De Bellis Renationis
Another hard to find set of rules from WRG revisiting the 16th and 17th century from the perspective of DBM. Likely it helps to have some army lists handy.
Monthly Archives: February 2015
Old Glory Catalog
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A rather nondescript catalog from Old Glory miniatures circa 2003 likely scooped up at HMGS. The range of miniatures offered is large and the prices seem good. Old Glory and Battle Honors now have new owners with Old Glory now under the name Blue Moon and Anthony Barton of Battle Honors now producing AB Figures.
Heroquest
For a brief time, Games Workshop and Milton Bradley collaborated on a couple of games. Heroquest is the most popular. Similar to early D&D, players take the characters of various archetypal fantasy figures and probe a dungeon encountering traps, monsters, and treasure. Plastic accessories and cardboard counters allowed players to decorate the dungeon according to the outline in a book of dungeon maps. Players and monsters were represented by plastic figures in the best Games Workshop tradition. One player served as dungeon master.
There were several supplements for the game both here and in Europe. The game begs for expansion. It should be relatively easy to design new and even more impressive dungeons. A guide was supposed to have been published in Europe outlining this.
Currently, there is talk of a reprint although old copies of the game can still be readily found. Some of the supplements are far more difficult to locate.
Chainmail, Rules for Medieval Miniatures
Here is a battered up copy of Chainmail published by Guidon Games before their acquisition by TSR. Gary Gygax co-creator of D&D wrote this with Jeff Perren a local hobby shop owner. As an afterthought, a fantasy supplement was added including monsters, heroes, and wizards. The rules were heavily referenced in the original D&D. It is for this reason that the rules book is highly sought after. There are three editions the first two published by Guidon Games, the last by TSR. This is the second printing of the second edition published in Belfast, Maine.
The second edition has some modifications to the first including the inclusion of giants. I am not sure the rules are still in print or frequently played but they certainly hold a place in wargaming.
So what are the rules like? The figure scale is 1:20, the ground scale is 1″: 10 yards. Two sequences of play are offered. One is an alternate move system with the usual move-fire-melee with first player decided by roll of a die. The other is a simultaneous movement system with a phase for writing specific unit orders.
Terrain is pretty standard though there is no provision for buildings except castles in the siege rules and no impassable or desert or beach terrain.
Figures are not based. The rules were written for Elastolin/Starlux figures which have standard bases. 25mm scale is assumed though there is provsion for 30mm. 15mm is not mentioned and likely still unknown at the time the rules were written.
Formations are very limited to column, line and square with optional rules adding a hedgehog formation. Facing and formation changes occur as portions of a unit’s move. Move and range distances are given in increments of 3″. There are rules for fatigue that involve bookkeeping to note a unit’s activity.
Firing is gauged by type of weapon which determines how often during turn the weapon can fire. Beyond that, one simply adds up the number of figures, determines whether or not the target is armored, rolls a single die and consults a small chart in the book to determine the number of casualties inflicted. Arquibuses are handled individually. Rules for cannon fire require the use of a specially marked dowel.
Melee is handled on a figure by figure basis with individual die rolls. There are also optional rules including prisoners, charges, and hedgehog formations.
Morale checks follow melee and may result in retreat or route.
Historical characteristics are also provided. Knights may charge without orders. Peasants may completely ignore orders. Mercenaries may also ignore orders based on the roll of a die. Generals may also be included, granting a bonus point to die rolls of associated units and mandating a morale check if eliminated.
There are also rules for jousting and castle sieges and the highly thought of fantasy supplement which allows players to introduce fantastic persons and creature into games using the basic rules. These fantastic beings are usually allowed the strength of multiples of a standard unit type. There are also rules for magic.
It is easy to see the appeal of the ruleset when they were the only game in town. Now they provide an historical context by which current games can be measured.
Essex
Essex Miniatures
When I was buying 15mm Napoleonic figures, Essex was my last resort. The figures looked chubby and the poses flat. But as with so many of these companies, a recent return to purchase some ancient and Renaissance figures suggests that the figures are much improved and now I routinely hunt for these. There are numerous sources for these figures. One is Great Hall Games in Austin.
Heritage and Battle Honors Russian Command Groups
The quickest way for me to tell which figures are Battle Honors and which are Heritage is to see which ones fall off their horses. Battle Honors cast horses separately while Heritage present a single piece. One thing about miniatures rules is that as time went on, the rules provided roles for every kind of figure. Napoleon’s Battles demanded a command unit in every regiment, a command figure for every battalion, 2 command figures for each corps and 3 for an army.
Heritage Russian Cavalry
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These first were released sometime in the 70s and include hussars, dragoons, and cuirassiers. Based for Napoleon’s Battles which uses a high proportion of men per figure, the number of figures needed for a respectable army is large. The figures are well proportioned though a bit toy-like. Produced after the merger of Heritage and Custom Cast, they continued to be distributed under the Empire label for several years but are now difficult to find.
Smaller in stature than Old Glory, AB Miniatures, Battle Honors and others, the figures do best by themselves. Mores the pity that they are no longer manufactured.
Caught in the Middle
More and more stuff is coming out of boxes. And the pieces that have still not been found have taken on an aura of mystery. Where is the Archive Miniatures lower orcan and goblin army. Where are the odd Heritage orcs? Where are the remaining Napoleonette cavalry pieces? And what happened to the Dragontooth miniatures?
When I was younger, just out of college and still living at home, my father had an odd habit of taking things of mine and keeping them as his own. It was not until after his death that I discovered such oddities as an issue of Amazing Spiderman no. 33, a melodic banjo instruction book, and an old issue of Warren Publications’ Creepy magazine in his room as well as several other items. I was able to get back most of these but not all before my mother gave away all my father’s things to some religious cultists living down the street. I suspect some of the miniatures disappeared this way.
I once checked and found that I had changed location about once every two years since the day I was born. Under those circumstances, life ends up in cardboard boxes roughly stacked somewhere waiting for the day when all the hidden treasures are revealed. Which is to say that there is a long way to go before my project started with this website reaches any level of completion of even its first stage. Where for example are the original Tony Bath ancient rules? At this point, I would be happy to consolidate all this stuff in one place but even that seems difficult. Still, I remain on the case.
Begin at the Beginning
MPC space men, the so-called ringhand figures. That is as far back as I can recall. These figures seemed to be everywhere for years molded in different colored plastic with different accessories to cover everything from the American Civil War to missions into space.
Toys were violent at that time. Most small boys not addicted to sports could be counted on to wield a small arsenal of toy weaponry. My most benign piece was a hunting rifle with scope made of plastic which my parents purchased for me when I was 4. All these weapons and soldiers and competitive games led me to believe that aggressive leadership amongst toddlers was the way to go but as a gawky, thin child with glasses, I just came off as annoying and finally a bit marginalized.
Of course, at that point, toy soldiers are just the ticket for solidifying one’s fantasy worlds complete with maps and histories and then carrying those worlds on into adulthood.
But in the beginning, there were MPC ringhand spacemen. When we moved to a new house when I was 5, I recall setting them up on patrol among the labyrinth of packed boxes. Where the spacemen went is not hard to guess. My father thought of toys the way one things of old lottery tickets and was quick to discard them. He taught me a lesson I still have not fully learned. But that was a beginning.