Oathmark Test Game August 30, 2026

Goblins and Orcs versus Undead First Oathmark Game

This was a 1,000 point test game of Oathmark held at my friend Sherman's place on the afternoon of August 30, 2026.  This was my first time playing the Oathmark game rules and Sherman's second time.  Sherman had an Orc and Goblin army that fought against my Undead army. As we were still learning the rules it ran a little slower than expected but the pace picked up as we moved along and got a grasp on the rules. Basing is on 125mm frontage trays with ranks of 5.   As usual once I got stuck into the game I missed taking pictures at all the critical points in the middle of the game, thanks to Sherman for adding a few of his pictures and for hosting.  

Who Let the Dogs Out!

 Here are a couple of new companies (bases) painted for my Fantastic Battles 28mm Dark Elf army:  Whelp Master with two Chaos War-hounds.  Obligatory sounds effects

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-MK1lLI_zQ

The Dark Elf figures are Marauder Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB) 1990 Whelp Masters and Whelp Mistress, and the Chaos War-hounds are also WFB figures made by Citadel but from over a decade later.  The asking price for the original Marauder 1990 war-hounds was just too much.

 

My two bases of Whelp Masters with War-hounds

As you can see the bases still need to be flocked, I will use a mix of brown ballast and green static grass.

Defend the Pass October 5, 2025

 This was a Fantastic Battles Defend the Pass Scenario held at my local games club on October 5, 2025. I provided the Dwarf and Dark Elf Miniatures and Morgan provided the Vikings that he played.   The Dwarfs played by Morley were the defenders and the Dark Elves and Vikings were the attackers.  I played the Dark Elves.

 

Initial deployment turn 1

 

WIP Dwarf Rangers

After a recent Fantastic Battles game on October 5, 2025 at my local games club I decided it was time to upgrade my Dwarf Long Beard unit from eM4 (Originally made by Grenadier) and make them Foresters.   The Dwarfs were defending a pass against Dark Elf and Viking attackers.  The Long Beards looked a lot like Rangers in the rough terrain area with their axes and brown trim on their chainmail so I decided to make them Rangers.  The leader in particular (back of formation) needed some repainting and the bases need work.

 Dwarf Rangers in combat with Witch Elves and Vikings

 

Ship Battle - "Pirates 3rd Edition" by Flagship Games from 2016

I was going through some images from back in January 2016 and found these naval combat pictures from a Naval Fantasy Skirmish game called "Pirates: Miniature Battles on the High Seas, 3rd Ed. by Flagship Games (sold by Scale Creep Miniatures SCM-FGP3)  that covers the period from 1400 to 1650 for historical and fantasy battles. The game was introduced to me by my friend John who contributed two ships and some of the figures, I contributed two ships plus figures, the sea mat and hosted the game.

Here is a link to the rules and to Scale Creep where they can be purchased:

 https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17220/pirates-miniature-battles-on-the-high-seas?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1LBM4x8F00OiYcZqGCfj-OHsaWdceVnlM-5UFvAfDa6jBxsOK-1ut7eME_aem_mryZddjEyVZ3Gp4cvFXAXg

 https://scalecreep.com/product_info.php?products_id=10000

As I recall this particular game involved ship to ship combat, boarding and finding a treasure chest on an Island.

 

Aft end of my Skeleton ship

Cards for Fantastic Battles

Here are some of the Fantastic Battle cards I have created for relics, spells and strategies, in order to help players avoid having to flip through the rule book to find them.  They have proved useful over the last two year or so.  You may have noted some of them in my AARs.  I also have made some company cards for various races but will post those another time.  Although you can see some of the cards (including some of these relic cards) in use in my earlier blog entitled "Fantastic Battles Dwarfs versus High Elves August 1, 2022."plus other later blogs.

Disclaimer: I found these images through an online searches and was unable to determine if they were copyrighted. No copyright infringement is intended and if I am informed that this is the case I will remove them from this blog.

Relic cards

Fantastic Battles Convoy Ambush December 27, 2024

 This was our annual Christmas holiday game, using Fantastic Battles mass combat rules set this year and its  Ambush the Convoy Scenario, a 3 player scenario. It features a dwarf convoy attempting to exit the board with ambushing forces on either flank, made up of Dark Elf and Undead armies, all in 28mm scale.

