Skirmish games and mass combat games have wildly different rulesets, those Oathmark rules look absolutely reasonable from a skirmish perspective but… yeah, no.
The only other game I really play is Bushido, its eastern Fantasy, but decidedly Skirmish scale. Only a 2’x2’ board, I don’t know if it’d even be of interest to the folks of this forum. It is a most excellent game tho.
Of the games currently out there, I’ve played LotR:SBG, Frostgrave, Vanguard and Moonstone.
Lotr is probably the only game GW has left with good rules that aren’t bloated, or requiring chase cards, or adopting a CCG model of rotating sets or requiring a dozen supplements, or horribly unbalanced. So, by that standard alone, it deserves a mention.
Frostgrave is great, 2nd edition is that great kind of iterative update that makes fixes but doesn’t add more stuff.
Vanguard I found to actually be too complex for a skirmish game, too much alpha strike, rapid movement and broken combos as well as thing like arcs and square base requirement that doesn’t fit in a skirmish game. Deadzone is wonderful and Vanguard does use that core structure, but far too much was added in without improving the core gameplay. Fatigue as a mechanic is okay, force fatigue and clearing fatigue pushes the game into the same rules trap as AoS, almost allowing a double turn.
Moonstone is great as a casual game, it’s balanced competitively, but I have no desire to play it that way. Reminds me of freebooters fate a lot.
How did you find Warlords Of Erehwon? I’ve read the rules, but haven’t had a chance to try it out yet.
Just bought the full rule book for Age of Fantasy: Regiments (€4.50), so naturally had to do a quick look video.
As you may be able to tell from the video, it is a firm favourite of mine. Will do a how to play video soon.
It was fun enough, I like the size of the armies, and the special dice mechanics.
It seemed rough and a bit unpolished though. We believe we found a couple of overpowered things immediately. 