Brown Hills '71

[aldarron]

vintagewargaming.blogspot.com/2012/06/battle-of-brown-hills-early-chainmail.html

Lots of interesting stuff there, but note the Magician has a "circle of protection" spell.

That's not one of the first 6 spells listed in CM - the first 6 reportedly being the original spell list in the '71 print. My guess is that it was the precurser of the Protection from Evil spell.

[owlorbs]

Cool find.

[thorswulf]

Sweet! I own a bunch of Wargames Digest from the 70's. My favorite articles are the ones by Gygax (Elephants in ancient warfare!), Arneson (Chainmail armies from the early to late middle ages plus Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen) and M.A.R. Barker (Battle of Rhu). This is just a wonderful find. Now if somebody would publish the Doomesday Book.....

[Matthew]

Nice. I did some number crunching today to find the points values used for the armies:

Warlock (80)
Giant King (50)
10 Ogres (150)
20 Orcs (40)
20 Orcs (40)
20 Orcs (40)
20 Orcs (40) with Foot Bows (60)
20 Heavy Foot (40) with Anti-Hero (20)
15 Light Horse (45) with Anti-Hero (20)
15 Light Horse (45) with Horse Bows (60) and Anti-Hero (20)
Total: 750


Superhero (50) with Magic Sword (10)
Magician (70)
24 Heavy Foot (48) with Hero (20) and Magic Sword (10)
20 Medium Horse (80) with Hero (20)
10 Light Horse (30) with Horse Bows (40) and Hero (20)
10 Heavy Horse (50)
12 Elves (48)
2 Light Catapults (30)
10 Long Bowmen (10) with Long Bows (40) and Hero (20)
Total: 596

This assumes that long bowmen were light foot (+10 points if heavy foot) and does not count extra points for arming the elves with bows (either +36 or +48 points, depending on whether a foot bow or long bow).

Either way, it seems that the forces of Law perhaps regarded themselves as the better players, having literally left something like a quarter of their army at home (technically a fifth it would seem, but no need to split hairs!).

[Finarvyn]

Jun 6, 2012 2:03:19 GMT -6 Matthew said:

it seems that the forces of Law perhaps regarded themselves as the better players, having literally left something like a quarter of their army at home (technically a fifth it would seem, but no need to split hairs!).

That, or they believed in the "small band of good triumphing over the evil horde" concept.

The Lord of the Rings loses some of its dash if Gondor outnumbers the forces of Sauron. Star Wars wouldn't be much fun if there were more Rebels than Imperials. Well, they might be fun but very different. ;D

[Matthew]

Perhaps, but Chain Mail specifically suggests, for example, giving a less experienced player a 350 point army to use against a 300 point army of a more experience player. That seems like a pretty likely explanation given that the write-up mentions that the forces of law have left a quarter of their army behind. In any case, it would be a simple matter to outnumber the enemy in figures without outnumbering him on points.