Oathmark: 2500pts, Isengard vs Human-Elves Alliance

Wednesday I played yet another game of Oathmark, this time Emil commanded an alliance of my Gondor, Rohan, and High Elf forces against the same Isengard army that I used against Ulolkish's Dwarves.

This time I decided to try a refused right flank, and a sweeping left flank attack with some Wargs and Warg Riders through the woods at the far end of the table,

The first turn was mostly 'Forward unto Battle', except for my Shaman, who failed his Activation Roll on three dice...

Turn 2 both armies advanced, and my Shamanmade his signature move and laid out a Smoke screen to prevent the High Elf Archers (blue unit facing my right) doing their thing.

In Turn 3 I moved a bit further forward than first intended in the center to get the units there protected by the hill (my Shaman had failed his activation, and thus had not been able to conjure up more Smoke).

Turn 4 saw the first real fighting.

The Rohan Swordsmen burst through the Smoke and into the Dunlendings and breaking them.

Which resulted in my Shaman suddenly finding himself in something of a predicament.

But my Orcs moved forward and thus offered some protection.

The Elf Linebreakers smashed into the Uruk-Hai Pikemen, and did not fare well.

The battlefield at the end of Turn 4. The sunlight falling in through one of the roof windows was quite annoying at this point.

We did not play through Turn 5, - when the Elven Bowmen marched past the smoke, they were attacked by the Wargs and Disordered - and soon after they were Broken by Orcish arrows, which made my opponent toss in the towel.

AT this point we had been at it for about 4 hours (interrupted by me picking up Anna from school), and Emil clearly found this amount of time too much for a game.

As I have stated in an earlier post, one of my concerns regarding Oathmark is the pace of the game, especially because of the somewhat clunky combat rules, and both of my two latest games have, indeed, lingered on (well, the last one would have, had not Emil given up) beyond a reasonable  time span.

My only fast game was the 2000 points played against Kevin, and that one contained  far less units. I think a 'Mass Battle Game' as Oathmark is proclaimed to be should be able to handle at least a score of units aside without lasting more than an evening, and I cannot see that happening with this game.

I still have to play more games and get better acquainted with the rules (although I had to look up a rule only once or twice during this game) before I decide whether to keep Oathmark as a 'go to' game, go back to tweaking God of Battles, or maybe even do a mash-up of GoB and Oathmark, as suggested by Ulolkish.

2019-08-17: God of Battles, Undead vs Blood Gorged Lizardmen

This may be the last time I have played God of Battles. With each game I play, it becomes more and more obvious to me that the combat system (and probably the whole points system) is heavily flawed, and if I cannot convince my gaming buddies to adapt some changes, the game is dead for me. Period.

The biggest problem is the Defence Dice procedure that means that it is the unit size, and not the number of hits suffered, that determines the number of 'saves' rolled, which means that a small unit with Defence 4 is prone to loose more models than a large unit with Defence 4 if they suffer the same amount of hits. This has to change if I am to even consider playing this game again.

There is a lot of things I love about the game, especially the very simple movement rules (although the rules for Formed Units lead to some very awkward situations now and then, and have to be tweaked a bit), but I am tired of seeing my bread-and-butter troops get cut to pieces by large Loose Units and/or single models with a psychotic amount of Defence Dice (T'lekkan Behemoth, for instance) without having the slightest chance of even inflicting a single wound on them.

Well, I have written down some suggestions for rules changes, and submitted them to one of my gaming buddies - we shall have to see how they are received.

On to the AAR:

The above picture shows the  battlefield with roughly half my army on the table while the next two show both armies fully deployed.

Turn 1 I had my Chariots and Knights speed forward on the left, while my infantry tried to get in position in the gaps between the jungle patches and ruins - in a kind of Refused Flank strategy.

The Lizardmen generally surged forward.

Turn 2 started well for me with an abhorrent dice roll (I forgot to add the 2 extra dice for Charge!), when a Chariot with a Blacksoul crashed into the enemy. Blue hit on 3, Red on 4....

When the other Blacksoul in Chariot attacked, I remembered the Charge! bonus - not that it mattered much...

The Chariot saves at 4+, which statistically should mean that half the defence dice should work, but never tell me the odds, as the universe does not work that way.

One of my Chariots was subsequently charged by some Temple Guards, and when it got to strike back, at least the Chariot (blue dice)  performed as could be expected, while the Blacksoul just barely managed to scratch an opponent.

I do not remember what this roll was for - looks like a Chariot save - but try counting the sixes rolled in all the pics so far...

This was the lay of the land after Turn 2. As far as I remember, both my Chariots were gone (40 pts C&S), and I had annihilated one unit of Temple Guard Watchers (12 pts, I think).

