Oathmark and the Middle-earth setting are both perfect for ‘narrative’ based games, ones with a specific scenario and goals for each army, and this is how I normally play my games (see my earlier article on scenarios). If however you do wish to play a points based game, the Oathmark points system works well for Middle-earth in so much as it gives the Orcs and Goblins lower points than the Elves, Dwarves and men and, as such, the army fielded by an evil commander will always ‘outnumber’ the good player’s army in a physical sense. Other than as stated all the normal rules in Oathmark are binding with these lists. The third battle of the age was known as the ‘Dagor Aglareb’ (The Glorious Battle). This was fought approximately 60 years after the second battle against the Noldor forces of the house of Feanor, and the House of Fingolfin. It was engendered by Morgoth because he made an erroneous assumption and sent out a force to defeat an enemy which he didn’t think was actually prepared for war: he worked on the principal of attempting to overwhelm the Noldor with numbers as he had attempted against the Sindar and Silvan in the first battle, however – in the end – the Noldor defeated this force so completely that it led to a 400 year long siege of Morgoth’s Realm of Angband. Anyway, as you can see, the plastic kit comes with swords, axes, daggers, spears, bows and more allowing you to make a diverse range of units for your Oathmark armies. Do you have a favourite combination of bitz yet? Metal Orc Miniatures Lead The Way Sauron can only cast spells in this form (in fact Sauron is the only character of either side that can cast spells), and the magical items rule is removed from his stats. The Goblin Slaves kit can be used alongside your greenskin armies in Oathmark but they would also be a solid fit for armies in other games as well. The joy of Oathmark is that you can mix and match which Fantasy factions fight for your kingdom so you might find a use for these!

Gothmog is the only Balrog that can Command an army. Only a single unit of two Balrogs (in addition to Gothmog) can be used. DRAGONS Sauron's human warriors: Wargames Atlantic's Afghans and Persians might make some splendid Easterlings - the human armies summoned in from the far-eastern corners of Middle Earth to lead the Orcs in war and conquest, and I've just be reminded that Victrix makes some great war elephants/olifaunts that ought to be perfect for that sort of project. In addition to their stats line, units also may have Special Abilities applied to them. These do amount to a toolbox of sorts– several of which seem entirely desirable for historical games. Fire Over (shooting overhead) or Nimble (no movement penalty for Rough Ground) might be given to skirmishing troops, for example (skirmishers do not exist as a distinct troop type in Oathmark), Brace would help represent pikes ( Oathmark only identifies spears, which automatically get Brace) and so on. Siege rules(I wrote a postabout it, but planning another one, because I started to write my home-brew siege rules)

Close approximations to these old-school fantasy orcs could be kitbashed from a mix of WA's existing goblin heads - or better still from hypothetical pig-faced orc heads from a head sprue - on bodies from (say) Dark Age Goths or Egyptian infantry, along with those distintive Egyptian shields. Generic spears and swords could be supplied from any historical set - Dark Age Irish or Goths or Egyptian khopesh swords would simplify the build, since those kits would be parts from kits I'd working with in such a project anyway. The fantasy/ancient weapons are the easy part since army kits from Wargames Atlantic and other manufacturers include so many great spares to choose from!

The following units are available to a Goblin leader. I will leave the word “Goblin” out of each entry as it can be assumed that all of the standard units in this list are Goblins. I also make mention of their armaments in case you want to see if the model types match up with the army you own or your preconceived notions.

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Again, from this I suggest eliminating Class 1, 2, 4, 6, and 9. I would suggest an Orc General (Class 3) as the Army commander with a bodyguard made up from class 11, the rest of the 40% of the whole army I would make up from Class 7, 8, 10. As an addition to these I would add an option of a Troll unit, using the standard Troll statistics from the rules. 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.

How is Oathmark different, then? It’s novel in several key ways which make it potentially attractive. The first is its take on the fantasy concept. Unlike more “corporate” approaches to game systems, it’s not tied to any particular figures or manufacturer. Northstar have taken care to produce an excellent range of supporting figures, which potentially cover all players’ needs and the signs are that these will keep on coming, but for players like me who have heritage collections of fantasy figures from their D&D or Warhammer days, not a single new figure is needed.

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I felt honour bound to use my Oathmark goblins and I also deployed my new Vendel Goblins, all in (to me at least) big, chunky 15 figure units. To my delight, none of them totally embarassed themselves in their first game. The Oathmark archers, played as orcs, actually finished off Mike's Rangers and the spear orcs got a couple of good charges in. My Vendel goblin archers managed to kill a few of the enemy too, which made them very happy.