Oathmark Dwarves and the Shattered Realm.

It's always good to start a new project and make some progress through the pile of unpainted miniatures in the store-room (otherwise known as The Pit Of Shame) at the same time!

So today I cracked open my box of plastic Oathmark Dwarves from Northstar, and put together my first Party of models for my own fledgling fantasy game, Shattered Realm.

I love the 'old-school', Tolkienesque vibe of these models! In this day and age of World of Warcraft, Age of Sigmar et al, it's nice to see what are basically stout, bearded little Dark Ages warriors instead of stubby walking tanks with a bit of beard poking out and wielding unfeasibly huge, steam-powered axes (not that that kind of thing doesn't have it's place, of course...)!

*A group shot of the Party as they set off for the ruins of Gharzulgrint- affiliated to the Guild of Stonesmiths, this gives the Heroes access to Melee, Brawn and Shooting Skills.

In fact, I love them so much that I've also just pre-ordered the Goblins in the same range, and will be picking up a box of the Elves and humans when Nick gets around to doing them...

As these will mainly be used for small-scale Skirmishes, I used parts from the Frostgrave Soldiers set to give them more of a 'wandering adventuring Party' feel- backpacks, bed-rolls, coils of rope, lanterns etc. These combine really well with the Oathmark sprues with minimal effort!

*The four Followers- the basic hirelings that give the Party some bulk. L-R we have the Archer, Agbert the Taciturn; 'Handsome' Roldo the Thief; and two Warriors- Ogri Whitebeard (with lantern) and Young Snorri.

You'll notice that I've used the square 25mm bases provided, instead of the round ones more usually seen in Skirmish games- simply because I want the option of being able to use them in Oathmark once that game is released...

*The four Heroes- in Shattered Realm, Heroes come in two types: Leaders and Comrades. These are the 'main characters' of the game, and are the ones who will level-up during a Campaign.
Here we have, from L-R: 'Red' Gutrikk; my Leader Ranhulf Finehair (the disgraced second son of a Northern Jarl); the inscrutable old Raven-Priest known only as Munin, and 'Big' Bjarni Hjostelriksson (brother of Roldo).

As for my own game, Shattered Realm- well, as you might have read on an earlier Post here on the Blog, this is going to be my pet-project based on the core rules of Dracula's America- but with several tweaks to better represent the sword and sorcery setting! It will be minis-neutral, so you can use whatever fantasy stuff you have to hand, and will allow for 'mixed' Parties that share a Guild Allegiance rather than a 'Race' (so Elves can work alongside Orcs, for example)!

I hope to figure out how to get a PDF up here for folks to look at and/or download very soon (though if anyone reading could help me out with how to do this, that'd be much appreciated!). The core rules are there, as well as the main Campaign system; plus a simple narrative Scenario for one or more players to get used to the gameplay (yes, I hope to make the game work for Solo-play!).

Hopefully I'll have a Shattered Realm game report to share with you soon, at the very least!