Phaeton Miniatures

This could be one of the half orc thief specialized unit trained to dig into the cold winter nights in the Saruman’s larder…

Why this sounds like something I may hold forth on!

Whoo-hooo!

The original Prince August fantasy miniatures are, in essence, designed to be played with a little known game called Dungeons and Dragons (look on the Prince August site. Look at the cast figures. Look at the characters. See those dice? yeah.) Not just D&D, mind you, but also Tunnels and Trolls, the Fantasy Trip and some other thing I can’t remember this very moment. Oh, and Runequest.

Around this time, another little game was appearing, or in genesis. That game was Rolemaster. Rolemaster started life as a “patch” for Dungeons and Dragons. The idea was to turn D&D’s fight scenes into something more interesting. This led to other rules, which led to “in depth character creation” which led to… well, eventually a simple version of Rolemaster called MERP. This may explain why MERP has so many oddities that are not-quite-Middle-earth. The other reason is, of course, that the original few MERP releases appeared before we got to see many of the histories of Middle-earth books.

Oh, also amusingly, the old fantasy armies figures were “perfect” to play with a then little known game called Warhammer.*

heh.

Anyway, the entire CH range of figures can be expressed in terms of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Second Edition. Fighter-thieves, Half-orc thieves et-cet-er-a. They can also, with a bit of squinting be expressed with Rolemaster Second Edition too. Kinda.

The general “look” and “feel” of the CH series screamed Dungeons and Dragons: the “elf magic user” for example is, to me, the ultimate expression of elf-player characters in the 1980s – casting a magic missile with one hand and ready to stab with the other.

I have used the various CH figures playing Dungeons and Dragons, which amused me. You can imagine most of the CH figures poking around The World of Greyhawk stabbing orcs.

The new PCH figures, on the other hand, certainly reflect a somewhat more sombre vision of the universe. In a way, I see the PCHs as conversions from AD+D to MERP, or high fantasy land to Middle-earth.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

* Interestingly, while trying to find a full list of Tom Meier miniatures, I came across a history of Iron Wind Metals, the successor to Ral Partha. The history explores the rather complex, incestuous and somewhat informal sets of agreements and business practices between TSR (Dungeons and Dragons), Games Workshop (White Dwarf), Citadel Miniatures (eventually, Warhammer), Ral Partha, Grenadier and so forth. By luck or design, Prince August remained a little apart from this world, but did sufficiently well to make a mark. (And The Man worked for Grenadier for a time). Ever wonder why a lot of old GW minis look like they belong to some other universe? Well that’s because they all started out as something else. Elric figures, D&D figures, licensed Ral Partha figures.

All of which brings home to me that the whole kit and kaboodle of “old school” minis gaming is really… people playing some hacked version of Chainmail and/or D&D.

Excellent expertise of true masters !!!!

Really, you know much about this……….¡Thanks!

Heh, thanks.

There’s even a special thanks to Games Workshop in one of the Prince August handbooks, and a recommendation to use Warhammer to play with Fantasy Armies.

Far off, more innocent times.

Yep
Games Workshop licensed most of the big American RPGs in the UK, so there were GW editions of Runequest, MERP and a bunch of other things. Hell, Taurefanto, the most amazing MERP add-on was published in White Dwarf.

GW’s refusal to acknowledge this is mildly reminiscent of Soviet Russia airbrushing disgraced Communist Party thinkers from official photographs

Awesome! My avatar picture is the other rider from that picture!

He didn’t pass on a word about the new January-releases to me either. We’ll know in time, I’m sure.

. . .let´s wait and see . . .
Only one sentence: The Man is magnificent !!!!