Oathmark Offers Big Fantasy Battles & Great Campaigns
What is special about Oathmark? Its campaign system, its flexibility, and its simplicity. Osprey Games published a winner with this game here.
How You Build Your Kingdom Matters
If you look at Oathmark, you are looking into a fun game with lots of variety in how you can play. Do you want to field Elves, you can. Dwarfs, you can do that too. How about Orcs and Goblins? Yep. Humans. Yes. Best of all, you can field them all together. You want to field a Human Army with Orcs and Goblins as allies? You can.
The way armies are built is by territories. Before the game, you design your Kingdom. Which lands you choose for the Kingdom defines what units you can take and in what numbers. As you battle, you work your way towards the enemy’s capital. If you take their capital, you win. As you take their lands, the enemy loses some of their abilities for the correlated units from those lands. They can still use those units, they are just not as good until they take the proper lands back.
If you are interested in how the different races play, and how to build your models as “What you See is What You Get”. The expansion Oathbreakers even adds in the Undead and the related lands that you can take into your kingdom. While the armies do not need to be WYSIWYG, it can make it more fun.
Now, what about the rules?
Quick Overview of The Rules
This game is not a “buckets of dice” type of game. Generally, you will be rolling a maximum of 5 dice at a time. Speaking of dice, this game uses 10-sided dice. Models are based on 25mm bases and work in ranks of 5 up to 4 lines deep. Larger figures go into smaller units.
The sample page above lets you know how to base your figures. If your figures are already based, that is okay. The objective is to have fun. Try to make what you have work.
To activate your unit, you roll against an activation number. If you pass, good. If you fail, then your actions are limited. That said, it is not all or nothing, which is nice versus some other gaming systems.
When it comes to combat, both sides fight. First, you determine how many dice to roll. This is determined by your front rank. Then you determine the target number you need to hit. The sample page below takes the rules even further.
The page above is a sample of the combat rules in the book.
If either side takes casualties, then that side has to take a morale test. The unit that scores the most hits against the enemy then gets a few options in what is called the “pushback” stage.
Shooting works out very much the same way (but without pushback).
Advanced Rules
The Author of Oathmark is very much about having fun with your friends using the miniatures that you have. If you want to keep things simple, you can, but if you want to take things to a higher level, he presents optional advanced rules. Below is a sample page of some of those more advanced rules.
A sample of some of the more advanced rules in the book.
Beautiful Artwork
As with most Osprey Games titles, the artwork in the book is fabulous. Below are a couple of samples.
A goblin Slinger. This is one of the units you can take if you so choose.
Orc Archers might not be the best, but they are fierce and their artwork looks awesome!
These pictures are but a small sample of what is in the book. If you want more, be sure to check the book out. It is a really pleasing experience to flip through and read.
Wrapping it up…
If you are after a fun, simple game with campaign rules. Check Oathmark out. You get to build a Kingdom and attack your friends. How you build your Kingdom affects the armies you can take. As you take lands from opponents, you can start to bring elements from their army into yours.
Overall, it is a game that I am a fan and reading through the book really fires up my imagination. If you want to learn more about the game, I have a ton of Oathmark material on my personal site. I also have the full review too.
Special thanks goes out to Osprey Games for sending me this book for review, and for giving me permission to use their images in this post today.
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Until next time, Happy Gaming Everyone!!!
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