WOTC Chainmail D&D Skirmish Miniatures

In 2000 Wizards of the Coast launched their Chainmail skirmish battle table top miniature game along with a line of Dungeons & Dragons Chainmail miniatures. These were a great line of miniatures if you needed elves, gnolls, ogres, undead, dwarfs, humans and drow as many excellent figures were cast. The elves, drow and gnolls were particularly wonderful. These miniatures did have the base slot and assembly problems that were typical to the WOTC lines: the base strips did not fit nicely into the base slots and many models, even the smaller ones, required assembly. For this reason and also due to rumors that WOTC had ideas forming to create plastic miniatures and a new skirmish game caused many gamers to not want to invest heavily into the line. This is unfortunate as the Chainmail game is one of the best table top battle games ever created. It varied from other successful table top games such as Warhammer in that battles revolved around small skirmishes rather than huge battles. if desired, a series of such small skirmishes could easily be evolved into a multi session battle or quest campaign and so it was a fun and imaginative game. Fortunately for those who which to try Chainmail, starter sets and miniatures are available at almost nothing on eBay. The full rulebook is impossible to acquire but a digital version is available at DriveThroughRPG.com. Many of the Chainmail miniatures were also boxed as Dungeons & Dragons miniatures. 

Chainmail miniatures, like their WOTC counterparts are readily identifiable by the WOTC stamp and the year 2000 or 2001 stamped on their base strip.  The plastic base itself has no such markings and is completely generic.

Thanks to WOTC's lack of success with the Chainmail game and miniature line, they are cheaply to be had on eBay. Many individually packaged miniatures sell for only 2.00, though some will bring 5.00-10.00 and a very few of the more rare 10.00-30.00. Starter sets of eight miniatures and other boxes of 4+ miniatures regularly sell for only 10.00 or so. They are a great deal for some wonderful miniatures. As collectors get their favorite lines completed they are bound to find something else to collect and I would be surprised if more collectors did not start picking up more Chainmail and other WOTC miniatures once they realize how nice they are, which will bring their prices up to what they deserve to be. Chainmail miniatures, like the other WOTC miniatures, were sculpted by the best in the industry and it shows, especially in painted models as the amount of detail is just right to make them paint up perfectly.  

Chainmail Checklist