Oathmark - Who's Playing?

[Hobgoblin]

You could always fill the gaps with some empty bases with grass and some spare shields and weapons. It would mark casualties.

That's a really nice idea! I'll have a think about doing that for my penny-based orcs and their sabots.

[zemjw]

I am reading the rules just now and hope to maybe play a test game soon(ish).

I have a lot of old school dwarfs based on 20mm x 30mm card bases (old Wargames Research Group Ancient LMI/LHI sizes). I'm trying to decide whether to attempt to rebase(*) some of them or just go with what's there. I have test 3d printed a movement tray for them, so I guess I'll see how it looks during the game.

(*) a lot are pre-slotta, which is fine. However, I removed all the slotta tabs on the newer ones and pushed the figure into a lump of milliput to form a base. I am concerned that removing some of those figures from their existing bases will also remove them from their milliput bases. I painted these in the 80s using enamels, so the chances of being able to colour match to fix any damage is pretty tiny

[Hobgoblin]

I wouldn't worry about rebasing - and certainly not until you've played a fair few games.

As the frontages are much more standardised (25 or multiples) than in games like Warhammer (20, 25, 40, etc.), you've actually got much more leeway to use non-standard bases. That's because you know what the frontage is supposed to be, and you also know that one unit engaging another head on with a full front rank rolls five dice. So whether your unit has a frontage of 100 or 125 mm doesn't really matter. It's not like Warhammer, in which certain combats might see dwarfs take advantage of their smaller 'footprint' to get more attacks than their orcish opponents.

[Historiker]

What Hobgoblin said!

I would urge you not attempting rebasing and thereby risking damage to your minis. Oathmark is very flexible in that regard and I would make full use of it!

[zemjw]

It wasn't something I was looking forward to, so good to know I should be able to avoid it It was more the depth of the base than the frontage that had me concerned, but that's probably less important.

There's more than enough to do without making more work for myself

[Ogrob]

You might want to make a mark on your movement trays where the unit is supposed to end, that way you can have correct line of sight arcs and such.

[Mr. White]

Several more thoughts this morning as I'm heading deep into Joseph A. McCullough's games. I have RoSD and ordering Oathmark today

1) How large of a role do heroes/leaders play in Oathmark? are they single models, separate from the unit like Warmaster or something? About how strong is a hero? equivalent to half a unit? a quarter?

2) I see people use Frostgrave's Gnolls, but has anyone considered the snake-men or tribal boxes from Ghost Archipelago for some exotic looking units? Too far removed from the Dark Ages/Tolkien look of Oathmark?

3) With Oathmark being army battles and RoSD being hereo-party level co-op, I feel like I should get Frostgrave for warband skirmishing in between the two. Not super into the new look of that game though. Particularly the font on the title, looks like a Disney movie. An odd thing to object to for sure, but it is what it is...

4) This is me buying a lot of titles from Joseph A. McCullough...a game designer I've not played a game from before. With Frostgrave 2nd newly released, RosD seeing new scenarios, Oathmark on the march, and all the development being done for the upcoming Stargrave...how can one man keep up with all of this? How can all of this be tested well? I'm not into the competitive scene for any of these titles, so perfect balance isn't anything I'm expecting, but this seems a lot for one person to take on at one time. Can anyone speak to how deep his playtest/assistant pool is? I'm still likely in for these games, but this does seem quite the workload...

[Ogrob]

Several more thoughts this morning as I'm heading deep into Joseph A. McCullough's games. I have RoSD and ordering Oathmark today

1) How large of a role do heroes/leaders play in Oathmark? are they single models, separate from the unit like Warmaster or something? About how strong is a hero? equivalent to half a unit? a quarter?

It is not hero-hammer. Most heroes exept spell casters will be deployed in a unit and have to stay with the unit for the game. The command ability is the big one I think, allowing you to activate two units in one go.

3) With Oathmark being army battles and RoSD being hereo-party level co-op, I feel like I should get Frostgrave for warband skirmishing in between the two. Not super into the new look of that game though. Particularly the font on the title, looks like a Disney movie. An odd thing to object to for sure, but it is what it is...

Give it a go, it's a great game.

4) This is me buying a lot of titles from Joseph A. McCullough...a game designer I've not played a game from before. With Frostgrave 2nd newly released, RosD seeing new scenarios, Oathmark on the march, and all the development being done for the upcoming Stargrave...how can one man keep up with all of this? How can all of this be tested well? I'm not into the competitive scene for any of these titles, so perfect balance isn't anything I'm expecting, but this seems a lot for one person to take on at one time. Can anyone speak to how deep his playtest/assistant pool is? I'm still likely in for these games, but this does seem quite the workload...

It seems like Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago is getting put on ice for a bit. No new titles announced that we know of. Balance in the games is generally decent, if not perfect. I have a lot of faith in Joe's game design, the vast majority of my gaming is with systems he has made.

