Auction Agent - Brown Hills

The Battle for the Brown Hills:
Chainmail Fantasy Rules

Test your tactical skills in this exciting miniatures game that is the roots of the original Dungeons and Dragons game. This classic Chainmail scenario was originally designed by Gary Gygax. For 2012 this event was played on the first ever Gary Con Sand Table! That’s right, a six foot by ten foot sand table just like the one Gary had in the basement of his home at 330 Center St. in Lake Geneva. The same size sand table that was used by the LGTSA to playtest Chainmail and Tractics. The Battle for the Brown Hills was first played by members of the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association and the Castles and Crusades Society in 1971. This game will feature 40mm Elastolin figures by Hausser and dimestore conversions of vintage plastic figures for fantasy creatures – just like Gary used in the early 1970’s before the advent of fantasy gaming miniatures.

Here in an excerpt from the Battle Report Gary Gygax submitted back in 1971 to Don Featherstone's Wargamer's Newsletter:

Having run across an old map I had drawn of a mythical continent, complete with many fantastic inhabitants, I decided to use it as the basis for a game. Lake Geneva was to play host to the Madison, Wisconsin, group so I got busy. The "Situation" was described as follows:

East of the Desert of Sorrow stretches the nearly unbroken barrier of forbidding mountains. Furthest south, dipping into the place where the Gnyxyg Sea meets The Ocean, they are called Mountains of Bitter Cold. At the place where the Broken Land joins them they become known as the Home of Dragons, and it is somewhere within their vast area that is hidden the Cave of Shifting Runes. Furthest north they are known as the Giant Mountains, due not to the stature of their peaks — albeit this is undiminished, but rather for the creatures who inhabit the labyrinthine caverns therein. A spur of the chain turns first eastward, then circles north again, to enclose the hidden and unwholesome valley of Lake Iuz. The lesser peaks of the spur are the Dwarfrealm.

On the coast north of the Giant Mountains are the lands called Drearshore, and the peninsula of Lands End. It was from here that Chaos armed its host, swarmed into the Valley of Iuz, and began to harry the Dwarves, causing them to flee southwards into the Brown Hills and bringing news of the massing evil, to the men of the Old Kingdom. From the town of Yon to the city of Hither the news travelled, and the paladins at Great Keep were called forth by the Count of Aerll. All of Law was to meet in solemn council at the hamlet of Lea. In a short time the men of the Meadowlands were joined by a band of the warlike elves from the wood near the Cairnstones, as well as a large band of horsemen from beyond the Silent Forest, the eastern border of all the land.

The encampment of the Count was made in the Cloverfields, between Lea and the Brown Hills. It was here that intelligence reached him that the Hordes of Chaos had debouched from the pass at the headwaters of the Darkling River, skirted the Marshes of Oozing Slime, and now were only a few days from him. Despite the fact that only three-quarters of his forces had been marshalled, the Count marched at once due west across the narrow waist of hills, and took up a strong position to await the enemy.

So with Gary's scenario at hand and the same sort of Elastolin 40mm and custom conversion plastic dimestore figures he used, the troops begin to gather upon the six foot by ten foot sand table. The table itself weighs in at a staggering 400 pounds with another 400 pounds of sand atop - good thing this event was held in the basement of the hotel!