The positives of Oathmark
Clearly I like Oathmark. I like the game enough that I gloss over the issues that I have with it which is typically not something I do with other systems. I don’t play Frostgrave because I find it too random. I don’t playing Dragon Rampant for the same reason 1. I avoid Age of Sigmar (except for Spearhead) because I don’t find it balanced. As much as I like Age of Fantasy, it gets played less frequently due to the issues with the magic system.
I don’t appear to really have a thick skin when it comes to miniature games. Lets not even start with Infinity. If that is the case then what keeps me coming back to Oathmark?
D10
The first time I encountered a D10 in a miniature wargame it was in Void 2.0. I think that I gave up on the D6 at that point. The D10 is so clearly superior to a D6 that I am constantly amazed that designers keep using it. It has a wider range of results with a flat distribution. To get something similar with a D6 you need to roll 2D6 which, obviously, doesn’t give you a flat distribution. As I discussed previously, having a Bell curve in a game causes issue with modifiers. Using a D10 avoids that.
Using a D10 also gives the designer a broader scope to use when creating stats. The difference of +/- 1 for a stat on a D20 is not as significant as it is with a D6 2 and so there are more options for slightly increasing or decreasing a stat to give a unit a benefit or debuff and still make the units distinct.
And, if you follow the general wargaming habit of critical hits and fumbles, they will happen less often in a game using a D10.
Alternating activations
I don’t know why people play games, other than skirmish games, that use IGYG activations. This is another reason why I avoid playing full games of Age of Sigmar. The idea of sitting and watching your opponent move and attack while you do nothing, or next to nothing, is boring. There is also something unrealistic about having your army just stand around and do nothing while they are shot at and charged.
In Oathmark you activate a unit and then your opponent does. As an added wrinkle, if you charge a unit that hasn’t activated then it now counts as having done so. You can choose to attack to limit your opponent’s options later on in the game.
Activating
The other side of this is that you need to roll to activate a unit. You can fail this roll and then be limited in the actions you can take. You won’t be utterly without options 3 but you won’t be able to initiate a melee attack. So when you are trying to determine what unit to activate you need to take into account the position on the table and also how likely you will be to activate the unit based on its stats.
Combat
The default for games of massed ranks of troops is that you will roll a lot of dice. Warhammer is the best example of this. ‘Buckets of dice’ is the way this is typically described. These are typically D6s and the games that use this type of combat resolution are often of the type where 4+ is the usual role required to hit. Vast quantities of dice are often the way to overcome the fact that most of the units in these games are not very different from each other.
In Oathmark you will always be rolling a maximum of 5 D10s in combat resolution. Combat is resolved by determining a target number for each unit in the combat. This target number is modified by the number of full ranks in a unit. A large unit of Goblins will have a large target number based on their stats but will get a bonus to reflect their numbers.
Oathmark also gives a player bonus hits if they roll higher than their target number. This typically doesn’t come into play a lot but when you have edge situations like Elven cavalry charging into the flank of an already activated unit of Goblins it will crop up.
The combat system is quick, uses a handful of dice and, I think, gives the player rewards for using their units to the best of their abilities.
Movement
The last time I played Warhammer Fantasy Battle I felt as if I was losing games because I didn’t understand the intricacies of the movement system and the effect it had on combat and charging. Oathmark gives you the ‘flank’ part of ‘rank-and-flank’ without complex movement and charge rules.