"50th Anniversary of Chainmail" Topic

It is the 50th Anniversary of Chainmail. It was released sometime between April to mid-May.

Paul Stormberg put together a short documentary with the crew The Great Kingdom (not sure of the status of that larger project):

YouTube link

Nah…the Gauls certainly had it two and a half thousand years back!

Broke my miniature gaming cherry with these rules in 1975. Still have my original copy.

That was interesting. Thanks for sharing this.

Nice article!!

Thank you for posting the link!

One question though for those active in miniatures wargaming from 1971–193 (pre-D&D's publication in Jan 1974), was Chainmail really that popular? If so, did people mostly use it for historical or fantasy?

How did you find the rules organization and writing compared to other games of the time?

My very first set of miniature rules. I think that was around 1979, haunted the store Waldensbooks for the odd chance at a box of Ral Partha, or Grenadier miniatures and in the same location I would see a book or two, that had black and write drawings of monsters or adventurers; which of course were D&D books. Everything back then was by chance, what will my trip to the book store bring me this time. Even ordering figures was hard, after I found Dragon magazine, you had to send for a bloody catalogue, fill out the order sheet , enclose a money order and postage. Need less to say I never got around to ever playing, at the time getting a group to D&D was easier than finding miniatures.

Played from 1st (Guidon Games) edition onward to 3rd. Started as historical with a mixed bag of figures (Scruby, Airfix, whatever I could get my hands on). Stayed with historical until maybe 1974 or 75; game was a mixed bag of historical and fantasy after that. Played quite a bit until maybe 1980 and took a break from the rules until late 90s / early 2000s. Playing a few games here and there. Every year I tell myself that it is time to start new armies (originals were given away years ago); I paint a unit, maybe two and then move along to something else. Someday I'll once again have enough figures (a mic of 25mm and 30mm) ready for playing Chainmail.

As for rules organization and writing; I didn't have much to compare with back then, but we could puzzle things out well enough. At one point I did a re-write; maybe not a complete re-write, but pulling the various pieces into a shorter length. More to help get new players going and partly to allow for easier experimentation when we came up with new ideas to try out.