EPIC OATHMARK BATTLE REPORT!!!!!

Last Saturday my buddy and me kicked off my Christmas holidays with a massive 5.500-points-per-side Oathmark Battle. Dark Elves with human slaves fought an Undead army with human... well, apprentices I suppose?

By mutual agreement we also both brought a Dragon. We also Houseruled that location-bound Spells like Smoke and Looking Glass would be Dispellable (which in the rules they are not, for some strange reason).

The pictures below show the table. There was quite a lot of terrain as the armies fought in the little hamlet of Nicolaasburg on Patricks lovely table.

Note that even with this amount of terrain we were still able to play a quite dynamic battle, due to the maneuverability of the units. No Warhammer army would ever have been able to maneuver on a table like this, but Oathmark armies can!

The battle ran about as follows:

With clear chokepoints on my left, center and right wing I decided to stop the center gap with Smoke, the left with my heavy cavalry supported by a Vampire and try a breakthrough with my humans on the right.

My artillery would use Indirect fire (by means of Looking Glass as planned, but actually the Dragon, being Enormous, could simply look over the Smoke) firing over the Smoke to whittle down Patricks Elves.

The Elves advanced cautiously over the entire front, parts 1 and 2 of my plan ran smoothly, although my Vampire took a beating from Patrick's Trolls, but the humans in front of my right wing proved tenacious and were only slowly being driven back, refusing to break (because we used the rallying rules wrongly, btw).

My Dragon managed to cause quite a lot of damage to the Elves. There was this very satisfying moment when my Dragon, walking partly through the Smoke Spell, Firebreathed Patrick's Linebreakers.

But eventually Patricks Dragon attacked him and pinned him in a deadlock in the center, the rest of the battle raging around the two fighting monsters.

To speed things up a bit I Dispelled my own Smoke and charged the battered remains of the Elves in the center with my Skeletons. The left wing blockade worked fine and the Elves in the center were practically annihilated. However, my Skellies suffered terrible losses from the Elven Archers (because I forgot that Skellies only suffer half damage from bows) and Patricks humans on my right still refused to either die or Break, being slowly pushed back however.

Eventually we decided to play out the Dragon fight, as the remaining player with a Dragon would still have quite good cards on the table. After the dust settled, my Dragon lay dead and Patricks Dragon stood reeling with just 1 Hitpoint left.

As large parts of my army were still very functional but Patricks Elves were practically destroyed and his Humans decimated (and I had to be home in time for diner) we called it a win for the Undead.

Lessons learned:

Dragons are way to powerful to use in a game and have fun. Don't.

Morale deterioration seemed very slow. Even units of humans reduced to 25% still kept making their Morale checks and the fact that you are not allowed to push them off the table meant they would simply stand their ground to the last man instead of being routed.

Some house rule seemed in order but as it turned out we made mistakes with rallying Disordered troops (that actually cannot just shake off Disordered and Activate, but are limited to a Simple Action in that turn).

A spectacular and great game that took us from mid morning to the end of the afternoon to finish. 5.500 points is quite a bit... Many thanks to Patrick for his great table and even greater hospitality!