Frostgrave OATHMARK GOBLIN INFANTRY

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Although the game has not been designed as a toolbox of optional rules intended to be selected according to taste, I can see no reason not to approach it that way, given how it works. I suspect Mr McCullough won’t be too unhappy with people adapting his mass battle engine for other contexts. Oathmark is, however, a pretty tight system, so any tinkering with stats risks distorting some aspect of game play. Even so, if your intent is precisely that – to distort it in a particular direction (in this case, towards something more useful for a historical battle) – the obvious route is to raise or lower particular stats in a unit profile to create profiles you feel more appropriate historically. Doing this effectively means you’re no longer playing Oathmark as written, but a variant of your own devising, so I suggest you play a few games first, with any suitable figures, without changing any stats, just to see how units handle without such creative adjustments. When in his humanoid form, Sauron resembled an Elf, and could wield a degree of enchantment, so – for this form – I suggest using the stats for a Level 5 Elf spellcaster. For his spell selection I have chosen a list from all the different race’s spells that are in the rules: these reflect his ability to enchant but note that none of these spells are ‘physical’ ones: in Middle Earth the magic was subtle, and very few could wield it, and even then it was more of what I would call a ‘psychological’ magic effecting the mind. On that basis I wanted to construct two further Oathmark forces using both the Halflings and an opponent and I wanted to make them somewhat usable in the LotR setting I had already had. So, I thought: why not a lost colony of Halflings that, perhaps, hadn’t gone west in the previous millennia and founded The Shire? They could be the halfling antecedents that, perhaps, were of the same tribe that Gollum’s people came from... Then, I thought, for some fun opponents, what about the Spiders of Mirkwood? Wolfish-heads for wolf-man armies on the same sprue: all the better to march with an undead or beast-man army with - a lot of great old horror and sci-fi was achieved with human actors wearing elaborate bestial masks or makeup! Engineers for every race: I dont think, that it will ever be separate engineer boxes. Only a few from them are needed, and the different races mean different sprues... Or a combined sprue? Because there would be no need for so many weapon options, means, there would be more place for bodies. For example 2 bodies from every race (including orcs and goblins) and some weapons? Sounds good, but not very likely...

So with that starting point in mind I fished out my copy of the Oathmark rules and saw what was available. Looking at the Spiders first, there is actually a Giant Spider listed: Casting is very well done. Low amount of mould lines, nice details, no flash and a properly filled sprue with lots of options. Each sprue covers 5 different bodies, enough arms to equip the infantry with either hand weapons and shields , spears or bows and quivers, 11 different heads, and a banner pole incl. banner top. In this, the second part of the Armies of Beleriand, I will be giving you possible options for creating the Armies of Morgoth for use within the Oathmark rules system (Morgoth is, of course, the chief evil within Tolkien’s created realm and all that came later seem to be his minions, servants, slaves and so forth. Ed .). It is my intention to use the statistics and points of equivalent racial types that already exist within the core rules, and, where applicable, assign a suitable statistic that also already exists in the rules, to a race or character that exists in the First Age of Middle-earth. In this way a player can chose these options without any need for house rules or alternative stats. This article is written in that same spirit: it outlines some exploratory ideas for using Oathmark to play historical games. Of course, many players have been using their existing historical collections to flesh out their fantasy armies in any case, but what I’m interested in here is how useful the system might be for purely ‘historical’ rather than ‘fantasy’ gaming.

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North Star offers two additional blisters for additional heroes for this boxed set, one with a great goblin, a shaman and a drummer, another one with three goblin champions. The plastic set with 30 infantry for 25 GBP is a pretty solid deal, as you pay less then a quid per goblin. Why, you may ask, mess about with a perfectly good fantasy rule system for historical games when there’s already more historical rulesets around than could conveniently be counted? My reasons are these: Before focusing in on the Goblins and Orcs, I want to let you know that there are two ways to play the game. The first is to take a straight-up list from a single race and field units from just that race. The second is to build your own Kingdom for a fantasy campaign game. In the campaign game, you can set yourself up to take any units that you want, but for this post, we are going to focus on the Orcs and Goblins of Oathmark. The Goblins I have actually given the Halfling Slinger a slightly better shooting ability than their Goblin comparators (a 1 as opposed to 0) as the Halfings are so good with this sort of weapon.

You could use the same Captain stats for their commanders as a Goblin Captain or Champion. Their Terrain would be a Halfling Village. CONCLUSIONS The downside with using existing collections is that Oathmark is, unusually, built around individual figures on 25mm square bases (larger for cavalry, artillery and monsters, of course). Whilst the system allows me to use any figures I like, almost all of my existing collection doesn’t conform to the basing standard. In fact, this doesn’t matter too much. Whilst the normal frontage of nearly all units is 125mm (5 bases of 25mm), as long as all units have a front rank of 5 figures, and roughly similar frontage, the game plays fine. As with all mass single figure games, movement trays or sabots are a good idea, and they can ensure that they all units have the same frontage, irrespective of the bases of individual figures. This means that almost all my historical figures, generally on bases smaller than 25mm, can be accommodated within Oatmark’s conventions. As you can see, Morgoth’s armies improved over time, and – with each ‘advance’– they slowly took the initiative until they defeated even the might of the Noldo: try to reflect that in an army you wish to field.

Ent tree-herders, giant spiders: Mantic's Kings-of-War "Forest Shambler Regiment" seem a bit pricey to me, but might be the only source of plastic Ents that I know of. Wargames Atlantic's giant spiders are a great source of Tolkienien spiders, but their legs are bit fiddly to assemble - bring some patience to the table for this kit, once assembled, these are beautiful spider models! Reaper Bones spiders are available for those with less patience, but can look a bit chunky in a toy spider kind of way. The following units are available to an Orc leader. I will leave the word “Orc” out of each entry as it can be assumed that all of the standard units in this list are Orcs. I also make mention of their armaments. Sauron was the chief lieutenant of Morgoth and – like his master – he preferred to work through others and rarely took to the field of battle himself, however when he is present, he will be in command of the army. Sauron was a shape shifter and was known to use a couple of different guises: for variety I will list the three major forms he used below and the different abilities he had in each form. Rank-and-file Goblins and Wargs: Wargames Atlantics goblins are excellent, and I think Northstar's goblin infantry and wolf-riding cavalry look pretty good in an old-school Tolkien style too - they look a bit different from Wargames Atlantic's goblins, but might work for a more formal, militarized breed of orcs.