Oathmark: Battles of the Lost Age

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K_Peterson

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I've seen Facebook ads/recommendations lately for Oathmark: Battles of the Lost Age. Osprey Games' version of WFB??
Empires have fallen, and the land is broken. The great oathmarks that once stood as testaments to the allegiances and might of nations have crumbled into ruin. Now is a time of warlords, tyrants, and petty-kings, who carve out their own realms and inscribe their oathmarks into standing stones, ancient trees, and the bones of their enemies. In this lost age, fealty and loyalty are as valuable as gold and as deadly as cold iron, and war is ever-present.

Created by Joseph A. McCullough, the designer of Frostgrave and Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago, Oathmark is a mass-battle fantasy wargame in which players command armies of dwarves, elves, goblins, and men, and campaign to expand their realms and secure the loyalty of those they conquer. Oathmark allows players to field the fantasy army they have always wanted, whether a company of stalwart dwarves or a mixed force with proud elves and wild goblins standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the battle line.

With one miniature representing one warrior, Oathmark is a fast, bloody, and tactical game, and players can field warbands of 30 figures or armies numbering in the hundreds. An integrated campaign system allows players to develop their realms from battle to battle, adding new territories, recruiting new troop types, and growing to eclipse their rivals… or lose what they fought so hard to gain and fall as so many would-be emperors before them.

It looks like Osprey has partnered with North Star Military Figures to produce a range of Oathmark minatures. North Star's Frostgrave plastics were pretty good, so I'm curious to see how the Oathmark sculpts look.
 
The figure's are great. I've always wanted plastics that would build most of an army. You've got bows and swords and spears on the sprue so you can build what you need.

I'm curious how the rules will be. Kings of War is my go to game these days. It's a bit dry but it works and plays fast. Warlords of Erewhon is fun and has a bit more character but honestly, makes any kind of organized battle line a joke. It's all just a bit too convenient. If one model gets into base to base contact, the whole unit fights, range is measured from the closest figures, no frontages. It avoids a lot of arguments over what's in or out or facing but loses tactical depth too.
 
I ordered a box of the Dwarf Heavy Infantry for a reasonable price off Amazon. Other infantry units (elves, goblins, humans) weren't quite as affordable, so I might have to track down a US retailer that regularly carries Oathmark figures.

I'd like to see how the warband rules compare to those for large-scale battle. Warband/skirmish-level play is more appealing to me, and I'd be more inclined to buy a variety of kits than field one massive army.
 
David Johansen David Johansen got an online store and any rough prices shipping to the US?

It's been a while since I ordered anything from Canada. Like, maybe a decade ago from the Sentry Box.
 
I've never gotten around to an on-line show, the boxes are around $40 Canadian. I can find a shipping cost. But to my own harm, you can probably get them from the Warlord Games web store which is in the US.
 
But to my own harm, you can probably get them from the Warlord Games web store which is in the US.
You've got to work on this whole businessman thing. :wink:

From what I can tell, Warlord just has Human Infantry in stock. Which I wouldn't mind picking up, but I'm not in a rush.
 
True enough, I should probably avoid trying to run a business in the future.
 
Just read about this game today. I've been thinking about getting back into wargaming (it's been years since I played Warhammer Fantasy) and this sounds like it could be a really fun one.
Have you painted any troops yet?
 
I have not yet. Assembled a bunch but then got distracted by other projects.
 
Well, given that I'm looking at April sitting at home, I decided it's a good time to add another hobby. The Osprey blog has a few battle reports that sound like great fun. Ordered a couple boxes of the human infantry and some painting supplies today. Hopefully I can relearn how to paint minis over the next few weeks.
 
The book was released today, unexpectedly, and book-only orders will be shipped from tomorrow. Nick and his son are home-isolating at the warehouse!

The deals that were due to be part of the launch will come later in the year. That includes the free mini, a wingless dragon and the plastic elf light infantry box.

Got a few sprues of the original Frostgrave soldiers, dwarfs and goblins. They've pretty decent, with a good range of build options in the core kits, as David Johansen David Johansen describes above. The Frostgrave sprues are a goldmine for RPG characters - lots of weapons, shields and extras like lanterns, bags and rope.

The only full kit I own is the wolf riders. Goblins are decent, but man, those are some thicc wolves...
 
The figure's are great. I've always wanted plastics that would build most of an army. You've got bows and swords and spears on the sprue so you can build what you need.

