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Author Topic: Revisiting Warhammer 3rd edition - and trying out Chainmail!  (Read 1614 times)

Offline Hobgoblin

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Revisiting Warhammer 3rd edition - and trying out Chainmail!
« on: September 30, 2020, 10:37:30 PM »
As semi-lockdown drags on, my son and I have decided to play a few games with various old rules. Some of this is nostalgia for me (Warhammer) but some of it will be new for both of us (Chainmail, Swords & Spells, Ral Partha Chaos Wars, AD&D Battlesystem). To kick things off, we squeezed in a 1,000-point game of Warhammer 3rd edition between work/school and our nightly D&D session.

I bought a second-hand copy of the third-edition rules a few years back. My friends and I loved them at the time and must have played dozens of games (though fewer were fought to a conclusion), but my views on the system soured dramatically after I got hold of Hordes of the Things, which I found much better in every respect. Still, I thought it would be fun to give Warhammer a chance again, and my son was keen to play too.

I drew up two army lists using small units and minor characters. The first was an goblinoid and lizardman force: 8 orcs with light armour and two-handed weapons; 12 orcs with light armour and shields; 10 hobgoblins with light armour and two-handed weapons; 10 goblins with light armour and shields; 10 lizardmen with shields; three troglodytes with two-handed weapons; five goblin wolfriders with bows; and three level-10 orc heroes: two with two-handed weapons and light armour, and one with heavy armour and a wolf.

Opposing this smelly and scaly bunch was a small chaos horde: two eight-strong units of beastmen with hand weapons; five beastmen archers with longbows; five chaos warriors; 16 skaven with light armour and shield; a level-5 minotaur hero; and a chaos sorcerer.

My recollection was that high-level magic users tended to ruin Warhammer games, to the extent that my friends and I agreed to ban all wizards above level 2. I also thought small units would give a nice taster of the game.

So how did the rules hold up? Well, the game was fun and played more or less to completion: we had to abandon it for D&D with the chaos warriors and skaven locked in combat with frenzied hobgoblins (we ignored the army standard rule that 3rd edition introduced) and the larger unit of orcs. It looked as if the goblinoids would claim victory, as the chaos warriors were beset from front and rear and taking casualties, and the skaven were largely ineffectual against the T4 goblinoids.

On the down side, most fights ended up as a series of long scrums with one-sided pushbacks; we had two units pushed off the table altogether. At one point, the centre of the field was bare as the the melees had been driven from the centres to the two edges. The 'locked-in' nature of combat made things a little dull and removed most of the decision-making after a certain point.

It also struck me that it's bizarrely hard to inflict casualties in Warhammer. If my maths is correct, two equally matched units of humans with light armour and shield and a frontage of four are more likely to inflict no casualties upon each other in a a melee round - after the initial charge - than they are to draw blood (eight combatants, but only a one in nine chance of an unsaved wound). That makes the game a bit of a slog - especially when contrasted with HotT's quick kills or Dragon Rampant's 12 dice at a time.

In our game, this was exacerbated by all the two-wound units (beastmen, lizardmen, troglodytes and chaos warriors) and by the fact that three of these four had toughness 4 as well. I thought the chaos-warrior profile was more interesting: two wounds but only toughness 3.

One thing we got wrong was not using the advanced wrapping/lapping rule. This was a standard rule in the second edition but is hidden away in the advanced rules in the third, so we played assuming that victorious units had to maintain formation. Overlaps for the winning side would have avoided the situation we had where a single surviving orc held five chaos warriors at bay until they pushed him off the table.

Another observation: stupidity is stupid. The stupidity rule looks like a lot of fun, but troglodytes (and trolls) are too useless even to be amusing. Instead, the stupidity rule makes them largely predictable. The problem is the Int stat, which demands that stupid beings have a very low score (4 for the trogs, with not much prospect of improving it other than with a very high-level leader). A test on Ld or Cl might make less sense, but it would make for a better game, with failed rolls being occasional, unpredictable events rather than inevitabilities.

Missile fire was surprisingly effective. The five-strong beastman archer unit whittled down the wolfriders and finished off the wolf-riding orc hero when he charged them. Magic, when limited to d3 fireballs, was about right.

Movement was faster than I remembered, helped by the reserve move; given charges at close quarters, the base infantry move is effectively 8".

The level-10 heroes were nicely powerful but not overwhelming; they helped the orcs and lizardmen give a good account of themselves against tougher foes. That makes me think that levels 15, 20 and 25 are probably a bit much.

Component-wise, metal miniatures are infinitely superior to their plastic kin for this sort of game. The chunky Chronicle hobgoblins, beefy Grenadier orcs and early Citadel chaos warriors slid across the mat nicely on flat square bases without losing their formation. I can't say the same for the slottabased plastic skaven and lizardmen.