 

The three armies overseen by Joey

In keeping with the season I used my tundra mat and snowy pine forests. I played the Dwarf army.

Fantastic Battles Game at the Centre Point Public Library 15 December, 2024

 I have run a fair number of Fantastic Battles Games, but it has been about 9 months since the last one and this was the first one I have run at the Ottawa Centre Point Public Library. The game ran fairly smoothly, other than a minor hiccups, involving refreshing my memory on some rules. 

Overview Turn 2

Fantastic Battles Game St. Patrick's Day game March 17, 2024, at OMG - Undead versus Wood Elves.

On March 17, 2024 (St. Patrick's Day) at the Ottawa Miniatures Game Club Nick and I had our first Fantastic Battles mass fantasy battle game, with 1,000 points per side with his UNDEAD versus my WOOD ELVES  in 28mm scale.

Overview

Activation Tiles for Fantastic Battles

 

Below is a picture of the activation tiles / counters I use for Fantastic Battles 1.2.  I bought them from the Dollar Tree, they costed only $1 plus tax for a packet of 26 in 4  colours (medium royal blue, green, purple, fuchsia) and measure 20mm x 18mm x 5mm.. They are marketed by Craft Medley and I have also seen them in black and white.. I add number stickers to them to keep track of the number on the table but this is not essential.  You can of course paint them, and I have painted some of the fushia counters dark red.   Sadly I did not see any on my last visit to the Dollar Tree, but they may have just been put in storage to make room for seasonal decorations.

 https://www.dollartreecanada.com/

However  if you can't find them at the Dollar Tree  you can buy  a pack of 100 from Amazon for a higher price, but with a different mix of colours (red, orange, white, green and light blue), see link the below.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B09MZGVSRB/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Tiles by Craft Medly from the Dollar Tree

Tiles sold by Amazon

Merry Christams 2022 & Happy New Year 2023

 A belated Merry Christmas and best wishes for a Happy New Year - 2023.

Picture above of part of my SAGA Age of Magic (AoM) Warband, I will be posting an AAR of the 4 player Christmas SAGA AoM game we played on December 27, 2022 soon.

Overview turn 1 SAGA AoM

Christmas Game 2022: SAGA Age of Magic - Battle Royale

 SAGA Age of Magic: Battle Royal  December 27, 2022

This Christmas  I hosted a 4 player game of SAGA age of Magic n December 27, 2022 with our forth playing being  John was visiting over the holiday. This is something we had not done since John's departure and the onset of the pandemic.  Once again I used the SAGA AoM Battle Royal scenario.  

 

Spears and Impalers

 I have had bout 17 of these OOP Wizkids Horror Clix Vlad the Impaler 32mm figures sitting around since I bought them some years ago at the local Comic Book Store in a bin sale.   I had been planning to convert them to Impalers for a Vampire based fantasy army by replacing the end of the spear with just a point rather than an impaled victim, as a regiment of 16 would just look too weird, one victim as a standard is sufficient.

 

Wizkids HorrorClix Vlad the Impaler

Accordingly I cut off the victim on all but 1 figure and planned to put spear tips on the end of the poles.  After the figures sat around for a few years I finally got around to it yesterday. This was partly inspired by the new Fantastic Battles 1.2 rules that has a Night Stalker army list that will work perfectly for my Vampire War figures and these Impalers. They will be an elite Regiment called Vlad's Carpathian Impalers with 3 companies with the traits: Feast, Pikes, Highlanders and Doughty.

 Below are some of the various spear options I experimented with:

Halloween 2022

If I do have a Halloween themed game this year it will be a post Halloween game in mid November as other activities prevented a game this past weekend.   In the meantime here are some Work in Progress pictures of possible figures for a Fantastic Battles Halloween themed game.

Tomb King's Army

 

Fantastic Battles Dwarfs versus High Elves August 1, 2022

 After many delays due to scheduling conflicts and weather we finally got another 28mm game of Fantastic Battle, this time with my newly based Dwarf Army fighting the High Elves.   While some of the Dwarfs need further painting I think they are battlefield ready.  This was my 8th game of Fantastic Battles that we played over two days, August 1st and 12th.  I still need to do AARs of some of the earlier games,  although they are outlined briefly in an earlier blog.

