In Place of Chainmail?

[Crypt King]

Didn't Wizards at one time have an add for a Return to Temple of E Evil mini set.

Why are there no more sets. I remember as a kid there were as many sets of figures as there were blister packs. I have tons of boxes, do these not sell?

Yes they did, with a Grell and others, but it seems that it went to the wayside. I was really looking forward to it. It may be because this was before Chainmail was launched or that the module didn't do as well as hoped.

 

[CRG]

More about what I proposed

a few more things

- the system needed to have the ability to support "traditional wargame" things like field engineers, etc. and have some amount of rules that let you bring those back into your D20 table top game
- we'd want to create some basic "armies" and "units" so that more common battles could be thrown together with only having to take a convert-the-heroes step.

 

[mmadsen]

I have a very simple system that I use for Mass Combat.
Divide the combatants into equal units (for example, if you have 100 men, you would divide them into 10 units of 10). Then, average the unit's saves, BaB, and AC. Treat each unit as one creature...

I remember doing something like that a long, long time ago, and it can work, but it has its flaws.

Rolling once for 10 or more units at a time skews things quite a bit. As an extreme example, any one soldier should be able to land a critical hit fairly often, but ten soldiers should never all land critical hits at once. To keep the stats right, you'd need to replace a single d20 roll with something more like the average of ten d20 rolls; it should have about one third the standard deviation of a single roll.

If anything, you'd almost want to take away the die roll entirely. Figure out how often they should hit, multiply that by the number of soldiers, figure out how much damage they should average, and multiply that by the expected number of hits.

Even then you're left with the question of how many 8-hp soldiers you take out with 100 hp damage. That's not a simple division problem.

 

[mmadsen]

It sounds to me that you guys want Fortress Figures . 20 plastic goblins for $10! (Not to mention 70 skulls for $10.) They may not be the prettiest, but they are cheap.

If they were a bit more generic -- and not quite so ugly -- yeah, they would be worth picking up.

The Warriors of Middle Earth set for the Lord of the Rings Battle Game isn't too bad -- $15 for 24 plastic miniatures: 8 High Elves (4 w/ greatswords, 4 w/ longbows), 4 Men of Gondor, 12 Goblins of Moria (4 w/ swords, 4 w/ spears, 4 w/ bows).

 

[CRG]

Loot board games. Give Hasbro some more money - I think they do Milton Bradley, right?

Weapons and Warriors, Catapults and Crossbows, etc.
Battlemasters (if you can find it)
Nick Lund did a set a few years back of 150 each orcs and dwarves called "Fantasy Warriors"

I also recommend looting any things like "Hero Quest" or similar boardgames. I'm not sure the scale of the "History of the World" game, but the minis look decently detailed to represent different cultures. I just did a search on eBay and found thisCrossbows and Catapults. You can find Battlemasters and the like on eBay.

I also heartily recommend if / when things go on sale you buy them and raid them for their miniatures.

If you want sci-fi-like miniatures, see if you can pick up the greatest boardgame ever made "Mutant Chronicles". We found a bunch at the KB here a few years back and my friends and I bought 12 for $5 each.

 

[mmadsen]

Nick Lund did a set a few years back of 150 each orcs and dwarves called "Fantasy Warriors"

I'd never heard of Fantasy Warrior before, but I just did a little research, and it's now sold by an Italian company. Here's their site: http://www.stratelibri.com/nemoenglish/nemo.htm

Now if I could just figure out how to order a copy...

I liked what I read about the game on a fan site:

Like any game FW has its little quirks and oddities, but the thing that makes it great to us is the focus on command and control. In many wargame systems you'll find yourself poring over your army's movements and tactics. You have a godlike level of control over each of your little figures, only losing your ability to determine their every move when an unusual psychological effect afflicts them.

FW takes a different approach, placing you much more in the position of an overall commander, issuing orders to your commanders and struggling to match their reactions to the battlefield situation. What is more you need a physical (or metaphysical) means of conveying these orders- if you can't get a messenger through to your men you might even have to send your warchief after them yourself!

On top of this you have the problem of ill-disciplined troops failing to respond to your orders, and even suffering from ongoing psychological effects, like 'bloodlust' which causes them to go charging into the nearest enemy, and probably getting minced in the process...

 

[CRG]

Don't get me wrong ... the game itself was nothing to write home about. It was amusing but really lacked any reason to keep playing.

The nifty thing was the 300 miniatures it came with. Mmmm....

 

[mmadsen]

The basic point of these is that we wanted something that scaled up, looked like D&D, smelled lie D&D and that we could play using semi-broken down D20 rules. It needed to have D&D balance. At any point where we "simplified" or sped things up we wanted a person playing for the first to think "oh yeah, makes sense. gave up some granularity for speed. its still basically D&D though".

Sounds like exactly what I'm looking for. Of course, there aren't too many details to disagree with...

 

[Crypt King]

Speaking of miniatures in general, does anyone know where to get the WoTC black dragon,and the fire/hill giant from the 25th ann line. Besides E-bay or New Wave that is.

 

[mmadsen]

Re: Can't stand it

The goals I had were simple:
- I wanted it to be D&D, or at least a simplified version
- When you were playing it, maybe every single specific bonus or ability wasn't taken into account but in a general sense, they should all be there in the background (like the Dwarven CON bonus, etc.)
- The units should reflect D&D style units, characters, creatures and monsters
- When creating a balanced battle that balance should reflect D&D balance as well - the black dragon should be about as powerful as it would be if your party took it on in the RPG
- It needed to be playable in an afternoon, so things needed to be done to speed up record keeping and the like - keeping track of individual hitpoints or how many little spells the 12th level sorcerer cast were right out - these needed to be quicker and more easily done
- It needed to allow for as many D20 skills and feats to be useful on the battlefield as possible without bogging the game down

Again, I love your list of goals. I've had the same goals in mind. Out of curiosity, what are some examples of your last point, fitting skills and feats into the mass-combat game?