Small numbers of d6 dice rolls destroys so many games. Every wargame, a 5 and a 6 is a hit, and for 20 straight rolls, I only roll a 1 or a 2. In high school, you dont know how many times I played Risk and saw 2 armies defeat 20 or 30 armies because of flukes in rolling d6's. Now maybe its just me, but I HATE, yes I HATE!! d6 combat in wargames. (note: eventually I will write my own rules, in the true wargaming manner, and it will be a combination of the Battlesystem, Chainmail, AD&D and maybe parts of Swords and Spells).

While I am currently playing Battlesystem (2nd edition) and believe its one of the better fantasy wargaming systems, the reality is, the 1st edition more closely follows the AD&D combat and the Swords and spells most closely follows the AD&D combat system (as I read it, and have not played it). This time though, instead this time, they attempted to copy GW's game engine, of rolling to hit, then rolling to reduce damage, but just putting a different face on the d6 but add weapons with different damage types. then in 1989, after Gygax and company were eliminated from TSR and 2nd edition released, they had to re-release Battlesystem as a second half hearted attempt to gain what they had lost to GW Warhammer (while trying to clone it at the same time, like most every other fantasy game tries to do). From what I can tell, the 1st edition Battle system was just a quick reworking of Spells and Swords, with slightly better wording, but hastily put together, and never properly supported. Now GW's Warhammer was released in 1983 and in 1985 TSR released Battlesystem. It baffles my why with all the interest in the Whitebox DnD (OSR) that there is so little interest in Chainmail, and also Swords and Spells. Remember this was released before the Dungeon Master Guide, and before 1st edition. If people look at the dates, the DMG was copyrighted in 1979, and Swords and Spells was copyrighted in 1976. To this day, when I hear people complaining about the 1st ed DMG, I say to my self, that they must surely be quite stupid. Yes it has some paper work, and it definately needs a rewrite, as its not nearly as well writen as the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guild is, many people complain about the DMG, but I my self have not issue with it, and my 10 year old boy, just finished reading it also, and like myself as a young teenager when I first read it when it was first off the press, I really thought it was a work of art. Its maneuver, its positioning, its how you use your resources, its how you prepared for the battle, ie, its every thing people say they want, but dont really want.ДЇrom what I gather, Spells and swords behaves exactly like what would happen if you actually had those 1000s or 100000 miniatures on the table, and you rolled it out using D&D rules. At that point, its a battle of how good you are as a general. In such a battle you dont roll for each soldier, and you dont roll for each figure. What Gary created with swords and spells is a system to have that battle of 1000 soldiers represented by 100 miniatures. If you have a battle that has 100 miniatures on the table, its a battle of 100 miniatures not a 1000 soldiers. Most people can only afford to buy 10's or 100's of miniatures and only paint a portion of them, and then want a game represented by so few figures on the board to represent a battle of thousands of soldiers. The problem is most people cant buy the 1000's of miniatures for a game, have time to paint the 1000's of miniatures and then take the time to roll 1000's and 1000's of dice during their game.

Remember, Gary worked for a insurance company, and in this instance, I think what he did this 100 percent correct.

It gives you the average hits and damage that would happen if you rolled that 20 sided dice 1000 times using the combat tables and inflicted the appropriate amount of wounds. The Swords and Spells combat system does just that. If you had 1000 soldiers ( represented by 100 figures) over a legnth of time you would expect to have inflicted some many wounds to the other side and received similar ( all based on how well you are armed and trained to fight. Based on what would become the AD&D Combat system. What the Swords and Spells does it take the concept that based on what armor and weapons and fighting ability a group of soldiers have, the better armed troops would create AVERAGE numbers of wounds and receive such. As Sgt Slag said, the rules are kind of cumbersome, but not necessarily flawed in its consept. While I have not played it, nor Chainmail, I would like to actually sorta recreate it. So what it is? its the evolution of chainmail and OSR/ and what would become AD&D into a wargame based on the Ad&D rules.

The missing link chainmail