Building for Midgard
It took them a long time but Osprey Publishing finally posted some information about what has changed in the upcoming second edition of the Oathmark rules. There are two critical elements of that article that have me worried about the game.
First is this comment:
For me, the biggest change is one of presentation. The first edition was very much a ‘game of battles’ with a campaign system added on. I’ve reoriented it so that is a ‘game about kingdoms’ with lots of rules for fighting battles.
I have always said that Joseph McCullough has been a developer that prefers the campaign aspects of the game over the strategic and tactical aspects of the tabletop. I think that the development of the Frostgrave rules shows this quite well. He likes a narrative campaign. I tend not to really care for them. I like fighting battles and almost all my attempts to build narrative structures into my games have been unsuccessful. I suspect that this is really because I want to fight a battle and not run a kingdom.
The second issue I had with the article is the lack of mention of any way for players to easily add their own units or monsters to the game. Oathmark does have a very good range of options for troops. There are issues in the first edition of the game with the cost of some of the models (primarily the Elves) but you have a good number of troops choices. Since most of my collection has been built from Oathmark plastic minis from North Star I have no problems building armies for Oathmark. Where the friction exists is when you want to add a new type of monster or try to model units that are more high fantasy than Oathmark’s middle fantasy setting.
These two issues are inter-related. If the focus of the game is on a kingdom level campaign then having a wider range of unit types isn’t as important as having units that fit into the various terrain elements in the kingdom. The troops you have available to you are an offshoot of the Kingdom you build and as your opponents capture your territory it has impacts on your army and your troops. The game has a spread of middle fantasy units available and since it isn’t interested in other troop types there aren’t tools to include them. If you want cavalry that have heavier armour and a more impressive impact on the field then you are SOL unless you want to create house-rules for them.
As I wrote previously, you can use the Kingdom system to make more typical army lists for a force. If you don’t enjoy the campaign game you can still use the system to create an army list that has troop and command limitations in it. If you don’t like that limitation of available troop types though then you are not able to work around that other than creating your own stats based on trying to figure out what system the author used to create his. He has, it has been said, been notoriously close-lipped about how he created the point costs for his troops and I don’t see that changing.
So what to do?
Age of Fantasy
One game that I have played in the past and as part of the process of creating my fantasy armies is the Age of Fantasy Regiments system from One Page Rules. I like that it is a simple system that has a wider range of troop types available as well as the ability for you to create your own units and heroes. If you aren’t put off by the simplicity of the rules then it really has quite a lot of what you need to play big fantasy battles. There are a few issues with the system as of late.
The first is that the developer of the system has decided to move from a more generic set of armies 1 to ones based in the fantasy world that is being created for Age of Fantasy. So in version 3.4 of the rules the Mummified Undead army had an Undead special rule that was similar to that seen is many other fantasy systems. In version 3.5 of the rules this changed to Royal Legion which gave the units bonuses to shooting and charge ranges. Part of this was due to a system wide change to rules such as Undead but it was also linked to elements of the background for the fantasy world they were creating. The change didn’t make any sense to me and I said as much during the v3.5 playtest but it remained. It makes thematic sense if you read the background for the Age of Fantasy world but it seems quite odd if you just want a Khemri army or something similar to it.
I disliked the changes in version 3.5 so much that I downloaded all of the version 3.4 army lists and rulebooks. That is what I used the last time I played and I can’t see that I want to use their new rules. While I have all the rules, I don’t have access to the online army builder so making army lists will take a bit of ‘manual’ labour.
Midgard
I have been checking out Midgard Heroic Battles as a possible alternative. The game seems to focus more on command and control and has less granularity in terms of unit and hero build options. It has an army building system but not an abundance of options for building your troops. Coming from Oathmark this doesn’t seem to be a big issue. First edition Oathmark had units that seemed quite similar across armies 2. Midgard is also similar to Oathmark in that there are no build options for weapons or armour. Armour in Midgard is used to determine how vigorous a unit is and not now difficult it is to kill. A high armour unit in Midgard might have plate armour or it might be a Troll with tough hide.
I have been checking out some videos online about the game and also reading some battle reports. It looks like an interesting game and at least worth trying out a few times. What I will immediately need to do is paint some more minis. Battles in Midgard rely on units having support from other friendly units in order to mitigate the negative effects of a combat. If you don’t have support you are going to lose. Oathmark allowed you to add ranks to a unit to keep it on the table longer and also keep it combat effective for longer as well. Support was subsumed into the rules via the negative effects of flank charges. Keeping a unit on your flanks stopped you from getting charged. Midgard uses those flanking and rear units more tangibly as part of the combat resolution.
The net result of this is that I will need to paint up some more units for at least my Elf army if I am going to play Midgard. Quite a few of my Oathmark games were Orc and Goblin armies versus Elf and Dwarf forces. Oathmark allowed multi-faction forces 3 and so I have armies that are made up of single units of various troops. Except the Goblins which routinely have 15 - 20 model units because Goblins need big units to survive in Oathmark.
Once I have determined how many models/units I need to paint I will also need to see how many movement trays I will need. I already have quite a few for Oathmark and Age of Fantasy Regiments but I suspect that Midgard will require me to paint some more.
Next steps
My first steps are to use the online Midgard army builder to create some forces and then see how many more models I will require as well as how many movement trays. I don’t have any MDF that is already cut to the size required/suggested for Midgard so I will need to order some from Warbases.