[Historiker]

A few thoughts not as a direct answer to one of your questions but more about the general idea of getting into a lot of games at the same time:

Frostgrave and Oathmark are very, very different games. The fact that they have been written by the same gentleman is only indirectly visible via same shared traits like

a) being more of less figure agnostic

b) being very easy to learn

c) being very open to house-ruling and modification

d) requiring no huge buy in to get a full game going

e) being light on fluff but strongly emphasizing narrative play

f) being actively supported by Osprey / Northstar with lots of new stuff coming out

If I were you I would just leave it at Oathmark and Rangers of Shadow Deep as the miniatures complement each other very well and you would effectively be working towards completing two gaming projects whilst assembling a standard army.

Getting into another Frostgrave-bases ruleset next to Rangers is of course an option but it is a path that could lead to what I call "wargaming-burnout" with too many projects going on.

Frostgrave does look miniatures-light at first glance but there are for example the monsters and the ruins of the city which can really escalate the scope of the project... you have been warned!

The questions leading my decision (if I were you) would be:

1. What game am I really interested in getting into if I could choose only one?

2. Is this a game for which I have or would find players (or does this not even matter)?

Hope that helped in some way!

[Historiker]

PS: I totally get what you mean in regards to the Frostgrave art design. I am also very particulate about such things and I find the more grounded design of Oathmark (and the general artstyle of RoSD) much more pleasing to the eye and aesthetic sense.

[Mr. White]

sound advice, Historiker.

It just seemed to make sense that if I had the models for Oathmark and RoSD....I must also have the models for something that sits in the middle like Frostgrave

[Historiker]

In case the decision is very difficult I would just build the first box you like. You could easily use the models for any of the rulesets mentioned.

And as to the rulesets, the core rulebooks are not that expensive. It is getting all the expansions that might be. A danger for every completionist 

[Hobgoblin]

1) How large of a role do heroes/leaders play in Oathmark? are they single models, separate from the unit like Warmaster or something? About how strong is a hero? equivalent to half a unit? a quarter?

They can be either free-ranging or embedded, but will probably be the latter in bigger games (for protection). But lone heroes, especially if mounted, could be quite useful for flanking, etc. Their power varies a fair bit by 'rank'.

2) I see people use Frostgrave's Gnolls, but has anyone considered the snake-men or tribal boxes from Ghost Archipelago for some exotic looking units? Too far removed from the Dark Ages/Tolkien look of Oathmark?

I've got quite a few square-based snakemen and was planning to use them in Oathmark. I don't really care about the 'look' of a ruleset; if the rules are good, I'm more than happy to use them with whatever figures I've got based appropriately. Chaos warriors (as human warriors) and gnolls (as human rangers) have featured in our games so far!

Skimming the rulebook again during a coffee break, I was struck by one possible weakness in the rules: too little difference between unit types. For example, it seems to me that heavy human cavalry are no better against goblin soldiers than regular human cavalry; both have the same Fight score, both have Charge (3), and both have Defence sufficiently high that the goblins will be hitting only on 10s. That seems a bit odd, as you'd expect heavy cavalry to be at their most deadly against small and lightly armoured foes.

Another point that occurred to me was the absence of heavy spearmen among the infantry options. It's easy to see what the profile should be - same as 'warrior' but with Brace - and presumably, it's just a point more (or maybe two, if equipment costs scale), in line with the soldier/spearman profile.

I wonder, therefore, if the game could do with an open points system, to facilitate fielding heavy spearmen or lightly armoured but aggressive units with two-handed weapons (again, easily extrapolated from the existing profiles). 

[Historiker]

@Hobgoblin:

Funny that you should mention unit differentiation. I had been thinking about the very same thing while on my walk around the block on lunch break.

To me it also seems to be the case that some units have very little differentiation. I wasn't even thinking about human heavy cavalry vs human light cavalry but also for example about let's say a unit of Rangers between the factions. The stats on elves are higher and the units more expensive but the special rules seem to be the same.

This probably is the case because there was the need to support every faction with the "standard" troops every player would expect. It also could be just a matter of perception because I have yet to read the rules completely in a quiet setting.

Right now this is perceived lack of differentiation is not a problem for me as I am only starting out and these "simpler" mechanics will make it easy to teach new players (which I hopefully will find).

As to the future: I think that the game will be developed in such a way that almost every supplement will bring new rules to further differentiate units. Whether these differentiations would be faction based or meta-rules (as they have been so far in Battlesworn) I could not possibly say.

[Andrew_McGuire]

The absence of unit differentiation had also occurred to me as a rather serious omission, not only in armour and weapon type, but in training and experience. As things stand, an infantry unit of a given race is identical to every other infantry unit of that race, whether we consider them to be levies, militia, professionals, or household troops. The Battlesworn supplement has rules or an individual unit to progress over a campaign, but otherwise fails to address the issue. 

It shouldn't be too difficult to fix with house rules, but for an otherwise impressive and reasonably comprehensive set of rules, this really should be built in, in my opinion.