Giving Oathmark a Spin: Game Review

My Oathmark plastic goblins take Mike's Orcs in the flank.

Pandemic restrictions are being slightly eased here in Ontario, so the Mad Padre came down for a quick overnight visit to eat Indian take out and have a game or two. Mike was keen to try Oathmark, the shiny new rules that all the cool kids are playing. So Friday night, stuffed with curry, we did a small game just to work out activation, combat and shooting. Saturday morning we gave it a bigger spin around the table with bigger armies using equal points.

My army of evil. Left flank.

Right flank. New Vendel goblins in the foreground

Not coming from the Warhammer Fantasy background, these rules are a bit problemmatic for me and my Dragon Rampant armies. They require frontages of 5 figures and multiple ranks, so big WFB armies that have been languishing, can get out and play again. 10 figures is the maximum size for cavalry and 20 figures is the maximum size for infantry units, and small units really just shouldn't bother, they don't seem to have much resilience. So my troops organized by 6s and 12s have issues.

Mike's army of evil. His right wing.

His left wing.

There are some subtle nuances in the design which are interesting. Champions can do some cool stuff, but they aren't overpowering. Generals have interesting command rules. Units within 6 inches of the general's unit get an extra activation dice so are less likely to fail, but also if the general's unit activates then he can immediately activate up to two more units within 6 inches, letting him deliver quite a decisive punch in the middle of the normal each side takes turns activating units.

My Nazgul general leads the human heavy cavalry in a charge smashing through Mike's center.

OK, not quite "smashing". Took a while to bludgeon him down. The wolf riders should have been squishier, but I rolled poorly.

We managed to sort out 1600+ point armies and then play a game within about 3 hours. The unit profiles and math to get to your shooting or combat target numbers can be intimidating at first, but you get the hang of it,or at least I did, and I find math hard at times. But it helped that we were both using orcs and humans. Humans, elves, orcs and goblins are all subtly different which can have an effect once you start rolling the dice. The initiative and activation rolls use 2d10, which is nice. You only have to win one roll, so rolling 2 dice helps avoid the constant roll offs when you tie. For activiating you are also more likely to succeed with 2 chances (or 3 if close to the General), but the Mad Padre and I certainly had our share of dud activation rolls, so friction will still happen. We didn't try magic or special magical items though. But it seems from a cursory look that each race has different magic spells, giving each a different flavour.

Pluses:

• friction in the unit activation
• flanks and ranks
• subtle, but distinct, differences between assorted races
• champions aren't overpowering
• commander's main battlefield role is to actually, you know, command

Minuses

• big units (or maybe this a plus for some readers)
• got to be able to make ranks of 5 figuresso rebasing might be required
• lot of math
• army lists are very pointsy and you need a calculator

I felt honour bound to use my Oathmark goblins and I also deployed my new Vendel Goblins, all in (to me at least) big, chunky 15 figure units. To my delight, none of them totally embarassed themselves in their first game. The Oathmark archers, played as orcs, actually finished off Mike's Rangers and the spear orcs got a couple of good charges in. My Vendel goblin archers managed to kill a few of the enemy too, which made them very happy.

Oathmark plastic archers sieze the hill!

Vendel goblin archers sieze the other hill

Oathmark plastic goblin spearmen drive rangers from the woods, where the archers can then shoot them down.

So will it replace Dragon Rampant, for me? Probably not. I don't want to go down a rabbit hole of bulking up units to 15 or 20 figures and rebasing to allow 5 figure frontages. Will I happily play it with others though? Definitely yes. So if you've got a horde of WFB Night goblins or Skaven looking to get out of the box, Oathmark might just be for you.