fear as a condition on his targets. Then when using some of his attacks, they can feed off of that fear to gain enhanced effects.

Marksman Quinn Leader of the Black Hand · Ranged

Quinn is a ranged damage dealer / support combatant that uses flintlock weapons. Through a wide range of different shots, he can mix and match ammo to apply roots, pierce armor, push targets into traps, and many other effects that can help through the course of the game.