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It seems like a recent acquisition but I bought this over 10 years ago in a remainder bin at a local hobby shop. Since then, the rules generated numerous supplemental books and finally went out of print. They are still discussed on many forums including this one: Warhammer Ancients
WRG with another version of ancients rules. The difference here is that the armies are small, very small. Many rule set scenarios require thousands of figures so it is nice to have one that mandates smaller armies yet maintains some historical flavor, part of a backlash against a then burgeoning complexity that made wargaming less and less accessible. Additionally, the rules are trimmed back substantially making for a quicker, less demanding game. De Bellis Multitudinous adapts the rules for larger size armies and offers four booklets of army lists while Antiquitatis incorporates a single list in the rules.
DBA is likely one of the most popular rules sets. The book is short and contains all the necessary army lists so unlike other sets, DBA is self contained. Each army is composed of 12 units of 2 – 4 figures ensuring a player needs less than 50 figures for an army. With the small number of figures it becomes possible to collect more than one army.
The rules are reasonably simple. Players alternate movement. At the end of a movement phase, both players allocate fire attacks. Units in contact than resolve melee combat.
Movement is governed by a die. The number shown is the number of units that may move. Units that are in contact and parallel or following may be treated as a single unit. One side loses when it loses its general or 4 units (a base camp on the edge of the board counts as 2 units) and has more losses than the opposing army. Since games are bounded by a limited playing surface, battles tend to be brief affairs.
DBM follows the simplicity of DBA but expands on the dicing for movement rules with each army broken into individual commands and diced for separately. The army lists offered are far more varied and elaborate and fill 4 separate booklets. Troop breakdowns seem fairly obscure. For example, Teutonic Orders from 1201 -1522 AD contain Knechte(regular cavalry), Turkopolen(Irregular cavalry), and Livonian horse archers(irregular light horse) among others while the DBA listing specifies only knights and cavalry for mounted troops. DBM does offer an avenue for expanding an existing DBA army into one a bit more epic.
A helpful resource for DBA is The Unofficial Guide to DBA which clarifies some of the more cryptic elements in the tersely written DBA. DBA, DBM, and the army list books are currently available in PDF form on the Internet and provide an easy way to begin playing with a nominal expenditure.
Somehow, returning from the holidays is never very pleasant and if not for Martin Luther King Jr., would be unbearable. The holidays saw the arrival of a new child. It also brought the opportunity to rifle through dozens of old boxes of stuff. I found some stuff I did not realize I had and began to wonder if it might be time to repaint the lesser Orcan army.
A lot of stuff came to light including ancient catalogs and convention fliers all of which contain interesting information on things past. I also found some interesting rule books including two from Fantasy Games, Down Styphon and Bireme & Galley. So there is a lot of work needed to add things to the site and hopefully at some point get around to the main focus and play some games.
The Royal Guardsman appears to have been the primary agent for Heritage and the various lines of miniatures from Duke Seifried as well as Hinchliffe figures. Custom Cast put out their own catalog as did Hinchliffe so perhaps this was aligned most closely with Heritage figures.
An imaginative range of fantasy figures sculpted by Tom Loback and now pretty difficult to find. They really look best as an army but finding enough for an army will be a challenge.
After a lapse of almost 10 years, I once again sought out a convention, this time Historicon. The convention is run by the Historical Miniatures Gaming Society. The original location was a large hotel and convention center in Harrisburg, PA, but the space was too small to accommodate the large convention so it was later moved to a hotel in Lancaster and even later moved to Fredericksburg, VA.
Imagine a time when the Internet was in its infancy. Walking into the dealers’ room was like walking into a fabulous miniatures mega-store.
The convention is devoted to miniatures wargaming and there is surprisingly little else on display which is of course pretty delightful. There is a flea market, a dealers’ area, and considerable room for gaming and presentations. A stroll through the gaming area is always interesting as some clubs and individuals will put on games with stunning figures and terrain. It can be a bit overwhelming but at the same time a helpful inspiration. If you want to see just how far gaming has gone, this is the place.
GenCon East 1981
This was a smaller sized convention held in NJ in the overcrowded region of Cherry Hill at a small hotel. Not too much to see or do and I did drift off midway through though the convention crowd was lively and pleasant. Part of the pleasure of these kind of broader conventions is that the crowd is more diverse and less people who already know each other. The small size also lent an intimacy to the proceedings though I am not sure this is necessarily what people are looking for in a convention.
I was lucky enough to go to three of these. The focus was heavily on SPI and Avalon Hill including a softball event between the two companies. The conventions were large and a lot of fun with a more diverse range of interests in evidence. Miniatures definitely take a back seat here but are still present. At the time, I was a thin tall guy in my twenties. I went to a talk on 16th and 17th century warfare and found myself in a roomful of thin tall guys in their twenties.
One memorable thing about these conventions was the opportunity to meet with game designers. These are fun conventions and as far as I can tell still being held somewhere in Ohio.
So what miniatures rules were popular in 1979?
Johnny Reb
Fighter by Lou Zocchi
Bushido
Chivalry and Sorcery
Dragonlord
Dungeon Adventure
Dungeons and Dragons
Empire Napoleonics
Fields of Terror
Gladiatorial Combat
Lord of the Rings ( Heritage Models )
Melee/Wizard
Seapower
Siege and Assault
Space Patrol
Starships and Spacemen
Star Trek
Stars n Bars
Strike Team Alpha
Superhero
Swords and Spells
Tunnels and Trolls
Universal Soldier
Whiff of Grapeshot
The Wizard’s Tower Strikes Again
Wizard’s War
WRG Armor
WRG Ancients
All of these had tournaments. D&D was clearly the winner. WRG was a consistent presence.
By the 1990s, Ral Partha presented an enormous range of fantasy figures in 25mm as well as some in 15mm. The figures were meticulously sculpted and offered a dainty appearance when viewed next to most other figures of the time. Their D&D range was huge. The dragons were especially striking. But take a look at some of the other offerings like the Mimics. They also had several historical ranges including a beautiful but limited Renaissance range as well as an interesting colonial range.
The stuff of empires. Here are the original 3 books that began the whole thing as well as the first supplement. For those who do not know, players would take the part of a fantasy adventurer and enter dungeons in search of treasure while battling all sorts of foul creatures. One player, the dungeon master, would moderate the game and perhaps even craft his own dungeons and fantasy worlds. At the time I bought this, the game was not too well known but it sure caught on quickly.
Perhaps one of the things that binds the most popular games is introduced here. Players craft their characters, building a little game-playing avatar who goes for a romp in an imaginary world, not unlike the point-based armies created for games like Warhammer and WRG Ancients. By creating these imaginary persons or armies, one invests in it and is anxious to see how it fares.
It is surprising that a game shaped by miniatures rules in this case Chainmail should neglect that side of the hobby. TSR and Gary Gygax did provide Swords and Spells as a kind of Chainmail ver 2.0. But it was not enough to satisfy and the niche left open allowed all sorts of modules for single and massed combat to be concocted by other companies. Eventually, there was an effort to generate a more compelling set of rules but by then most gamers had found other approaches.
