60. I´m not dead (yet)

3,5 years since the last time I wrote something on my blog... Long time. But I´m not dead, and I didn´t stop playing games, crafting terrain and painting miniatures, just the free time got short. Yeah, Covid years were the golden years for the hobby... So I had to cut from my hobby doings and sorry, but this blog had to be let down. I don´t say, that I have more time now, or that I will write regulary, I just wanted to give a sign of life (not that I expect any interest for this...). A lot of things happened in this 3,5 years, so here is a short summary of just the most important ones:

59. Weather and daytime effects in Oathmark

Wargames basically want to simulate a real world with all its features, so we don’t need to jump to another dimension or time (and gather troops, supply them, kill a lot of living creatures, risking the life of a bunch of other ones, including ours) to test our tactical and strategical skills (and sometimes, maybe have a little fun). Of course this simulation is not perfect, but some very obvious, real world features are missing in a lot (I wouldn’t risk to say the most, however I think it would be true) of rulesets. Are in these other worlds or times no day and night? No seasons? No weather?

54. Mixed units in Oathmark

Last time I promised, that I will post about my homebrew rules for mixed units in Oathmark. And promises have to kept!

53. Oathmark: Bane of kings

The time has come, I finally arrived to the third and latest supplement for Oathmark: Bane of kings! Does it have a new faction, as in Oathbreakers? No. Can it still be better, then Battlesworn? Yes!

52. Oathmark: Oathbreakers

Oathbreakers was the second Oathmark supplement, and it was a big one! Not because it was thicker or printed on larger pages, but because it introduced a brand new faction: Undead!

51. Oathmark: Battlesworn

I’m still not getting a review writer, but as the already 3rd supplement is published for Oathmark, I thought that I make a short series about them. Let’s start with the first one, because (to spoiler my post) its leaves a better feeling at the end if we get the worst things first. And Battlesworn is the worst of the Oathmark series…

50. Long time ago in a galaxy far away...

…I promised myself, that I wont start anything new, until I don’t finish my open projects. I kind of kept it (kind of… but that’s another story). But it looks like that I vaccinated my kids with attraction towards tabletop gaming. And Star Wars (do you see the double meaning of the title?). And those two things can only lead to one destination: Star Wars Legion.

36. Polishing Oathmark

I stated a lot of times how much I Oathmark like (just take a look on the title of my blog). Although, after more then dozen various battles (unfortunately we dont have the time to play that much), I think, there are some small parts of the ruleset, which could use a little polishing. So I did it (all of the following is a correction according to my mindset and experience). These are only small changes of the existing rules, there are no new rules, and there shouldn’t be a significant impact on the game balance. The only exception are the army building limitations, but this is only an option for some battles, and if used, it should serve a better balance, not a worse one.

35. ...and rules for them

Now that I have self-sculpted miniatures in acceptable quality, I also want to play with them! In Frostgrave, the golem can be used as a construct, and the treeman as a giant, so I can check off one of my main systems. And in the other one, Oathmark, they certainly can be used as subtitutes for some monsters from the official rulebook, like an Eachy and a Giant for example. But that would bleach out their individual character a bit… So home-brew rules are needed!

33. Oathmark Halflings!

Im not planning to make a news channel out of this blog, but now, I have to make an exception. Because there are great news for every Oathmark fan! Joe McCullough announced on his blog, that halflings arrived to the Marches!

32. Black powder weapons in Oathmark

Oathmark setting is in technological terms like european early medieval: there are no crossbows (which I wont accept, because dwarves have to have crossbows, so I made house rules for them), not to mention black power weapons. But what if… What if once somebody would invent a magical powder, which explodes if ignited? And what if somebody puts that powder in a tube, and throws a rock on before igniting it? What if the kingdoms of the Marches would get primitive black powder weapons? Maybe it doesn’t fit the initial idea of Oathmark, but as its just a house rule and not a must, I don’t see big problems here (if You want to use house rules, just agree it with your opponent, if not, You can use your miniatures as archers and catapults after all).

31. Modular wooden fort II.

Let’s continue last week’s project with building the more complicated parts!

The tower: I made it 1 floor high, and a floor is for 28mm miniatures approximately 50mm. So, for the walls, 100 and 110mm long sticks are needed (50-60mm as for the walls plus 50mm for the floor). But there has to be doors and windows! Placing the doors for the best versatility is according to this example (and sketch):

30. Modular wooden fort I.

Back in business! After a short break, last weekend I got back, and finally started doing something. I decided, that I will work through my open projects (hopefully all of them...). The first step was not painting (at least for now), but building terrain. A little time ago I started to build a modular wooden fortress. I had two reasons for it. The first one was that I started to write siege rules for Oathmark, and I need to have something to try them out. The other one was, as I saw a youtube video on the TWS channel, which show a very quick way to build wooden fortifications. I basically built the same with some modifications.

First step was planning (as always), I had to decide the main dimensions. My insulation foam (XPS, extruded polystyrene, but it can be made of the cheaper EPS, expanded polystyrene also) is 30mm thick, so the embankment, where the miniatures will stand, will have that height (by the way, in my siege rules, there will be different walls, depending on their height, material, and number of ranks, that has place on them). The battlement is an additional 20mm and (because of the serrated form) 30mm higher. The width and depth was also not a big question. It will be a pretty small wall (the smallest one according to my rules), so it is enough if a single row of Oathmark unit has place on it. The width is at least 5x25mm, so I went with 130mm to have a bit space.

28. GW got me...

In tabletop world, there is a giant company, unavoidable sprawling in the middle of the whole industry. Some of the gamers hate them, some of them love them, and some, like I, have mixed feelings about them. This is the company, who done a lot, to make the tabletop universe, what it is today. It could be a microscopic genre of nerds without them. They soaked me into this universe of fun, and many others like me. But they are also, who are exploiting the wallets of our kind with their insane price politics, constantly updating rulesets, and breaking games into more and more must buy pieces. And they slain the Old World... Unforgivable.

21. Christmas special 2020

It was a pretty special year from a lot of aspects. Here and now I just want to emphasize one of it. Because of the limited options for spending the free time, I landed this year by my unfulfilled, childhood passion: tabletop games and miniatures. I jumped into a lot of projects (maybe got a bit addicted...), and Im enjoying them a lot. But maybe the biggest pleasure is, that my family joined me in this! That is why not only this year, but the Christmas was also very miniature heavy:

18. Home made Oathmark units

I really love Oathmark (otherwise I would not made a blog dedicated to it...), but its not flawless. One of that little flaws for me, is the (yet) limited selection of units. There are a lot of general units, but I miss some more specialized ones, that make a little more difference between the races, and I also miss some traditional fantasy races. I didn't want to invent anything new, I basically just transferred something from the good old WHFB feeling... But when something doesn't exist officially, you can help yourself by home-brewing them!

15. Siege of Oathmark

This will be a special post, because here will be nothing about miniatures or introduction of rules. This will be fiction of rules.

I read on Bloodbeards blog an idea: siege setting in Oathmark. I find this great, I would love it (I was always amazed by the painting: Siege of Acre)! So I started to think about possibilities, how this could be implemented in the rules. I don't know if any other fantasy rank-and-flank system has any special rules for siege (are there any?), so the following will be my personal, one man brainstorming about it (I try to write it systematic, but I can’t guarantee the solid lucidity).

3. What is Oathmark?

Last time I wrote about Frostgrave, now it´s time for a short introduction of Oathmark!

2. What is Frostgrave?

After a longer-than-planned introduction, let's dive into Frostgrave!