It is worth noting here that while Oathmark has its own line of miniatures, you can also use whichever line of miniatures you like best. It is miniatures agnostic but their miniatures look great too. I especially like their dwarfs and humans. Now, let’s talk about Kingdom building. Building Your Kingdom Spellcasters are powerful, but expensive characters. You can buy them in levels and the higher the level, the more spells and the more dice you may roll to cast them. But also much more expensive. Spells can only be cast once per Activation per Spellcaster, can make a powerful impression but so far have not been gamechangers. Monsters can be very impressive, like the 800 point Winged Dragon which is practically a small army in itself. However, in a 3000 point average game it will eat up over a quarter of your points, so it better be a gamechanger. That amount of points will buy four (4!) full units of Goblin soldiers! Second, Oathmark ditches Priestley's Law (Only D6 Games Will Sell) and uses D10s. Predictably this will give more gradual and less predictable results. In Oathmark though, all the races know how to get along for the most part. You are battling against kingdoms, not the specific races. Humans don’t hate Orcs here just like Elves don’t hate Dwarfs. What maters is who’s Kingdom do you belong to. You are encouraged to make your Kingdom how you want and to have it contain more than just one race.

In addition, most advertising networks offer you a way to opt out of targeted advertising. If you would like to find out more information, please visit http://www.aboutads.info/choices/or http://www.youronlinechoices.com. Below: the hammerers are primed and spray painted silver. I hadn’t tried a metallic spray before, and this sure saved time in the long run. The spray was a little lighter than my customary Lead Belcher paint, which gave some variety to work with for their armour.That said, I don’t think there would be any issue if you buy the terrain element of the race that allows you the unit and field a human model (but using all of the elf stats and special rules). In fact, the rules allow you to build out your Kingdom like this so you can get the units you want. Why not go with a proxy and use the models you want too? Wrapping it up…

As you prepare to play Oathmark: Battles of the Lost Age, you may be wondering what you need to play the game. Here's an extract from the book looking at what is required in a little more detail. Enter Oathmark: one of several “rank and flank” wargames to fill the vacuum left by Warhammer Fantasy. The Oathmark range offers several chunky boxes of popular fantasy races: elves, humans, undead, lizardmen etc. Their dwarves come in two styles: heavy and light infantry. Hoping for Hammerers and Ironbreakers, I went for the big hitters. Sprues, glorious sprues To start with, I went for 15 two-handed hammerers. I wanted these chaps to be imposing, so I went for the brooding closed helmet look. Here they are assembled, based and ready for priming. Oathmark uses 25mm bases (included in the box) so I had to get some 20mms for Warhammer Fantasy. The dwarves rank up just fine, and now I have 30 spare 25mms. Another happy accident. Slimmer than other dwarves, these rank up just fine. Human heavy cavalry: will be included in the Human Cavalry box (although I dont see any heavy cavalry on the possible box art), or will it became a separate set? If a separate set, will it be the same size as the former ones, or its time for smaller boxes (because 15 Human Heavy Cavalry is a really huge and expensive force)? Or maybe some metal/resin casts with separate horses and riders, maybe separate hands+weapons to combine? If you choose to play by Kingdom building, hopefully this article will help you decide which race to focus on (or if this is a game you want to explore further). What terrain types you choose for your Kingdom dictates what units you can field in your army. If you lose those lands in a campaign game (more on that later), then you can still recruit the troop type from that land but they take a small penalty in their activation value (moral).

