Last time I wrote about modular ruins, now I want to take a look on my trees and bushes. It might end up being a pretty short post, or like a showcase. Because Im mostly not really satisfied with my results... So to write a tutorial about bad methods may not be very useful. However a "How not to make it" could be edifying...
I think we can agree, that terrain is the second most important (physical, because, You know, the rules...) thing in tabletop games (very closely after the miniatures, and far before banners). Until now, all my terrain was only shown in the background of the photos (except the part 1 and part 2 of the modular wooden fort), but now I'm planning to write some posts about terrain. One obvious choice is making it in chronological order, so lets start with a very versatile terrain pieces: modular ruins.
In the last post, I showed some solutions for storing and organizing ideas for complicated (dices, tokens, cards, tiles, miniatures, other thingies) board games, especially for Descent (Journeys in the dark second, and so on...). Since then, I received a lot of requests, to show my painted miniatures... Actually not, but I will show them anyway.
As I mentioned in my introduction, my first ever tabletop game I played was Frostgrave (because my love for Warhammer before was only platonic), and I just had boardgames before. But there is a missing link... A game which lures board gaming people to tabletop games, I think that the proper terminus technicus is "gateway game". A game in a fantasy world with stories, heroes, monsters, villains and, the most important miniatures: Descent (Journeys in the dark second edition).
Now comes just a short, but important topic about the eyes (Go for the eyes Boo, go for the eyes!).
If you imagine a view of a tabletop wargame, what do you see? I bet, that the first two things, what you think of, are the painted miniatures, and the terrain. Obviously, these are the most important. But what is the third thing? Thats a harder question... At first, but after thinking a while my answer is pretty clear: banners!
As I already wrote in my post about future of Oathmark, there should come chariots for all races in the upcoming Bane of King. These are especially great news for orcs and goblins, as they have no heavy cavalry, and even more for dwarves, as they have no cavalry at all (but humans and elves don’t need them that much, as they are very similar to their heavier cavalry units). As my sons have these armies, my brain immediately started to rev up!
As my sons got 2 boxes of Frostgrave for Christmas (Gnolls and Snake-men), it was urgent to build them. But building without planning gets not 100% usage of the possibilities... Making a Frostgrave warband from 20 miniatures is not a big deal, but what else is possible? Using them in Oathmark is a pretty obvious offer. But how? First step of this planning is to set the limitations:
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.
