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How is Oathmark doing?

What is the state of "bring the models you have" rank and flank games?
For someone who's fed up with GW and finding KoW a bit too... technical.

Not sure, as I live in the UK and only know of one local shop that at least stocks the range.

I think if you look for the historical groups, who are more likely to be reading Wargames Illustrated than White Dwarf, you might find others playing Oathmark. There's also Dragon Rampant which is based on the popular Lion Rampant...

SamusDrake wrote:
Not sure, as I live in the UK and only know of one local shop that at least stocks the range.

I seem to hear about the models far more than the game. They're good value.

I have a crapton of the minis, because they're great if you like generic fantasy.

I also have the book. I decided not to go with it for fantasy mass battle because I felt the army lists were pretty half baked, little evidence of testing.

 Da Boss wrote:
I have a crapton of the minis, because they're great if you like generic fantasy.

I also have the book. I decided not to go with it for fantasy mass battle because I felt the army lists were pretty half baked, little evidence of testing.

The monsters/large units seem to be kinda randomly assigned.

What are you playing instead?

I mostly play with one other guy and he just accepts whatever I put in front of him, so I'm hacking Hail Caesar to fit fantasy games. Nothing dramatic, mostly just subbing units in and a little change here and there.

Another option would be Age of Fantasy Regiments but it's also somewhat half assed.

I used to play KoW in 2e, but I've sort of lost track of it now and don't feel like getting into it again. I'd play 2e KoW again though, it's a fun game.

I enjoy it quite a bit, although I haven't gotten to play it as much as I'd like. There's a couple of units that people tend to agree are a little wonky; I think the only real standouts I remember are dragons (truly monstrous), surma (somewhat overtuned), and skeleton archers (bad and the unit entry tells you they're bad). A bit less balanced than it could be, but much better than certain market leaders The rank and file tends to only differ from the baseline by a stat point or two.

I think the real reason you don't see much of it out and about, besides not having GW's presence, is because it's built around a narrative campaign between two players. Pickup games are possible, but you're losing half the system if you do that, and it's not designed for tournaments at all. The kind of thing that would likely have more online space on a blog than reddit, if that makes sense.

Me and my gaming buddy embraced it and it's a great system. Very tactical, the game size is also quite nice. We take our lotr minis to play it and unlike War of the Ring which would be the obvious contender, you don't need 36 miniatures to field a medium sized unit, but rather 10. Or even just three for Cavalry.
The real highlight of the system is the kingdom system which is basically your FOC, but it's also much more as it made us build a whole world and the kingdoms of our factions around it.
I can't really compare it to KOW or Warhammer because I only know these systems from battlereports or reviews. I can just say it's the rank&file system we embraced and we like it very much. Compared to what I see in WHFB batreps the maneuvering seems superiour in Oathmark, as well as the unit activation system.

 Da Boss wrote:
I used to play KoW in 2e, but I've sort of lost track of it now and don't feel like getting into it again. I'd play 2e KoW again though, it's a fun game.

I just got back into KoW after dropping out mid 2nd (just due to time and lack of players, nothing else). Working out what the latest iteration was with the compendium, CoK, errata and their army builder was moderately annoying and I don't think the keyword system adds much beyond unnecessary WYSIWYG complications, but it's still a tight and fun system and they got rid of the corkscrew charge finally.

Playing 2nd is of course entirely valid also, but you miss out on some new factions and units.

 Da Boss wrote:
I have a crapton of the minis, because they're great if you like generic fantasy.

I also have the book. I decided not to go with it for fantasy mass battle because I felt the army lists were pretty half baked, little evidence of testing.

When asked about that on Facebook, the author said he did no testing whatsoever.

 DarkBlack wrote:
How is Oathmark doing?

What is the state of "bring the models you have" rank and flank games?
For someone who's fed up with GW and finding KoW a bit too... technical.

I have around 10 games of Oathmark under my belt, playing as and against Orcs, Goblins, Humans and the Oathbreakers (the undead), some of the pictures below. It's an OK system that does what it aims to do relatively well, but we were done with it after a duel mini campaign of several battles and feeling we've seen all the game had to offer. It's simple and plays well, a lot of rules are straightforward and concise which is rarity in wargaming rules writing, but I'd say there are also significant drawbacks.
1. The balance is lacking. Due to the limitations on the amount of dice you can throw at any given time, cheap massed units don't have any advantages over extremely elite heavy cavalry and monsters, and get trampled hard with no chance of dealing meaningful damage in return (until heavy artillery arrives). Frankly, it's a common balance decision that I constantly see in mass battle fantasy games to the point I'm tempted with writing my own ruleset that finally has normal infantry actually doing something useful for once.
2. A lot of the options are completely interchangeable, playing as humans is virtually identical to playing as Elves or Goblins. A lot of the faction's power comes into play once you bring the monsters in, but fielding a giant wooly rhino is not exactly playing to the thematic dwarf army's strength.
3. The Undead rules are very awkward and basically force their opponent to play in a singular way, because shooting is severely diminished against them, but melee deals bonus damage instead.
4. It's a very minor detail, but some of the addon ideas are very confusing. For example, what's the point of Battlesworn or whatever was the name of the water expansion? Why was it even written? 2/3 of that book was about adding water monsters, river terrain and describing (very barebones) rules on conducting naval battles and amphibious assaults. Are there seriously a lot of people with huge rank-and-file fantasy army collections and 10+ identical huge regiment-sized barges lying around who can't wait to recreate giant ancient naval battles in 1:56 fantasy scale?

Despite what I've written, it's not a bad game, but it certainly didn't keep us engaged for very long.

When asked about that on Facebook, the author said he did no testing whatsoever.

It really, really shows once you get to the design monstrocities like Burrow Worm from the Oathbreakers list.

I'll have to say so far we didn't have problems with balance, really. That's not to say there aren't some problematic profiles in the game, like artillery and some monsters, but these are easily balanced if you let your opponent know that you're bringing some of them, but I had similar experiences in literally every wargame I've played
When doing a field battle our experience rather was that the balance is really good in that we just threw stuff against each other we wanted to field and the result was very close.
Scenarios on the other hand have more of an impact, most scenarios with attacker/defender put the attacker in an uphill battle if he doesn't build his whole army around the scenario.

It's pretty interesting to hear your perspective. If I was gonna play, it'd probably be in a short campaign as well, but I don't know that my current group can really support that (I do all the miniatures and scenery, and people use my stuff to play).

I do want to like it, because it has some cool ideas. But I wasn't too keen on buying a load of expansions for it either.

I don't play Oathmark but I find some of their books potentially interesting with rules useful for campaigns stretching further than single or a few battles.

I played a lot and I really enjoy it. It's fast, easy to grasp with enough tactical depth.

It is false that the game had no playtest: it has been postponed at least on time for playtest reasons. It is true, otherwise, thet the author said balance was not a major concern.

Clearly the game shines in campaign mode.

I play Oathmark for friendly and campaign games and Kings of War in tournaments