EDIT: This post has been updated, see the final para.
It started with a comment on Mr Wargaming’s yootoob channel:
The Joy of Wargaming
The Comment and the rules quote:
Oh, dear. Did this start a discussion!
It went late into the small hours on Friday, and then I posted it in the Clerics Wear Ringmail discord, to see if anyone else had heard of this.
People started tossing out all sorts of rule quotes, from Chainmail, Swords & Spells, even the Domesday Book!
Wait. What Are We Doing Wrong?
It seems that, according to the rules, a melee in Chainmail carries on as long as necessary, until one side or the other breaks and flees.
This takes a rather careful reading of the rules to discern, but if you are familiar with D&D you know about Rounds, and if you are familiar with other wargames, you understand the idea of two units being “locked in combat”, and that combat carrying over into the next turn.
EXCEPT that is not what Chainmail says!!
What is a Round? Or a Turn, for that Matter?
A turn in Chainmail is one minute, or so.
“The ratio of figures to men assumed is 1:20, the ground scale is 1”:10 yards, and one turn of play is roughly equivalent to one minute of time in battle.”
Chainmail, p8
An this is the Turn Sequence:
“Melees are resolved.”
This means you need to work through the combat procedure, step by step, until each units’ melee has been completed. And by completed it means breaking or fleeing due to a morale failure.
Do you see this little sentence in part 4?
0-19 difference - melee continues
Many of us, myself included, for sure, read this as “melee continues NEXT TURN”, like it does in many other games. But, you know what you get when you assume, right?
tagg1080 says melee continues until one side breaks.
And, on further inspection, the rules seem to bear this out. For example, the FATIGUE rules use both of the terms TURN and ROUND:
There is also the example of a combat, where one side flees and is caught up by the “continued charge move” and melee is rolled again.
There is a rule that a longer line of troops can “lap round” a shorter one, after the first round of melee.
Bobman Bob went looking in the old ODD and Chainmail forums and found the same discussion:
RHampton went looking at other contemporary rules, such as WRG
I went looking for the old pictures I’d seen of the guys playing Chainmail in the 70s. Like this one, from the 50th Anniversary video:
Jeffro Johnson went looking in Swords & Spells, and found this little gem:
So it appears that it is definitely a thing. A thing that pretty much everyone passed over, and the dudes who had questioned the language in the rulebook 10 years ago never bothered to tell anyone else.
(Searching those forums is terrible for finding good info. It takes FOREVER)
0 - 19 - Melee Continues
This is the key part of the discussion. The very crux of the matter.
And as we have seen in many videos, and game reports, most people (myself included) are using units of 10-20 figures and they rarely, if ever, get a morale result of 0 - 19. If you don’t get that result, you wouldn’t think about needed to RESOLVE the melee in the single Turn.
I kept going back to that picture in my mind, of the Chainmail game with the huge units, some of 60 or 80 figures. It clicked, eventually, that the bigger units would be getting the smaller morale results of 0 - 19.
So, I tested the hypothesis with a sample game between two units of Heavy Infantry, both at least 80 strong.
Large Unit Testing
I started off with yellow and green cubes to represent the two units. I placed them 18 “inches” apart. As I played the game I took notes and pics of each stage.
NOTE: The cubes are 15mm square. The base size in Chainmail for a single figure is one inch, thus the movement units, missile ranges, etc. So I painted marks on a ruler to indicate the “inch” marks due to the smaller base size.
Turn 1
I decided yellow could
advance 9 in, or
hold, or
charge.
I rolled a d6, it came up a 2, which meant advance 9 in.
I had already decided that green was merely going to advance 7 in.
This brought both units to 2 in from each other.
Each army has one fatigue for movement.
Turn 2
Both units have no choice but to charge. They each move 1 inch and meet in the middle.
Round 1
Green has the white dice, and causes one kill. Yellow has the purple Dice and causes two kills...
I rolled a four for the casualty modifier.
Morale score for heavy infantry is 5. So yellow wins plus 34 and the green unit is pushed back one half move in good order.
Now, yellow must complete their charge move, of which they have 11 inches remaining, they may easily cover the four and a half inches between the yellow and green units
Both units have three fatigue markers one for moving, one for charging, and one for melee.
Turn 2, Round 2
Since the yellow unit is once more in contact with the green unit they must melee once more this turn (Turn 2) I forgot to take a picture of this die roll. However green suffered 0 casualties and yellow suffered 2 casualties.
Green has fewer casualties, rolls of five, to multiply by the difference of two, and gets 10 points. Green has 78 figures left yellow has 81 so they will get three points for having more troops.
Total score is 400 for green and 408 for yellow therefore no one moves and it's a 0 to 19 result, meaning we melee a third time.
Turn 2, Round 3
Also, after the second round has been completed the green forces on either wing may lap around to the sides of the yellow unit for more attacks. The green forces move at one half rate which means they can cover 4.5 in.
For the third melee the green figures on each side will add three more attacks, while the yellow figures on the side will each only add two more attacks, because the yellow figure in the corner can only attack in one direction.
In the third round of melee both yellow and green suffer two casualties. This gives green a score of 304, yellow a score of 316, + 12 for the yellow unit.
Which means they need to fight a fourth round of melee.
Now this being said, for the fourth round the green forces can lap around one more time adding a total of six more dice to their attack roll.
Turn 2, Round 4
SMH
Green takes four casualties, yellow takes five casualties. The difference then is 1 times the die roll of 5 minus one for Fatigue = 4.
Yellow has two more units Morale is 4, which leaves 292 for green, 298 for yellow, a +6.
Meaning a fifth round of melee.
This kind of simple test is a little bit misleading, because there are no missile support troops or units on either side to assist, re flanking.
It also looks like it could go on for a while, so I called it quits on the test. The next playtest will be to make a full-scale army, like the ones in the picture above, and play a battle using these rules.
I put out a call for ideas for the army composition and disposition, and the discord is voting for Cannae. I have scenario rules for playing Cannae with Commands & Colors, so I’ll take a look at that.
The next email will bring a link to the video and any of my own notes or thoughts on how it played out. (There is a good chance it will be a multi-part video!)
UPDATE: It seems Griffith Morgan, who has a bunch of primary sources in his basement and access to some surviving OG players, has an update at The Comeback Inn forum:
"Combat continues" is as opposed to the other results on that table. Page 15 says dice are rolled once by each player, casualties removed, and morale if necessary. Page 9 shows melee as end of the turn.
And last but not least, both Jeff and Gary played it one round of combat per turn.
Here endeth the lesson.
Sooo, a whole bunch of fuss, with a rather educational ending.
Thank you for reading and subscribing, I really appreciate it! I have a few free/PWYW RPG and Wargame downloads on itchio, of you care to check them out.
This is fascinating! Great work on "rule diving" as well as the must-have of play testing!
Saved for future use!
It would have made more sense for me just to link the post
https://odd74.proboards.com/post/240710/thread