New Woodland Army for Oathmark

Fauns from Wargames Atlantic. Plastic, painted.

My new Woodland Army for Oathmark and other fantasy mass combat games. I play Oathmark, not as much as I’d like, but I’m finding the stuff that I once considered useless detail — building armies and statting them and the point costs and such, are actually becoming interesting. I really wanted to balance the cooler armies (for me, Oathbreaker undead and Orcs/Goblins combo) with equally cool GOOD guy armies. The good guys tend to be bland in the generic fantasy niche. Elves and Dwarves and Humans. That’s about it. I thought I’d take a different track and go in a “good guy adjacent” army based on Woodlands. I’ve managed to collect some various miniatures along those lines and it’s finally coming together.

Earlier (metal) faun infantry from the now defunct Fanticide series.

Combining older Eureka Miniatures Fanticide* era metal minis with newer plastics from Wargames Atlantic makes a force of 28mm Halfling archers and pikes, Centaur cavalry, Brownie special characters, Faun (2 kinds) pikes and archers. Note the little details like wielding skillets and the chicken flags on the halflings. I’m very happy about this force of good guys, painted by my friends John Montrie and Virginia Remsberg. The two lines aren’t a perfect scaling match to each other but it’s fantasy anyway– so look over there for a second! Future expansions: wood elves, ents, bears. I’m glad the Eureka infantry stuff got painted and is combined with the newer Wargames Atlantic plastics. WA has some really really tall fauns and maybe Eureka nailed my visual thoughts on what a faun should be, but I think the opposite is true about the centaurs. The Fanticide “Liberi” Plains Indian centaurs are LARGE and very unique looking, but the idea of plains Indian centaur just seems off to me. To their credit, I don’t think Eureka sculpted those particular figures.

I don’t know what a company of crack Brownie troops will do in this Elf’s army, but I aim to find out.

I have three boxes of Wargames Atlantic fantasy troops, too. First is Halfling Militia, and it will provide at least 3 companies of troops to a new army– 2 Archers and 1 of Pikemen. This could really be a central core of an army.

Note the chicken war banners

I love these guys.. small in stature, giant in courage.

The Wargames Atlantic sculpts are all grim business. I like the little details like carrying skillets as side weapons. A diminutive troop type but they are all business!

See how the compare to the metal Eureka Centaur.. hmmm.

Bigger than my existing Fauns (left), but I like them.. They are wilder.. maybe a different “tribe” of faun. Also, they sculpt obvious female figures which I think is pretty cool.

There are no neigh-sayers in this army! Note the single Fanticide Liberi centaur in the back.

There are also Fauns and Centaurs from RGD Games (distributed by Wargames Atlantic). These will provide about two companies of infantry (mixed bows and swords) and a small cavalry unit to the main army. The fauns seem really tall for what I think of as a faun and the centaurs pretty small- pony sized. That’s fine. As I said above it’s only fantasy. RGD Gaming also has a related release called Satyrs which really look like Warhammer beastmen to me:

Still, I think I’ll paint up a unite or two of these. Forty figures a box can really bulk up an army.

Conclusions: A scrappy core army

I’m glad I went in this direction. I haven’t really statted them out yet in Oathmark terms. I’m probably going to borrow liberally from the Human and Elf lists and there is already a halfling list done by the designer. A good start. I intend to get a small unit of wood elves, at least a few Ent figures and maybe a wizard of some sort.. or two. I was thinking maybe a unit of bears as well. A nice polyglot and useful little army, no pushovers. This is a great start.

Fanticide.. now about 10 years into the past

• (Postscript–note on Fanticide) This was an extremely short-lived fantasy warband game designed by Rick Priestly in 2012. The game was “mature themed” and centered on “Homicidal combat” between fantasy warbands on a planet called Nowhere. It was an interesting pipe dream of a game that had a little bit of everything, published by Alien Dungeon. There were some interesting miniatures created by a series of manufacturers, notably Eureka, who created armies of Satyrs, Fauns, Flying Monkeys and Creeps. All of these are still around for order on their website, and all references to Fanticide are scrubbed. Fanticide had some great ideas and was a unique setting that was rated “adultish”, but I didn’t get what was so “adult” about it. The publisher, Alien Dungeon (now long gone), was the original creator of All Quiet on the Martian Front, which had a few years of intense popularity. LIke many publishers of the era, Alien Dungeon went a “Kickstarter too far” and ran out of capital. Fanticide was lauded for being clever and a weird and funny setting, but it never gained traction. So when Alien Dungeon declared bankruptcy, many buyers were left with bits of really weird miniature warbands that had no setting to play in. I personally had (have) some centaurs, many fauns, some creeps (eyeball creatures), some eagles, and flying monkeys.

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