When in his humanoid form, Sauron resembled an Elf, and could wield a degree of enchantment, so – for this form – I suggest using the stats for a Level 5 Elf spellcaster. For his spell selection I have chosen a list from all the different race’s spells that are in the rules: these reflect his ability to enchant but note that none of these spells are ‘physical’ ones: in Middle Earth the magic was subtle, and very few could wield it, and even then it was more of what I would call a ‘psychological’ magic effecting the mind. Ghoul: Well, I dont see any feasible combination with other unit types here, and a separate set, just for Ghouls is unlikely. Maybe a smaller box, if there ever be smaller boxes. In my opinion, the most likely here, is a cooperation with Mantic, as by the Frostgrave Undead Encounters set. For any battle fought during the Siege of Angband I would again suggest using the same forces as the Third Battle but with the optional addition of ‘Wolf Riders’ from the standard Oathmark lists to replace 10% the Normal Orcs, this reflects the more mobile forces used to raid during this time.

North Star has started to release the plastic and metal miniatures designed to accompany the forthcoming Oathmark fantasy battle rules from Osprey Games. The new Goblins are a new take on old school designs. For unit Formations, I suggest forming the largest units possible with all types, with a minimum of 15 figures but mostly the maximum 20. As you can see this is a very large, and brutal force with little finesse, however – at this time – Morgoth was attempting to overthrow the smaller Sindar and Silvan Elven forces with pure weight of numbers and this army reflects that. This was also the first time the Balrogs were sent against the Elves. Although they weren’t involved in the early stages of the battle, I will discuss the characters and possible stat options at the end of the article. The Glorious Battle If you split this box and keep 2-3 sprues, you can build a few encounters for Frostgrave or use them as a warband of themself (using the shaman as a leader), maybe by using the rules of the Gnolls or so. Maybe add a bit of fur to their shoulders to make them more winter ready. Oathbreakers has s urprisingly nothing, not even the box art of the already available Skeleton Infantry...Immediately following that first battle, the Noldor arrived in Beleriand with the intention of battling Morgoth, and they fought the second battle. This one was known as the ‘Dagor-nuin-Giliath’ (Battle Under Stars): this battle was fought by the forces of Feanor against a third large army that was sent against them by Morgoth. For this battle the basic Morgoth forces should be the same as those for the First Battle but with the addition of Balrogs: Demons of Might. They are all 28mm in scale so it's just a case of making sure that weapons and such match. A lot of the metal characters would be great as replacements for the main characters of Middle-earth too!

Morgoth’s forces for this stage of the war should be at least 75% from the Orc list rather than from the Goblin list, with a possibility of using any of the known characters. In addition, in the list for this battle there is an option to use a unit Humans: men of the East – or Easterlings. For their stats see the first article in the last issue. A careful use of these Special Abilities can produce troop types which have at least some correspondence with historical units, always remembering, of course, that different gamers have different views on how some troops functioned in any case, yielding another dimension for possible experiment. To enable us to use these creatures and characters without having to create completely new stats, I have given them the stats from creatures that are already in the rules. This doesn’t mean that the creatures as listed exactly reflect the Middle-earth creatures, it just enables us to use the rules without having to justify new stats and it also enables us to use the points as listed if you want to play a points battle.I won’t go into the history of Morgoth and his war against the Elves as Tolkien did it a lot better than I can. However, I will try to keep the various options for forces chronological for the times, and loosely based around the major battles of (what are collectively known as) The War Of The Jewels, of which there were five. Within this chronological framework I will introduce the various creatures, and character types that can be used as commanders as they appeared in the histories and the make up of the forces that they commanded, as with the last article there will be no distinct ‘army list’ for these forces, merely suggestions of suitable force make up. I think we are trough with the missing units. Regarding monsters and artillery, I wouldn't make any prophecies, because there is only one official monster, and zero official artillery available. Thats to few to draw any lesson from it. And the characters?Northstar has a lot of metal miniatures, the tooling for metal casts is relativelyeasy to make, so there is everything possible! We managed to sort out 1600+ point armies and then play a game within about 3 hours. The unit profiles and math to get to your shooting or combat target numbers can be intimidating at first, but you get the hang of it,or at least I did, and I find math hard at times. But it helped that we were both using orcs and humans. Humans, elves, orcs and goblins are all subtly different which can have an effect once you start rolling the dice. The initiative and activation rolls use 2d10, which is nice. You only have to win one roll, so rolling 2 dice helps avoid the constant roll offs when you tie. For activiating you are also more likely to succeed with 2 chances (or 3 if close to the General), but the Mad Padre and I certainly had our share of dud activation rolls, so friction will still happen. We didn't try magic or special magical items though. But it seems from a cursory look that each race has different magic spells, giving each a different flavour. 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. Elf dogs: there was an Elf Hunt Master miniature, but only as a special offer, and without dogs. There could be a separate box for this, but honestly, I dont think that its really needed... Northstar has some metal dog/wolf miniatures, so if the Elf Hunt Master would be released as a normal miniature, anybody could make a unit with combining them.

