Chainmail (game)

Chainmail is a medieval miniatures wargame created by  Jeff Perren and Gary Gygax. The 1971 edition includes a fantasy supplement and is one of the oldest sets of rules for fantasy miniature wargaming, containing spells and monsters that would reappear in Dungeons and Dragons.

Early History
The use of 40mm Elastolin miniatures for medieval wargaming was popularized by Siege of Bodenburg which appeared in Strategy & Tactics magazine in 1967. This motivated Jeff Perren to develop a few pages of his own rules for these miniatures. He introduced the rules to Gary Gygax and the LGTSA at the 1968 Gen Con. Gygax expanded the rules to 16 pages and published them in the newsletters of the IFW and the Castle & Crusade Society.

The Rules
In the core rules, each figure represents 20 men. Troops are divided into six basic types: light foot, heavy foot, armored foot, light horse, medium horse, and heavy horse. Melee is resolved by rolling six-sided dice: for example, when heavy horse is attacking light foot, the attacker is allowed to roll 4 dice per man, with each 5 or 6 denoting a kill. On the other hand, when light foot is attacking heavy horse, the attacker is allowed only 1 die per man, with a 6 denoting a kill.

Additional rules govern missile and artillery fire, movement and terrain, charging, fatigue, morale, and the taking of prisoners.

The Fantasy Supplement
The rules first appeared under the name Chainmail when they were published by Guidon Games in 1971. For this edition of the game Gygax added rules for jousting, man-to-man melee, and conducting battles with fantasy creatures. The man-to-man melee used two six-sided dice (2d6) to determine whether a kill is made and took account of the attacker's weapon and the defender's armor. The armor sequence was nearly identical to what would be used in Dungeons & Dragons.

The fantasy creatures and spells exploited the current popularity of Lord of the Rings and helped make Chainmail Guidon's best seller. In a 2001 interview Gygax recalled that

...as the members began to get tired of medieval games, and I wasn't, I decided to add fantasy elements to the mix, such as a dragon that had a fire-breath weapon, a hero that was worth four normal warriors, a wizard who could cast fireballs, [which had] the range and hit diameter of a large catapult, and lightning bolts, [which had] the range and hit area of a cannon, and so forth. I converted a plastic stegosaurus into a pretty fair dragon, as there were no models of them around in those days. A 70 mm Elastolin Viking figure, with doll's hair glued to its head, and a club made from a kitchen match and auto body putty, and painted in shades of blue for skin color made a fearsome giant figure. I haunted the dime stores looking for potential additions and eventually found figures to represent ogres, elementals, etc. The players loved the new game, and soon we had twenty or more players showing up for every session.

Each of the fantasy creatures are treated as one of the six basic troop types. For example, halflings are treated as light foot and elves are treated as heavy foot. Giants are treated as 12 heavy footmen, and require 12 cumulative hits to kill. Heros are treated as 4 heavy footmen, and require 4 simultaneous hits to kill. Wizards were not limited to fireballs and lightning bolts: they could cast other spells. Unlike in D&D, a stronger wizard can cancel the spell of a weaker wizard by rolling a 7 or higher with two six-sided dice.

Use with Dungeons & Dragons
Dave Arneson used Chainmail in his Blackmoor campaign, and many elements of Chainmail were carried over wholesale into Dungeons & Dragons (1974). In fact, the original edition of D&D recommended the reader own a copy of Chainmail. Gygax intended the Chainmail combat rules to be used in D&D, though he provided an alternative d20 attack matrix which would eventually become standard.

The real advantage of using Chainmail with D&D was that it allowed one to conduct battles between armies. Since D&D introduced new monsters and spells, Chainmail needed to be updated to cover them. Gygax decided that the technique of treating each fantasy creature as equivalent to a certain number of men was not working, and in Swords & Spells (1976) he opted for a diceless approach which averaged each monster's D&D statistics. Swords & Spells failed to gain acceptance, possibly because it was hastily produced.

Later Products
In 1975 TSR, Inc. acquired the rights and released the 3rd edition of Chainmail, which was available as late as 1980. TSR then concentrated on role playing games, leaving space for competition such as Warhammer by Games Workshop. In 1985 TSR released a successor to Chainmail called Battlesystem; it went through two editions.

Chainmail was briefly available again in 2002. It was replaced the following year by the Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures Game.