Oathmark (II)

I got another game of Oathmark awhile back with Nellie.  I ran the same army as before, but broke my 18 figure archer unit into two smaller units of 9, split the 10 cavalry into two units of 5, and turned the Spellcaster Level 2 into two Spellcaster Level 1s.  This gave me more actions per turn and more options than the previous game. 

Gothic cavalry on the left on the advance.

Despite being better acquainted with the rules, this game ended up taking longer than the previous game. This was partially due to a 8-turn scenario played to the end, and also due to a long stoppage in play to confirm that there was in fact no rule saying friendly units could not move within 1" of each other. Still, almost three hours for a game with only 50-70 figures per side seems slow  (at least compare to lightening fast Portable Wargame games!).

And Gothic cavalry on the right on a flank move.

We were using the "Wind and Rain" scenario, where shooting attacks and movement become more and and more difficult over the course of the game.

Elves in a defensive block.

This showed the forward advance of the bulk of my army, and made the shooting of my archers almost completely useless.  Because Elves have a higher base shooting score, they were able to score enough hits to chip away at the humans.

The terrain was working against me here. The Elvish archers have nice clean line of sight all around while mine had a "window" through the two woods.

As you can maybe guess, this game ended in another win for Nellie's elves. I could probably do better hanging back out of archery range, waiting until all my units are as close as possible but still out of range and then having them all advance/attack at the same time. As it was, I allowed the elves to winnow down a few units piecemeal. 

Gothic infantry finally in melee, attacking Elvish left. I need to coordinate this better.

Its still a small sample size, but I also have a nagging feeling that elves are a little overpowered.  I know that having base score of +1 better for activations, melee, and shooting shouldn't make that much of a difference when you're using d10s, but that efficiency feels more like 50% better than 10% better. 

Gothic infantry attacking Elvish center. In distant background you can see what's left of my flanking cavalry attack still engaged with the Elvish left-rear.

Which kind of ties into a fault I see in a lot of these points-based kinds of games where units are not same-same to begin with: a unit getting a better stat (usually modifying a base target number by 1, so +16% probability on a d6 or +10% in the case of a d10) usually only results in a small bump in cost.  The Hail Caesar points system seems a case in point on this, with the points-value difference between a light and heavy infantry unit being quite marginal.  The Lion Rampant family is a little better at the extremes (six foot knigts are worth twice as much as 12 foot yeoman, and statistically feel equally superior) but gets fuzzy in the middle (archers and crossbows cost the same but crossbows feel quite superior on table).

Gothic cavalry attacking Elvish right.

I'm still not entirely sold on Oathmark, since the pace still seems sluggish, and I like games where a side can close with thier opponent quickly.