I am not sure of the sequence here, as this looks conspicuously like another Blacksoul/Chariot attack roll gone bad. It has been a couple of days since we played, and, frankly, I did my best not to think about the game until I sat down yesterday to process the photos.

In Turn 3, my knights managed to dispatch the remaining Temple Guard Watchers without sustaining a single casualty (!) themselves, but at the same time the Saurus Ravagers reached my infantry line, and the carnage began...

We opened Turn 4 with my Knights attacking and slaughtering half a Skink Archer unit, and the Ravagers almost wiped out my Skeleton Horde. Emil agreed that any dispense was gone from the game, as the Ravagers would wither down my Skeletons faster (and longer) than my Knights could hope to kill reptiles, and we called it a day.

This session completely killed my desire for playing wargames - God of Battles in its current form in particular - and just as important for painting minis, as I have absolutely no other reason for painting minis than using them for gaming.

Bad day for my hobby mojo.

2019-08-06: Age of Fantasy Skirmish AAR

Emil and I duked it out in the garage attic once more - he playing the staunch defenders of Gondor, and I the devious Goblin horde.

We played the standard 4 Rounds.

We rolled only 3 objectives this time, and Emil won the deployment roll-off.

The first couple of photos show the table before deployment (almost - we had just begun placing units when I remembered to pull out the camera).

The next three pics show the forces deployed.

This photo I snapped to make sure that all Objective Counters were shown (there is one in the ruined throne room upper center right).

In Round 1 both forces sped forward - I was able to secure two Objectives, while Emil took the last.

In Round 2, the fighting commenced. The Gondorian wizard hit one of my Trolls with a Fireball which left it flat on its back. My Shaman failed horribly to cast Glare on the enemy Wizard.

I could not defend the Troll, and he was quickly dispatched at the beginning of Round 3. My other Troll took its place, was also hit by a Fireball, but shook off most of the effect. My Shaman failed another casting attempt.

Early in Round 4 it became clear that Emil could not shift the Goblins from any of the two Objectives I held, and we agreed to call it a day, with a 2-1 win for the Moria horde. Before that, my Shaman actually managed to Glare the Wizard, and managed to inflict a whooping 3 hits (on 2d6), and one of those was saved, leaving the Wizard to cast another spell.

The game could have gone either way, but I succeeded in taking and holding the two Objectives closest to my side of the table with the majority of my warband. I need to think up some alternative scenarios, though, as the game may get a bit samey.

2019-07-03: SAGA Age of Magic, Goblins versus Gondor

Today, I introduced Emil to AoM; I had prepared two 5-points lists (Horde and Kingdoms), but without any fantasy elements (basically, it was like playing with 'historical' warbands).

I skipped the 2nd Ed. rule about having to end the movement of each model within S of the first moved model (I plan to go back and also play with the 1st Ed. rule that only models within a certain range of enemies add dice to the Combat Pool), and this eased Movement quite a lot.

Emil was 1st player, and we both advanced; I even used some extra SAGA Dice activations to move a bit further.

The lines closed in.

The Gondorians kept Manoeuvering closer...

...while my Goblins rested to get rid of some Fatigue.

The Gondorians converged on my center. We did not adhere rigidly to the rules on gaps between units.

There was blood. Much Blood. First, my Hearthguards charged a warrior unit, rolling perhaps 20 dice, inflicting 4 hits. The, my Warlord charged the same unit, also failing to wipe it out. Finally, my Hearthguards took a Fatigue to charge again, this time annihilating the stubborn Gondorians.

Then there was more fighting. My last Hearthguard barely survived a Hearthguard versus Hearthguard scrap, after fending off another Warrior unit. On my right, my Warriors beat the crap out of some cocky Humans.

The Levies on both sides moved towards the center (neither side had fired a single shot), but the dwindling number of SAGA Dice was beginning to be felt.

Emil went all in on attacking my Warlord, but failed to kill him (he was saved twice by his Resilience). On the end of Emil's turn, both Warlords were Exhausted, and it began to resemble the old Robin and Marian movie. We called it a day, and did not count the Massacre Points.

We both had some horrific dice rolling at certain stages in the game, but Emil suffered badly from his as it occurred late in the fight, and thus was rather decisive.

Understandably, Emil was not all that excited about the game, but he agreed to try it again when we meet up after the summer holidays. If he still dislikes SAGA, I shall read up on Age of Fantasy (non-skirmish version), and see how many units I can field for that game (or how many I have to paint up - I intend to get some of the new Citadel Contrast Paints to use for unit painting, so as to be able to get some models ready for the table faster).