Do yuou know how they scale with the Perry plastic kits? I've got more than a few of those, but would love to expand the "Empire" army with some of Oathmark's stuff if they look good enough together.

perry-wr50-foot-knights-1450-1500-38_1_3139ec48bc970cfc8ad42835aca3f165.jpg

Kings of War is my go to game these days. It's a bit dry but it works and plays fast.

How is 3rd edition? I found 2nd just a bit too dry, but some folks online were comparing KoW 3rd to WFB 3rd, which piqued my interest
 
The Perry plastics feel small, even compared to Warlord historicals, and are realistically proportioned. The Oathmark figures look a little chunkier, and stand on thick bases.

My own personal feeling is that they may not mix well in a unit, but units from the different manufacturers will work well together on the tabletop.
 
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The nice thing is that dwarves, elves, and goblins don't need to be proportional to humans. But yeah, the proportions of the Perry stuff tend to look out of place even when they're the same height. Much like 80s Ralpartha and Games Workshop.
 
IMG_20200401_010208.jpg

Bit blurry, but these are GW Empire (top left), Perry Wars of the Roses billmen and archers (top right) and Mantic skeletons (bottom). All plastic.

The Oathmark dwarfs are much better proportioned than the old GW "bowling balls with feet" style dorfs.
 
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The Perry plastics feel small, even compared to Warlord historicals, and are realistically proportioned. The Oathmark figures look a little chunkier, and stand on thick bases.

My own personal feeling is that they may not mix well in a unit, but units from the different manufacturers will work well together on the tabletop.

Yeah, I tried mixing them with old Citadel Empire and they looked like their small, anorexic cousins. I wa hoping maybe Oathmark were more realistically proportioned.
 
Got my book today - absolutely gorgeous!

Only had a quick flick through, rules look straightforward. Kinda like Warhammer, but armour, fight and rank bonus are included in a single roll. The game is roll high, and uses d10s. Roll 1 attack for each figure in the front rank (ranks are 5 minis wide).

Alternating unit activations. Units must roll Activation to perform 2 actions (including attacks), but can still perform 1 simple action - move or shoot - if they fail the roll.

No real armour or weapon stats. Spearmen have the Brace special rule, 2-H weapons appear to give +1 to fight (or are assigned to troops with a higher Fight). Missile weapons have a range; siege weapons have multiple attack dice.

Technology level is Tolkien - Dark Ages butno crossbows, and no guns or cannon. No pike or lance.

Solid army lists for dwarfs, humans, elfs and orcs/goblins, including catapults or ballistae and a few monsters, and some generic monsters.

You also generate a kingdom of 10 provinces, in 4 rings. Your king, commanders and basic troops are granted by your city terrain in ring 1, more elite troops and monsters require you to hold the a certain terrain type in any province. There are also 4 border provinces in ring 5 that can be fought over.

Each race inhabits a list of terrain types. Increasing rarity places some types in rings further from your capital city and so more vulnerable to attack. Monsters are limited to a certain number per terrain, so you may want more than one province of that type.

You can have cities from other races in your kingdom, and access to leaders, low-level spellcasters and basic troops from that race.

Campaign is basically fighting over terrains in kingdoms. There are 6 battle types (determining the provinces that can be attacked and battle outcome) and 5 scenarios (setup and victory conditions).

Not touched magic yet. There are core spells and race-specific spells.

Looks fast and brutal at first skim-through. No real complaints about the game. Simple compared to old Warhammer editions, whether that's good or bad remains to be seen. Alternating activations add some tactical depth to the game as well as target unit.

Some of the monsters are a bit unusual (are there many woolly rhino minis out there?), and ents are missing, surprisingly.

I believe race 5 will be the Undead, and they will be the first supplement.

Overall, can't wait to play this.
 
Atelerix Atelerix where'd you order the book from? I checked Osprey and Amazon and it's listed as not yet published on both.
Thanks for the write up though. This sounds like exactly the type of war game I'm looking for. My infantry units will arrive Monday and should provide so quarantine fun.
 
North Star Miniature Figures in the UK, which makes the Oathmark minis, shifted the first batch this week. They put preorders up last weekend.


The game was due to be launched at the annual Salute show in London later this month. The show was cancelled, and they took a late decision to launch the book without the usual deals and free figure. Caught everyone by surprise.
 
