Is Oathmark a good game? Seems very fun in premise but is it a better option than other similar games? like Conquest or Song of Ice and fire or One page Rules?
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It is way better than asoiaf, but not as good as opr
The frick is Oathmark? Never heard of it. Pitch this game to me OP.
Oathmark is a fantasy miniature wargame by the designer of Frostgrave/Stargrave and published by Osprey. It's mostly classic fantasy, with the main races being dwarves, elves, humans, and orcs/goblins, plus undead in a later supplement. It is a rank-and-flank style of game, with casualty removal. You can use whatever appropriate fantasy miniatures for it, but Osprey and North Star have partnered on a line of official figures for it. I think it exclusively uses d10s.
The big thing that sets it apart from other fantasy wargames is how army construction is done. Every player has a "kingdom" with 10 different territories, and each territory gives you access to certain types and quantities of units. (You can gain extra territories if you are playing a campaign.) You can have a mix of racial territories in your kingdom, but if a territory doesn't match the race of your capital city, it counts as one tier more rare. So for one of your territories in your second tier, you could either get specialists of your main race, or basic troops of another race.
I don't know how it plays, or whether the campaign system is good. But I like the official artwork, and the official plastic kits are pretty good generic fantasy miniatures at good prices. I picked up a few humans, dwarves, and elves for use in Frostgrave and D&D.
The campaign system is good, and each player can be at different stages in there campaign when they fight. As afar as how it plays, its rather good too. I recommend a channel on youtube called "Ash and Stone", he does a lot of solo play for it and its really decent.
I like it. But i think you should ask over at /awg/ OP.
More like LOAFmark. Gottim.
Gottim.
It's Osprey so it has a 75% chance of being good.
They have like 3 bad games and those are still good skeletons, just meatless skeletons.
I dont like it because of the racemixing.
OPR is better
OPR also has that. Up to 25% of your army can be a different book and you can pick two books on top of your main army book meaning half of your human army can be elves and orcs.
Simply don't permit allies and thie doesn't happen, while in Oathmark it's built in.
>like Conquest or Song of Ice and fire or One page Rules?
It is way better than asoiaf,
No it isn’t.
Could you tell me how it is better?
I am playing ASOIAF and I would naturally be interested of what fails for you with asoiaf?
Yes it’s very good but good luck finding someone to play it with.
I love the art they made for it
quite solid and fun mechanics
a few problems with the lists
skeleton archers are so overcosted people thought it must be a typo but apparently not; a couple of other units have similar problems but iverall the lists are pretty neat
>OPR
Is extremely reductive. The rules are basically just Warhammer with alternating activations and every trace of character filed off of the armies. There's one homosexual on here who works for the company and relentlessly shills it. It works, and it's playable, but remains just playing a grossly simplified version of Warhammer Fantasy. Relatively cheap and minis-agnostic.
>Conquest
Has some excellent rules. The company running it are as exploitative and scummy as Games Workshop, but without the model quality to go with it. It's a shame, because they do have some interesting concepts. The game is extremely expensive outside the starter box, has the usual copy+paste body issues of a lot of monopose CAD sculpts, and the miniatures are almost all unusable in anything else because they're sculpted in damn near Green Army Men scale.
>ASoIaF
Solid rules. Company running it normally pumps-and-dumps rulesets without warning, but seem to be committed to actually supporting the game for once. Again, models run a bit larger-scale than normal but not nearly as badly as Conquest. They're also much better sculpted. Heavy emphasis on a side deck of characters and politics cards that you can use to influence the actual battle. If you're a fan then it's worth getting, otherwise it's not really anything special.
>Warlords of Erewhon
Is a much better adaptation/distillation of old Wahammer rules than OPR, made by Rick Priestly. It's designed to let you take an Old/Middlehammer or historical army off the shelf, add a wizard or cleric, and start fighting. It doesn't stand up too well to people deliberately trying to cheese it. Also very cheap, since there's only one book
>The 9th Age
You remember that greasy fricker who had the army of 600 Skaven and 150 Dark elves in 8e WHF and treated 4th place in a tournament as a deep personal offense that ruined his month? Imagine that he went into an autistic trance and rewrote WHF to be his perfect tourney ruleset.
>What is Oathmark?
An Iron/Dark Ages game that's loosely intended to mirror LotR in the Age before the books and movies. You command alliances of various races. Rank-and-flank, alternating activations with gambling and command point systems. Campaign play is a core part of the system. Minis-agnostic, with 4 books currently out and another on the way at the end of the year. Most people use 2-3 books (Main Rules, Oathbreakers and Bane of Kings) and ignore the first supplement
>What does it do well?
It's very.. quick is the wrong word. But unencumbering to play. You roll a max of six dice at once. It rewards good coordination and using realistic tactics like pinning enemy units with ranged fire before they can move up to support overextended troops. There are only a few counters and no proprietary bullshit involved.
It's a lot of fun building up kingdoms, and army building/expansion is constrained enough to force some tough choices while still open enough to handle multiple different viable armies. The rules are also flexible enough to let you run (say) Skaven as Goblins or Lizardmen as Elves.
>What does it do poorly?
Many of the scenarios are heavily biased to the defender. This can stagnate campaigns.
In addition, a couple scenarios become literally unwinnable if someone spams minimum-sized units. Very small games (<50% of the standard points limits) break down when monsters and artillery show up. It's easy to work around these, you just have to not be a dick. Likewise, very large games become complete clusterfricks. The way retreat/engagement mechanics are abstracted gets very awkward on a crowded field.
Many fantasy archetypes flat-out don't exist because of the setting. If you want guns or mutated Chaos, look elsewhere.
Single-race armies usually have 2-3 weaknesses, which the rules assume you're going to cover with some allies.
<cont>
Sorry, got delayed by my wife making a sudden and not unwelcome demand of me.
At any rate.
Oathmark runs with units of 5-20 men and some singles. Cavalry is units of 5-10. Monsters usually run solo or in groups of 1-3. Full-size army runs around 60-80 figs, with an extreme horde build maybe pushing 100 and an extreme elite cavalry force down into the 30s.
By contrast, Erewhon uses skirmish order and units of 5-10 models for an army of ~50, while ASoIaF runs about the same as Oathmark and Conquest is in the ~60 model range.
Overall I'd say that Oathmark is the best standalone game out of the options if you don't already have an army, or if you want a good midpoint of tactical depth vs. play complexity. It's not the cheapest, but it's quite reasonable, has active support and accommodates most fantasy ranges with little or no hacking. The company makes extremely good minis if you want them. The technology level is pretty unique and handles a major fantasy world well without having to pay the licensing markup. The game doesn't tack on a big sack of extra bullshit parts to play. It handles campaigns reasonably well if not perfectly, and the level of abstraction is great for a group of 3-5 players without a dedicated GM.
With an existing army and no interest in campaigns, then Erewhon is pretty good. You do have to mock up the order dice and pin markers on your own, but that's like $15 and an hour's work with a sharpie.
OPR and Kings of War are for guys who don't want campaigns, have very limited time to play, and don't care much about tactical or rules depth, just wanna slam armies together and roll fistfuls of dice. KoW also has tourneygay support.
Conquest has very solid rules. If you really want just one game and like the look of it, cool.
ASoIaF is really only worth it to a fan of the minis or the books. I'm neither, but I respect people who go for it. Again, the game is pretty solid and has some interesting side stuff.