Chainmail Miniatures Game
| Chainmail Miniatures Game | |
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| Cover of the Chainmail Miniatures Game Starter Set booklet. Art by Sam Wood | |
| Type: | Rule Set |
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| Author(s): | Chris Pramas, Creative Director |
| Cover Artist(s): | Sam Wood |
| Publisher: | Wizards of the Coast |
| First Published: | 2001 |
| Class: | Officially Published Source |
The Chainmail Miniatures Game was a ruleset created specifically for D&D, based on the 3rd Edition, and released in 2001. It streamlined the gameplay, making it easier to use for skirmish scenarios consisting of numerous individual units. The storyline for the seven factions was set in far Western Oerik on the world of Oerth, in an area known as the Sundered Empire.
Description
From the back cover of the original starter set:
"The God of War is dead, and six factions vie for control of his legacy. Will your batle-hardened warbands lay claim to his lost power or be swept from the field like chaff?
The Dungeons & Dragons Chainmail miniatures game is an everything goes battle-royale based on the D20 system and features some of the most infamous creatures the D&D ;universe as ever known.
Build your army with care or feel the sting of classic D&D spells and new abilities taken straight from the Player's Handbook. This Starter Set contains everything that two people need to start playing, including rules for multiplayer play."
Time to throw down."
In the Sundered Empire timeline, the God War began circa 1006 (586 CY. An end date was never published, due to the cancellation of the product line.
Publication History
Chainmail was originally the name of the predecessor game to D&D, written by Gary Gygax. It was a set of rules for medieval tabletop miniatures battles. The name was used again in 2001 for a second (unrelated) set of skirmish battle rules, known as the Chainmail Miniatures Game.
The first Chainmail Miniatures Game Starter Set came out in 2001. According to the Lost Minis Wiki: Wizards of the Coast revived the Chainmail skirmish game and released a range of miniatures to support it. This game would eventually become the D&D Miniatures skirmish game, and many Chainmail sculpts would be later turned into prepainted plastic: the last recognizable one being the Large Ice Elemental (Para-Ice Elemental) in the Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures set #12, "Unhallowed".
The Chainmail brand would be discontinued in August 2002 but many of the miniatures ... would reappear in several of the D&D 3.5 Miniatures boxsets. [1]
Reception
The Chainmail Miniatures Game line wasn't remarkably successful during its release. Varying reasons have been proposed why that may've been, but, after the branding was changed when a new line came out, the following Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures line was more successful.
According to project Creative Director, Chris Pramas, the setting was originally proposed to be set in the Flanaess, during the Greyhawk Wars era. [2] But there was interest in making it a brand on its own, so a "new" setting was begun in design. Information came to management it would be better to tie the game more closely to a known setting, so the decision was made to put Chaimail in Greyhawk, after all. They couldn't entirely redo it to be in the Greyhawk Wars, so it was retrofitted into Western Oerik, giving it a more Greyhawk "feel" as expansions came out. [3]
Amongst a subset of Greyhawk fans[2], in the years after the end of the product line, the Sundered Empire gained a certain amount of popularity with a cult following.
Gallery
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Set 2 Guidebook:
Blood & Darkness -
Set 3 Guidebook:
Fire & Ice -
Set 4 Guidebook:
Shadow of the Drow -
Ghostwind Campaign
External Links
Chainmail product line at RPG.net
References
Citations
- ↑ Lost Minis Wiki. Miniatures-workshop.com. Retrieved 2020-Jul 23
- ↑ a b Chris Pramas on Twitter. "At this point there’s only a subset of Greyhawk fandom interested in the Sundered Empire (because it’s set on a different part of the world than the Flanaess). My original pitch was to use the Greyhawk Wars as the background, but I was told no because GH “belonged” to the RPGA.". Jul 7, 2019.
- ↑ Stan!, Creation of the Sundered Empire, Dragon magazine #315, Bellevue, WA, Paizo Publishing, Jan 2004, p103.
Bibliography
Encyclopedia Greyhawkania Index
The Encyclopedia Greyhawkania Index (EGI) is based on previous work of Jason Zavoda through '08, continued by numerous other fans. The EGI article has a list of sources, product names, abbreviations, and a link to the full, downloadable index.
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