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Which fantasy battle with what you already own rules do you prefer and why?

I personally love, love, love Hobgoblin.

It has some slight issues of it's own, like how ranged combat cannot outright kill standard units (only skirmishers) to help force the game to not rely on gun lines and to keep visceral melee combat between troop blocks as the focus of the game. It's not in any way a game breaker, just something unique to the game that might be unexpected to some.

Other than that, the game is excellent. It is an all-encompassing ruleset, by which I mean everything is in one rulebook, from unit creation rules to a terrain and battlefield condition generation system that can make every game feel different even if the same scenario is played back to back. With the unit creation rules, you can really create just about anything with some imagination. I also like how the rules are designed to be quick and decisive when it comes to combat.

There are no unit conditions to keep track of other than "Doom" which functions nicely as both unit health and a morale system, especially with how the systems quickly deals with units being destroyed degrading their nearby allied units.

No rank n' flank game can truly be a "beer and pretzels" level of casual but it comes pretty close.

I haven't played Midgard yet, but it was the one that appealed to me. Strong "dark ages" flavour, a mechanic somewhat similar to Might from LOTR SBG and otherwise relatively simulationist over gamey "grounded" rules.

The way things are atm for me it'll be a while before I get to play. I must pick up the others and have a look. I was disappointed with Oathmark but aspects of Hobgoblin sound appealing.

Was excited for Midgard until I watched the authors' gameplay video where one of them visibly dissociated halfway through and started to forget mechanics which was awkward because there is only one mechanic.

The pot of victory points is crazy clever tho, it's one of those concepts that all game designers from this point on should at least be aware of.

I've played some fantastic battles, which gave us some fun times. Cool movement and formation rules. Perhaps a bit heavy on the damage tracking, and a bit shame stands can't be removed from formations until they all break. Overall cool ruleset though.

Oathmark I've bought, but not yet playtested. Perhaps too restrictive army lists to draw in people with existing collections.

Shoutout to fantasy warband by pendraken. Very light hearted game with wide army selections.

I've just ordered Warhost (expansion for Baron's War, by Hobday & Hicks), which sounds interesting to me.

I tried Hobgoblin, and wasn't that excited by it. A bit too simple, maybe? Perhaps I like the flavor of factions, and am less keen to "build them myself", though I can understand why others might like that.

Oathmark was fun, but after a game or two, our group never picked it up again. Sigh!

Never heard of Fantastic Battles.

Love Oathmark. Simple but very effective mechanics: orders, cascading panic, fast combat resolution. And great campaign rules. Absolutely like it.

The campaign rules for Oathmark are my favourite part, and very portable too. I hacked them out and made a LOTR SBG version.