The differences in races are notable. Elves tend to be expensive and extremely disciplined elite specialists, are very hard to break, will almost always activate but are never numerous. On the other end of the spectrum there are the goblins, brittle, undisciplined and mediocre at best but cheap enough to field them in hordes. For those that don’t know, the Kingdoms in the core rule book include Dwarf, Human, Elf and Orc/Goblin. Et voila! 15 haughty hammerers ready for war. I’ve enough for 15 more, with lots of leftover bits for conversions. As I look to my greenskin army, I expect many of those heads will end up on spikes

While your human generals may not be as effective at leading a unit of orcs, you can gain access to a plethora of units by mix and matching. The Armies of Oathmark As a note, s pecial thanks goes out to Osprey Games for sending me a copy of the rules for review. Two Ways to Play… For most people, the decision on table size usually comes down to whatever is available. If this is the case, size your armies accordingly. You do not want huge areas of open table space, but you do want to make sure units have plenty of room to manoeuvre. At the end of the day, smaller tables make for shorter, bloodier games; larger tables allow for slower, more tactical battles. It is worth noting that all Oathmark miniatures come unpainted and, in the case of plastic figures, unassembled. So, if you are just starting out, you may also want to invest in some glue, paints, paintbrushes, and other such hobby tools. A Note on Base Size While Bob works extensively with digital design tools, the Dwarfs he designed for North Star Figures were all sculpted by hand, using mainly greenstuff and polymer clays. For me, the Dwarf Infantry models perfectly capture a ‘less is more’ aesthetic, with a deliberate avoidance of the more ‘heroic’ elements that can enter into fantasy models. I was interested to know the inspiration behind the designs, and was afforded the opportunity to ask Bob about this.The Dwarfs in Oathmark have the best overall defense values and the second-best activation (and moral) values in the game. They happen to also be the slowest army in the game and none of their units can take mounts of any kind. Available Units Ghoul: Well, I dont see any feasible combination with other unit types here, and a separate set, just for Ghouls is unlikely. Maybe a smaller box, if there ever be smaller boxes. In my opinion, the most likely here, is a cooperation with Mantic, as by the Frostgrave Undead Encounters set. Now, some of those terrain units give you access to a limited number of units, so you will want to select multiples to add to your ranks. For example, you can field up to 12 Ogres total in your army. A rough hills terrain element lets you take 6. To get the full 12 Ogres in your army, you have to take two sets of rough hills in your Kingdom. This takes away from the other options that you can select because you lose a slot to max out your Ogres.

There are multiple troop types (although not all races have all troop types) like several infantry types (spearmen, linebreakers, militia etc), cavalry (heavy and light, horse and wolf) artillery and a list of aligned and unaligned monsters and creatures that either fight in small units or alone. After miniatures, the most crucial item is a table. It is called tabletop wargaming, after all! Oathmark does not require a specific table size to play, but you do want to make sure you have enough room for the armies you are using. For example, you could play a game with 30 figures per player on a 2’ x 4’ table. A larger game, in which each player has 100 or more figures under their command, would require a larger table: something more like 4’ x 6’. We are getting to misty parts... But there is still one clue: the book art. If you look closely at the book, you can notice, that the box arts are also included in it: double sided prints, with more, differently armed figures. But there are also such pictures, what we haven'tseen on plasticboxes. Yet... I think, that its pretty likely, that we will later! Here is a list of the double sided, box-art-like pictures from the books, with my tip on the possible sets: One of my favourite things about this set of models are the wonderful faces of the Dwarfs, each one full of character and (if a Dwarf can posses such a thing) charm. This was a point I expressed to Bob. One thing that I noticed while reading the book is that some of the models I want to use actually list for the “wrong” armies. I have Ballistae that I want to use in a human army, but they list for the elves. I have been looking at Irish Saga dogs with a handler. Again, I would want to use these in a human army, but the only army with a listing for them is the elves.

A beginning Kingdom contains 10 terrain spots. In the core book, each race has 9 terrain types of terrain available to them (except the Dwarfs who have 8). This means that if you concentrate on just one race, you can have access to all of their units right out of the gate. The following units are available to a Dwarf leader. I will leave the word “Dwarf” out of each entry as it can be assumed that all of the standard units in this list are Dwarfs. I also make mention of their armaments in case you want to see if the model types match up with your army or preconceived notions. Siege rules(I wrote a postabout it, but planning another one, because I started to write my home-brew siege rules)