Got my infantry in and started assembling. It's been at least a decade since I've done any painting, and I was never very good at it before anyway, but I'm looking forward to learning again.
 

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Looking good K_Peterson K_Peterson and under_score under_score !

From the rules, I think 2-3 boxes of infantry, a box of calvalry and some specials (war machine, monster) will make for a darn good game. Cavalry, monsters and your commander are expensive! From the battle reports so far, it seems to play well from a single box upwards.
 
Scaling up and down well would be a huge advantage. Warlords of Erewhon starts working well at around 30 figures and scales up to a hundred or so fairly well. Kings of War works best with huge games and has a mechanically unrelated skirmish game for around a dozen. Warhammer skirmish / Mordheim works okay, the campaign rules in Mordheim tend to result in disparity fairly quickly but that's a good thing as the campaigns end fairly quickly. Most versions of Warhammer start to bog down with too much detail in really big games but sixth and early seventh did okay at that level but scaled down poorly though there were some alternate army building rules for smaller games in White Dwarf where they cut down the minimum unit size.
 
Ordered the rulebook from North Star, so I'm just hoping to finish painting the two boxes of infantry I purchased (assembled as 20 each archers, spearmen, and hand weapons) by the end of quarantine so I can get a few simple battles played before I decide how I want to expand.
 
I'm planning to get Oathmark as well, it seems like just the right flavour of fantasy for me, besides, I've already picked up a box of the Goblin Wolf Riders, and they are really great! It'll have to wait a few months because of budget reasons though.
 
Wonder how hard it would be to run some play by post battles.
 
Got my first rank of spearmen finished. Well, still gotta do their shields and basing. And I might take another touch-up pass at them. So maybe they're not completely finished, but finished enough that I can start on rank 2.
They're not gonna win any beauty contests, but for my first paint job in ten... maybe twenty years, I think they look alright.
oathmark_spearmen.jpg
 
So with social distancing preventing in person wargaming, I decided to try setting up a game in Roll20. It worked out pretty well. Got the map and tokens scaled appropriately and setup character sheets with all the appropriate stats and we ran a pretty simple battle with both sides having the same army configuration: 20 soldiers with a champion, 20 spearmen with a captain, and two groups of 10 archers each.
It was a lot of fun and should make for a fun way to experiment with different army configurations even after the world is normal again.

Oathmark Roll20.PNG
 
Finished painting up my 2 boxes of Oathmark Human Infantry. Split them evenly between Soldiers, Spearmen, and Archers. With a Champion and Captain embedded in the melee units, this would be a decent 900 point army.

It's nothing catalog worthy, but for the first army I've painted in over a decade, I'm pretty pleased with the finished product and can't wait to field them in battle.
20201104_131420.jpg

The next supplement, Oathbreakers, is due out at the end of the month, which adds in undead, so I'm starting to work on those. I've got some Forgotten World zombies I picked up a while ago for fun and on their Halloween sale I ordered a 90 unit pack of skeleton infantry from Warlord Games.
 
Revenant cavalry will join my army on the battlefield. Wargames Illustrated just did a flip-through video of Oathbreakers so I was able to check out the stats. These will be equivalent to human heavy cavalry with some special undead rules that prevent it from failing morale, though morale checks can turn into additional losses. It's actually pretty close to the undead rules from the Forgotten World game these miniatures came from.
20201112_160419.jpg
 
Well, given that I'm looking at April sitting at home, I decided it's a good time to add another hobby. The Osprey blog has a few battle reports that sound like great fun. Ordered a couple boxes of the human infantry and some painting supplies today. Hopefully I can relearn how to paint minis over the next few weeks.
I'd say the best part of 2020 for me has been picking up this hobby. Since ordering my first Oathmark infantry back at the end of March (to occupy April till this whole Covid thing blows over!), I've now completed a pretty good sized Oathmark army:
20201213_174419.jpg

My list:

UnitCountPoints
Level 5 Necromancer1400
Human Captain1133
Human Spearmen19247
Human Champion151
Human Soldiers19228
Human Archers20240
Revenant Cavalry5350
Ghouls20300
Skeletal Champion150
Skeletal Spearmen19228
Skeletal Archers10140
Revenant Captain1142
Revenant Warriors19323
Ready Army:2832


I think I'm pretty happy with this force and will hold off adding to it at all until I've had the chance to play some battles.
 
