CHAINMAIL

Reading CHAINMAIL started the same way I read my first English novel, I gave up. I gave up on CHAINMAIL a few times actually, until I didn't. When I had carefully parsed it over a few months, laboriously figuring out each sub system, I felt confident I could play a game and get it roughly right. 

The most rewarding part of this was then re-reading OD&D and watch so many parts of it fall into place. Not primarily Morale or Combat procedures, because St. Gary explicitly told me to reference CHAINMAIL for those, but for the conceptual understanding of it. I also then knew what Man +1, Hero -1 and Heavy Foot meant!

 Combat System 1: Combat Tables

I quickly became smitten with the core combat system of CHAINMAIL - the combat tables. It incorporates weapons vs armor in an elegant way, and as one who has always desired this mechanic, this was very attractive. I have read (never tried), the AD&D system for this and wasn't impressed with it. I have read and tried Oakes Spalding's system for it in the excellent OD&D clone Seven Voyages of Zylarthen but felt it didn't have impact enough except on low levels. But in CHAINMAIL, a fully armored horseman is a monster compared to lightly armored footmen. I suppose this triggers some sort of verisimilitude kink of mine. 

 Combat System 2: Man-to-Man

I was ambiguous when reading the Man-to-Man rules. It did incorporate weapon vs. armor, not unlike 7VoZ (I would even be bold and say 7VoZ is a revised version of CHAINMAIL man-to-man), but seemed very cumbersome and granular in a way I didn't feel might sit well at the table, especially at high levels or where many combats may have to be resolved simultaneously. It seemed more like a system fitting for duel-like battles. I understand it might be used just like that, for "boss fights" to use a novel term. Here, I did like Spalding's system more, similar but more functional in a table top skirmish situation. 

 Combat System 3: Fantasy Combat

This struck me as not very useful in OD&D. In a mass battle with fantasy elements such as a Dragon or Troll, it seems a perfectly feasible way to handle epic monsters vastly out-powering normal men, where let's say a Hero battles as Dragon in the midst of battle, it's super fast and heavily abstracted. The monsters presented in the Fantasy add-on have rules for engaging other legendary figures in fast, epic battle (Fantasy Combat Table) and for the monsters slaughtering droves of men using the normal mass combat rules. 

I don't immediately  see an application for this in OD&D, the system is so heavily abstracted - positions, time, abilities, strategy and spells are irrelevant here (not magic weapons and armor though) and resolution is just a die roll on a table. If anything, the real epic fights become substantially less detailed and my experience is that the tolerance for drawn out, granular battles is higher when fighting a dragon or a balrog, not the opposite. 

 Cheers!