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. Trolls, ogres, giants: It looks like Wargames Atlantic's upcoming Classic Fantasy trolls would be the perfect Tolkien-style trolls, but they don't seem likely to be ready until later this year. Fortunately, these are popular fantasy gaming standbys and pretty widely available in plastic today: Reaper makes some great, inexpensive Bones plastic trolls and giants in the mean time, and other companies like Games Workshop and Mantic almost certainly have some plastic trolls and/or ogres kits of their own that would work well enough. In addition, most advertising networks offer you a way to opt out of targeted advertising. If you would like to find out more information, please visit http://www.aboutads.info/choices/or http://www.youronlinechoices.com.The pseudo-historical era at which Oathmark is pitched seems to be, loosely speaking, Dark Age, although the currency of that idea is probably more to do with the illustrations in the rulebook than the rules themselves, which do not specify what “heavy armour” or “hand weapons” mean, for example. Some gamers talk of it as “a return to authentic Tolkien fantasy”, i.e. a world largely of spears, swords and shields, where magic exists, but has only minor influence (I’d include myself in that category! Ed .). As such, I didn’t find it difficult to choose unit specs which suited relatively simple armies. Here, for example, is a basic Saracen Army, the kind of army the rules readily allow, where all the units are taken from the Human list: Northstar's Frostgrave hard plastic kits for wizards, knights, soldiers, crewmen, barbarians, and tribals are a great source of miscellaneous adventuring gear and figures, and can be used for sources of bits for customizing humans, elves, wizards, and more or less human-sized orcs/goblins pretty easily, and can be used to customize dwarves and hobbits with varying amounts of modeling work to make them look right (since weapon-holding arms tend to be shorter than typical human arms!) 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

One of the best things about Oathmark is that you're not tied to a particular faction. If you want to mix armies of Dwarves, Elves and Orcs together, you can. So, if you like this new kit there is nothing stopping you from snapping it up. The key problem with any such adjustment is that there’s no clear statement of how troop stats or characteristics equate to points, so players will need either to ignore the issue of exact equivalence between armies, or to playtest adjusted points for altered units until both sides are reasonably happy with the outcome. My way of doing this is to play a game using the standard stats as given for every unit except one, or at the most, two experimental units, so I can gather evidence on the impact of those adjustments in comparative terms. (This phrasing makes it sound a little like a controlled experiment. It’s not, of course, if only because dice are involved. But it does limit variability a bit, so you can at least get a playtester’s sense of whether your tweaks are radically unbalancing). This is where our first problem arises... In the Oathmark rules, Goblins and Orcs are distinct races, with the usual range of troop types, however, in Middle-earth, Goblins and Orcs were alternative names for the same creatures, so – to counter that – I will be using the stats for both races from the rules. The reasoning behind this being that the ‘Goblins’ are in Tolkien, just smaller, less powerful Orcs. The Fifth Battle, Nirnaeth Arnoediad (The Battle of Unnumbered Tears) was the last battle of the War of the Jewels and, essentially, smashed the Noldor forces in Beleriand. The only main Elven strongholds left facing Morgoth after the battle were Nargothrond, Doriath and the City of Gondolin.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. Lets assume, that all of my tips will prove to be true, whatwill be still missing? Here is a list of the units (so no characters, no monsters, no artillery) from the books, which would be still needed: You can give them dynamic poses, that fill 25mm round bases or rank them up to a proper regiment on 20mm squares. Both options work quite well, and due to the vast options of weaponry (and the beat-up hand weapons are a proper choice for goblins) you can build multiple types of regiments from this set, so it's a proper core choice beyond Oathmark for similar games like Kings of War or Saga Age of Fantasy if you like. Due to their slender build, the goblins could even be used along with the true scaled miniatures of the Lord of the Rings, maybe not as goblins, but as Mordor orcs or such not a bad choice. For this reason, I think the way to use Oathmark in historical games, is to use dwarf, goblin, orc and elf stats with different human proxies. For units or armies with high morale or good command and control, you might choose elven stats. For militia and unwilling rabble, you might choose goblin stats. For me, this makes an interesting sub-game: trying to figure out what fantasy stats might best represent my view of particular historical units, then testing them out on the table.