All in all, the game was reasonable. I think we'll probably give it another go with a similar set-up, more terrain and more missile troops and monsters. We'll probably give the trogs another go with stupidity tested on Ld too. But we both felt that it compared unfavourably to HotT for speed of play, tactical possibilities, tension and - above all - flavour. In HotT, a warband element is much more distinct from a blades element than any of our main infantry units were from each other - despite their widely varying profiles. But the next comparison for Warhammer will be with Chainmail, which we're going to try to play tomorrow ...
« Last Edit: October 01, 2020, 06:54:08 PM by Hobgoblin »

Offline ZeroTwentythree

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Re: Revisiting Warhammer 3rd edition
« Reply #1 on: October 01, 2020, 01:28:58 AM »
Interesting to hear your review. I played a couple of games of 3rd ed. a few years ago and have been considering another go as well.

Offline Cat

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Re: Revisiting Warhammer 3rd edition
« Reply #2 on: October 01, 2020, 01:54:25 AM »
Way back when, I found Chainmail to be a better game than WRG 6h edition Ancients!  Chaos Wars and its pre-curser, the freebie hand-out Rules According To Ral is my favorite and most-played Fantasy/Medieval game for engagements smaller than DBA/HotT.

Offline ZeroTwentythree

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Re: Revisiting Warhammer 3rd edition
« Reply #3 on: October 01, 2020, 02:43:36 AM »
I started with Battlesystem but had trouble getting into it. RP Chaos Wars was the game that really got me hooked on fantasy wargames. I haven't played it in 30 years, I'm curious how it holds up to newer rules

Offline JollyBob

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Re: Revisiting Warhammer 3rd edition
« Reply #4 on: October 01, 2020, 09:21:57 AM »
I still love 3rd Ed, my gateway drug to the world of massive unfinished armies....  lol

I completely agree it was never an easy game to play, too many modifiers and not enough carnage. The ongoing scrum in the middle of the table was always a drag in our games too, although we house ruled a lot of things to make it play a bit faster (I think there was an automatic break after three rounds of stalemate, diced for if units were equal strength and the beloved Free Hack on the broken unit).

Still, it has pride of place on my shelf, and Warhammer Armies regularly gets a thumbing when I am contemplating a new fantasy force. (i.e. I have nostalgically accumulated enough random models to convince myself I need to do something with them...)

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Revisiting Warhammer 3rd edition
« Reply #5 on: October 01, 2020, 09:35:25 AM »
Yes, I'm very interested to see how Chainmail and the RP rules play. We also play HotT sometimes with individually based figures ("MicroHotT", as I call it, although it should perhaps be "MacroHotT", as we use 100-AP armies or bigger). It works very well too.

The other thing I should have noted in the Warhammer review is that flank and rear attacks seem distinctly underpowered. At the climax of the game, my son had the four remaining chaos warriors attacked from front, side and rear - but because they passed their panic tests, they weren't greatly impeded. In most rulesets, that situation would have doomed even the most powerful of infantry, but they managed to fight on and destroy the lizardmen to their front. We stopped before the end of the melee, and it looked like they were probably going to succumb to the remaining orc/hobgoblin combination, but it was a bit unsatisfying.

BUT ... delving deeper into the rules today,  I see that there is an 'automatic hits for undefended rear attacks' rule, but it's buried very deep in the advanced rules (p. 132) and not included in the quick-reference sheets. So, those chaos warriors would almost certainly have been destroyed before we had to call it a day.

I also realise that we missed the +1 to hit for following-up troops. That would have helped to speed things up a bit.

In light of that, I may have been a bit harsh on the rules, so another game is certainly in order. Next time, I'll cost the hobgoblins as berserkers (+5 points), given that we're allowing them their second-edition frenzy propensity.

I can also see this multi-game project leading to a frenzy of rebasing. My current principle for basing 28s is that preslotta figures go on square bases (25mm) while slotta-based ones go on rounds for skirmishes. But I've got lots of preslottas mounted on rounds who could be very swiftly rebased on squares to create bigger armies for this whole suite of games. My thinking is that true skirmish games don't need many figures whereas bigger games almost always benefit from square bases (even Dragon Rampant, given the wall of spears' rule).

Offline meninobesta

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Re: Revisiting Warhammer 3rd edition
« Reply #6 on: October 01, 2020, 11:00:10 AM »
3rd edition is the best warhammer version regarding "style" - the minis were great, the books and ilustrations were even better
additionally the DYI, aspect of the game was also something to be take into consideration during that version - and which was very positive.