 

Turn 4 action

 The High Elves were a confident force having defeated the Undead in their last battle, but they were now facing an entirely different enemy, not the slow Undead with primitive weapons, but the Dwarfs and their technology.

Fantastic Battles

 In my 2022 New Year's message I had mentioned I was very interested in and had started playing the Fantastic Battles (FB) rules system by Nicholas Wright, for mass battles for both historical and  Fantasy genre for a range of scales (2mm-28mm). The rules allow you to customize and build armies based on a tool kit approach of different traits added to company types including: Elite, Formed Irregular, Fantastic Beast, Vehicle and Giant.  There is a separate system for characters that makes them significant but not exaggerated in power. FB is also well supported by the author and members on the Fantastic Battles Face Book Page.

Cover

Since early  December 2021 I have played at least 7 games of  FB, but sadly I have not had time to provide detailed reports for each game.  I still don't have time now to provide detailed reports but  read on to find information on basing, table size and a list of games played with selected photos.

Sacred Ground for SAGA Age of Magic

 After my last game of SAGA Age of Magic in  December 2021 (AAR pending)  I realized I need proper Sacred Ground markers so I have been built one for my Wood Elf (Lords of the Wild) and have almost finished one for my Undead  (The Undead Legions) warband. 

On the left for the Wood Elf Sacred ground I used 2 standing sacred stones and a totem from the Wizkids 4D Jungle Shrine set on a base flocked with brown ballast and light green grass flock.  For the Undead I have used 4 skull pillars / death columns by RAFM plus a sarcophagus / crypt by Mega Miniatures (OOP) and I plan to flock it with brown ballast and dead yellowish static grass. The Scared Ground markers are the regulation  4" in diameter.  For now I am not gluing the miniatures to the bases for ease of transport and flexibility.

Grenadier eM4 Dwarf warriors with spears and sheilds

Back in January 2020 I bought, from eM4 miniatures, a 48 piece set of 28mm  plastic Dwarf Warriors which included  16 warriors with spears (as shown below) with the remainder being warriors armed with axes and crossbows, and it only cost  £7.70  which works out to about 27 cents Cnd a figure (the 25 round plastic shield to go with them was only £1.50 extra)! These are former Grenadier dwarf figures sculpted by Mark Coppleston from the early 1990s,  but they are still very serviceable for rank and file troops. As you can see in the picture they have built in bases.

eM4 Spear armed plastic Dwarf

Spears are an ideal weapon for Dwarf warriors especially in Fantastic Battles when they have to deal with enemy cavalry!  Too bad they are hard to find among GW products, but I really like the Dwarf figures produced by Grenadier Fantasy Warriors in the 1990s, sadly Grenadier is no more but the figures are still available from companies like Mirliton, Forlorn Hope and eM4.  That being said I believe the new plastic Dwarf infantry set for Oathmark by North Star has a spear option.

https://www.giggrowth.shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=304022

They Oathmark dwarf infantry require assembly, the old Grenadier plastic dwarf figures do not other than attaching the shield, this limits the variety of poses but it speeds things up.

Happy New Year 2022 and Fantastic Battles Project

 Happy New Year 2022

A project I was working on to create Resolution tracker counters for Fantastic Battles (FB).   These are 20mm MDF bases spray painted green with self adhesive 5/8" Roman numerals designed for clocks.  Sadly not a lot else to do on New Years Eve thanks to Covid-19, so watched TV movies and made counters.

 New Roman number counters

SAGA Age of Magic September 17, 2021 Undead versus Tomb Kings

 SAGA Age of Magic September 2021

 This was one of the first post-pandemic lock-down SAGA Age of Magic games that featured my Gothic Undead versus Jeff's Tomb Kings or Egyptian Undead held at the Ottawa Miniatures Games Club on September 17, 2021. It featured Jeff's 3-D printed Camels and Egyptian  scenery.

 I will let the pictures tell the story.