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.

Oathmark

Because it is miniatures neutral, and has an early Dark Ages vibe, I decided to give the Oathmark fantasy battle rules a try.  This way, I can get my late Roman era Goths, Franks, and Saxons, as well as Romano-British stuff, on the table a little more often, and meet other players who may not be historically-oriented.  So I set a game up with Nellie (who I met through Saga club, so there you go), against their LOTR Elves.

My Gothic infantry in their starting position.

Oathmark uses d10s and a I-activate-a-unit-you-activate-a-unit system, which seems to be emerging as the new trending thing in games design. You make an activation roll for that unit, but you roll two dice and only need one to beat the target number. You frequently get a third die because a commander is nearby. If the activation is successful you get two actions for that unit (so move-and-turn, or shoot-and-move, or cast-a-spell-and-move). If you fail the activation, you still get one action, usually with limitations. 

Gothic infantry advances across the open ground.

As you can guess, fail-an-activation-but-still-get-to-do-something-just-not-as-good keeps the game moving at decent clip. In our game, I tried sending my cavalry on a flank march around wooded areas, while my infantry came up the center to keep the Elves occupied. Elves are good archers and quickly started picking off 3 figures here and 3 figures there. Gothic archers didn't shoot as well and I kept putting my wizard in the wrong place so he could not be as effective as he could be (you need line of sight to cast spells - most of which give boosts or minuses to units).

Gothic infantry, led by a champion, closes in on Elvish infantry.

After picking off a lot of Gothic infantry with archery, the Goths were able to pull off a flank attack that seemed very underwhelming at first, until it triggered a chain reaction of pushbacks amongst three separate Elvish units, which gave the flank attack a nice chaotic result.

Goth infantry making flank attack.

Then, finally, the Gothic cavalry landed its punch on some Elvish archers, and showed why they cost twice as much as infantry, almost completely destroying an Elvish archer unit in one combat.

Gothic cavalry.

Unfortunately for me, by this time the Goth infantry was fairing quite poorly, so it was too little, too late for the Gothic cavalry.

Disordered Gothic infantry.

The champion-led Goth infantry broke, the infantry with a captain was quickly reduced. The cavalry became disordered and was then decimated by archery.

"Run away! Run away!"

So, a convincing Elvish win, and I can not blame the dice, which is always a plus. I probably could have been more crafty, letting my cavalry get into better position on the flank before advancing the infantry, and tried to time both closing into melee at about the same time, whereas instead I basically split my forces and allowed Nellie to beat each in turn. I also ran my infantry units on the big side: 18-19 figures each, which is fine for infantry but archers can probably be in smaller 10 (or even less) figure units, as the most dice a unit can ever generate for shooting or melee is 5 (which is the troops in the front rank).  Nellie's elves were in smaller archer units, which gave them more shooting attacks/options in a round, versus my single shot by an oversized unit.

Will play again, and look forward to hopefully a quicker game as the learning curve diminishes.