Unfortunatelly, the rules, per se, were not great

the 6th edition rules were, in my opinion, the best warhammer rules written - but lacked most of the style of the 3rd edition, that and the fact of being used mostly in tournaments - When used in a more familiar environment the 3rd edition "style" could be freely added

Cheers,
Pedro

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Revisiting Warhammer 3rd edition
« Reply #7 on: October 01, 2020, 11:32:03 AM »
3rd edition is the best warhammer version regarding "style" - the minis were great, the books and ilustrations were even better
additionally the DYI, aspect of the game was also something to be take into consideration during that version - and which was very positive.

Unfortunatelly, the rules, per se, were not great


Yes, I think that's right - although I do prefer the aesthetics of the pre-slottabased models that were used in the first and second editions.

I'd probably argue, though, that second edition is the best when you consider the supporting material: all those narrative scenarios like Orc's Drift, McDeath, Rigg's Shrine, the Magnificent Sven and Vengeance of the Lichemaster.

I'd pinpoint Ravening Hordes (second edition) as being a bit of a tipping point, because it introduced the concept of army lists, none of which would allow the creation of the forces featured in those scenarios. It was an optional extra of course, but it and third edition's Warhammer Armies really set a different tone from what had been the norm before.

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Revisiting Warhammer 3rd edition
« Reply #8 on: October 01, 2020, 06:53:35 PM »
Well, we played Chainmail tonight with slightly smaller forces: 10 hobgoblins, 10 goblins, 6 armoured foot, 4 gnoll longbowmen (treated as orcs) and four ogres on one side; 2 x 10 orcs, 6 giant orcs, 4 wolfriders (treated as medium horse) and 6 wights on the other.

My son and I both thought it compared favourably to Warhammer. It was faster, more dynamic and more tactical; flanking and rear attacks played a much bigger part. And the troop types were much more clearly delineated, I felt, even though we had less variety in species on the table. We both want to play it again soon, and with larger and more varied forces.

My main criticisms of the rules would be (a) the organisation of the rules and (b) the complexity of the morale system.

The rules definitely show their age, and it took a bit of jumping around to find things like the points values of basic troop types and missile rules. An improved layout and a reference sheet for missile fire would definitely help here. On the other hand, the main rules are only a few pages, so I expect navigation to get easier. I'll probably attach index-card-type labels to the printed-out pages to make navigation easier.

The morale system was - initially - a bit of a headache. I can see that it offers plenty of subtlety, balancing a semi-random element related to casualties with a 'strength in numbers' consideration and a troop-type one, but it's a slightly involved calculation - at first, at least. Because our units were small, we were constantly having to double numbers too. But I expect this to be easier next time around. Some more guidance on the morale of large creatures might help; we presumed ogres counted as six heavy foot for morale purposes as well as

The one rule that didn't make much sense was the specific instance where armoured foot (including orcs and hobgoblins) were flanking other units. Moving armoured foot up a grade, as per the rules, makes them equivalent to light horse, who are generally no more effective or even less so. I think the logical thing is either to add a die per figure for armoured foot in this situation or to slide them up to medium horse.

Otherwise, there was lots to like. Where Chainmail clearly has an edge over Warhammer, I think, is in its clear delineation of a few broad troop types (light, heavy and armoured foot, for instance) and its tweaking of those categories to reflect fantastical creatures. (Orcs, for example, cleave closely to Tolkien's uruks in being fast-moving, undersized extra-heavy infantry who are easily dismayed.) The clear distinctions between the basic categories - as in HotT, with warbands, blades, spears and hordes - means that the game is clearer and more dramatic. In our Warhammer game, there were huge numbers of small distinctions between troop types that all but cancelled each other out.

That, I feel, is a major flaw in Warhammer: the big statline invites a lot of granular detail, but the distinctions often cancel out (e.g. high WS is negated by the opponent's high T or save).

Chainmail's faster movement rates also got the game going a lot quicker. The wolfriders were involved in flanking manoeuvres from the get-go, and we did much more thinking about how we were moving our infantry.

Also, I liked the fact that retreats and (temporary) routs played much more of a part in the game. A lot of attacks were driven off, but the retreating units then reformed and came back into the game. I prefer that to the 'all or nothing' Warhammer set-up whereby units that are driven off are usually doomed (because they've been decimated by free hacks).

Would i have liked Chainmail more as a kid? Probably not - unless I was forced to play it. There's no allure in the rulebook, but there was a lot of fun on the table. Next time we play, we'll aim for more missile troops and cavalry, and throw in a few heroes and a wizard or dragon or two.

In the meantime, we're turning our attentions to Chaos Wars ...

 

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