Very nice work! The blending of races into one army is a feature I like in Oathmark, but sadly I mainly only get to read the book for now.

What does the kingdom build the undead/human mix comes from look like?
 
Yeah, I think the kingdom building rules work well to create a bit of history to your kingdom. With the Undead, you can either add them to another base army or choose between a Necropolis (for a Revenant King led army) or Cursed Burial Ground (for a Necromancer led army) as your capital. I went with the Cursed Burial Ground because I knew I'd want a powerful Necromancer for keeping my skeletons in the fight.
My kingdom build isn't finalized, but enough regions defined to support the army I'm fielding:
Capital: Cursed Burial Ground1 Necromancer Level 1-5, 1 Necromancer Level 1-3, 1 Revenant General or 2 Revenant Captains, 1 Revenant Champion or 1 Skeletal Champion, Skeletal Soldier, Skeletal Spearman, Skeletal Archer
Region 2: Human City, Graveyard1 Human General or 2 Human Captains, 1 Human Champion, 1 Human Spellcaster Level 1 or 2, Human Soldier, Human Spearman, Human Archer, Human Militia --- Ghoul
Region 3: Catacombs, Sepulchre, 1 region undefined1 Revenant Champion, Revenant Warrior, Revenant Line Breaker --- Revenant Cavalry

I'll fill in the last region 3 slot and my region 4 territories when I find other units I want to add to the army. I know I want some artillery, but haven't found a good catapult anywhere yet. Might eventually throw in a dragon, cause why not?
 
I've got a stockpile of Frostgrave and Oathmark boxes waiting for me to get my hobby groove going after some eye surgeries and an big work crunch earlier this year. I'm thinking hard on a dark elf + goblin force. I already have an undead army for KoW that can do double duty. I'd really love a supplement that adds the Frostgrave gnolls as an official Oathmark force, but for the time being, I suppose they can serve as human proxies like they do in Frostgrave.
 
Oathmark's Elves include a monster called a Wulver, described as "creatures that resemble massive, bipedal wolves or dogs". Maybe the gnolls could work for those.
 
We finally got to play our first Oathmark battle today. Sadly, no terrain, not even a textured tabletop, but at least we got our armies on the table and got to test out the rule system.
Oathmark.jpg

Brother fielded an all human list. 20 soldiers, 20 spearmen, two groups of 5 cavalry, three groups of 10 archers. Had a mounted general among one cavalry and a level 3 spellcaster.
I fielded a mostly undead army with some humans archers. Revenant warriors, cavalry, skeletal soldiers, spearmen, and archers, with 2 groups of human archers for support. Characters were a level 3 necromancer and a champion among the revenant warriors.

We called it a victory for the undead horde in turn 6. By that point almost all my skeletons had been destroyed by his cavalry, but his cavalry were overrun by my revenant warriors in a flank attack and his soldiers and spearmen had been pretty badly beaten by my revenant cavalry. Archers on both sides were in decent shape.

Spellcasting had almost no effect on the game. He did get off an improved initiative spell in turn 1 (remains in effect all game, letting him roll 4 initiative dice against my 2 every turn), but despite the odds I still won initiative more turns than him, including a vital roll that allowed the flank attack that destroyed his cavalry. I got off a single reanimate spell that brought back 1 skeleton spearman.

Those skeletons crumbled like dust against the cavalry charges. Lost 7 and 8 in the first two attacks, with a half dozen follow-up deaths due to undead rules (never fail morale checks, but extra deaths occur). I expected them to be weak but I was surprised that spearmen receiving a cavalry charge really aren't much of a match. His cavalry had a +3 on the charge attacks, spear bracing only reduces that to a +2. Doesn't really help spearmen kill cavalry in any meaningful way.

We both really liked the activation rules and the back and forth gameplay, as opposed to one side moving everything before the other side goes. It felt like things moved quickly and kept us both engaged regardless of who was currently doing something. The game really plays fast - a 6 turn battle with 1800 point armies took about 2.5 hours even with a lot of stopping to look up things. And we could pretty much eliminate the lookups by printing out a quick cheat sheet of the special abilities that apply to our respective armies. We'll try that next time.

Overall, very fun game and it was great to have this payoff to the months of building our armies. I don't have room in my current place to get into terrain crafting yet, but I'll at least get some kind of table cover and a few basic terrain pieces to deploy before our next game.
 
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