A campaign RTS that runs in a browser tab

Oathband

A warband you raise, a country you cross, and battles of a few thousand men that you fight by hand. Mount & Blade's campaign over Total War's battles, in pixel art.

Play it now

No download, no launcher, no account. It is a tab, and the campaign starts about a second after you click.

Season is live

scroll to raise the visor

7environments
5weathers
6formations
44kinds of soldier
5things that end a year
2800men on a field
0art assets on disk
  • Spring grassland under a clear skyGrassland · spring
  • Autumn forest in the rainForest · rain
  • Summer steppe under a clear skySteppe · summer
  • Highland under a stormHighland · storm
  • Winter snowfield under snowfallSnowfield · snow
  • Autumn marsh in fogMarsh · fog
  • Summer desert under a clear skyDesert · summer
  • Seven environments, four seasons, five weathers.
  • Every picture and clip here is the real game. No mock-ups, no concept art.
  • Everything you see and hear is made fresh when the page loads. Nothing to download, nothing to install.

Five things a year can end against

Each wakes behind a rung of your own ambition, at a place of its own on the map, with what stands with it. Each shuts one way of killing and leaves the rest open. Kill one and your men keep something of it.

  • Aldo Halfshield, the bandit king, beside a man and a catapultAldo Halfshield · a camp in a wood
  • The red ogre beside a man and a catapultThe red ogre · a highland ruin
  • The wyrm beside a man and a catapultThe wyrm · his roost in the hills
  • Blackmaw the werewolf beside a man and a catapultBlackmaw · a wood, on a fog night
  • Vaskin the Pale, the lich, beside a man and a catapultVaskin the Pale · an old battlefield
  • A footman's blade turns on the ogre's hide. Arrows find where the wolf was. Bolts stop at the king's pavises. Bring what answers him, or ride on and come back with it.
  • Each carries two moves and a store of charges, and something you do refills them. The ogre eats the fallen. The lich is paid for every man who dies near him, either side.
  • Their places are marked on the map, one shape and one colour each, once you have found them.

Season is live

This season, everyone plays the same world

The Season button, steel with blood on it

The same button as on the title screen. It opens the game.

The season ladder: houses under their shields, ranked
The ladderranked on ambitions, then men, then days

One world for everyone

  • Every season, one world for everyone.
  • Same start for all: 14 men, 960 denars, 84 days.
  • The ladder ranks you on ambitions reached, then men, then days.
  • Play it as often as you like. Your best run stands.
The Season door: your warband, the days left, and how a season works
The season screendays left, and how it works

Houses, not scores

  • Your row is your house: your name, your band, your shield.
  • Anyone can read the ladder. To be on it, sign in with an email.
  • The campaign, with a world of your own, is the button right under it.

What it is

The countrya new one every campaign

A campaign

  • A whole country: realms, towns, roads, rivers, prices, wages, food, weather.
  • Parties trade, patrol, raid and go to war without you.
  • Ride between towns, take work, hire men, hold land, or take a crown.
A castle on the frontier, with cloud over the unridden ground
The frontierday 40, a quarter of the country ridden

What you have ridden

  • The map starts under cloud and clears where you ride.
  • A settlement is a grey mark with a question over it until you have stood in front of it.
A charge landing on a flankimpact, not a damage number

A battle

  • Up to a few thousand soldiers, each one his own man: his own target, his own nerve, his own corpse.
  • Six formations, cavalry charges with real impact, arrow ballistics, high ground, fire.
  • Two sides in two liveries. Your colours on your shields and standards, theirs on theirs, so you can read a melee at a glance.
  • Morale breaks a line long before it is killed.
The after-battle tally
The tally

A year that adds up

  • After the battle: survivors, wages, promotions and the dead, all back into your roster.
  • The men who lived are the men you march tomorrow.
The muster screen
The musterevery kind of soldier on one screen, bought a man at a time

A band that is yours

  • Name it, roll its arms, pick a livery, choose an origin.
  • Forty-four kinds of soldier in one tree: peasants up to knights, hunters up to arbalests, pikemen, hillmen, horse archers, mages, a catapult with a crew, and five that are not soldiers at all.
  • Your captain has a face, a level and eighteen skills in four branches.
  • He can be wounded, he can die. His best lieutenant inherits.
The deployment phase
Before a shot is firedyour ground, your order of battle

You set the line

  • Every battle opens paused: your companies in your hands, marked ground to put them on.
  • Anchor a flank on a wood, hold the ridge, keep the horse back.
  • Let it go, and give orders by dragging.
A castle at its strongest: the keep, the curtain wall with its gate and towers, and the garrison drawn up inside
A castle wall across the fieldkeep, curtain, gate, and the hamlet inside

Ground that fights back

  • Walls with gates, a cliff, a bridge, a settlement in the middle of the field.
  • A village behind a timber palisade, a town behind stone, a castle behind a curtain that turns a corner.
  • High ground worth taking. Ash where a march has burned.
  • All of it in your way, and in theirs.
The catapults, and the breachfour stones to a segment

A siege

  • A wall is worth men. Storm it and you pay for it at the gate.
  • Or bring a catapult. It crawls into range, throws five stones, and where four land the wall comes down.
  • A breach is a third way in, beside the gate and the postern. The machine that made it dies to the first company that reaches it.
  • A castle of your own sells you the machine.
The stormingspare it, or put it to the torch

What you do with it

  • Break the garrison and the town is yours. Before the tally, you watch your men go in through the gate.
  • Spare it and it stays a town worth holding. Sack it and you leave with its silver while it burns behind them, and every realm in the country remembers which you chose.
Two rivers running to the sea on the world map, and a road crossing one
A crossing on the mapwhere a road meets a river
A battle across a river, the enemy host coming over at the ford
A crossing, foughtthe host comes over at the ford

Rivers, and the fords across them

  • Rivers run from the high ground to the sea. A column cannot wade one.
  • The roads cross at fords and bridges.
  • Caught on a crossing, the battle is fought across it: one way over, and a host that has to come through it while you hold the bank.

One year, one warband, one player. No multiplayer; the season ladder is where you meet the others.

What else is in it

  • Weight. Winter costs a fifth of your marching and a third more grain. Fog shortens a bowshot. A dangerous road can be ambushed.
  • Goblins. A third of the bands in the hills are warrens. A goblin is cheap and there are a great many of him, and a chief stands a head over the rest.
  • Work. Halls have errands: carry a cargo, escort a column, put down a band. Do enough and a realm grants you a fief.
  • A captain in your hands. Break the band a hall wanted broken and you ride back holding its captain. Sell him back for silver, or let him go, and the hall will not forget it.
  • Land. A garrison you pay for, walls you raise, a market that pays you back, and a thing an enemy can take while you are three days away. Secede and become your own realm.
  • Men behind your walls. Leave your band in a place you hold, under a lieutenant, and ride on with one man at your back. They stand on the wall when somebody comes for it. Three armies at most, one to a place, and you can take command and ride them out again.
  • Six relics. The Iron Ledger, the Oath-Stone, the Cold Larder and three more, each in a monastery or a ruin, yours while you hold it. Each helps and each costs. All six is a way to win the year.
  • Sound. War cries, horn and drum, arrows, rain and wind, all made on the spot. There are no audio files.
  • It remembers you. The campaign saves itself in the tab. Sign in and the year follows you to another machine.

Your year has a shape: eight rungs, climbed by playing.

  1. 1A band
  2. 2Known in the country
  3. 3Against the odds
  4. 4You hold land
  5. 5A hall of your own
  6. 6A hundred men
  7. 7Walls worth the name
  8. 8A realm of your own
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