Battlesystem
Battlesystem is a tabletop miniature wargame designed as a supplement for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. It was first published in 1985 and was usable with both Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and the Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons (see editions of Dungeons & Dragons). The game was promoted as a successor to Chainmail and thus as a return to the wargame roots of Dungeons & Dragons.
In a Battlesystem game each miniature represents multiple troops (10, 5, or 2, depending on the troops' level or hit dice) or a single hero or commander. There are no statistics in the game for any troops or characters, instead all are derived from the relevant Dungeons & Dragons publications. This means that any creature from the Monster Manual or similar publications can be used as 'troops', with their in-game point cost based on the XP reward listed for killing the creature.
First edition
The first edition of Battlesystem was sold as a box set which contained:
- 32-page rule book
- 24-page scenario book
- 16-page guide to miniatures
- 2 Player Aid Cards
- 2 Metal Miniature Generals
- 3-D fold-up 'miniatures'
- Army Roster Sheets
- 801 die-cut counters
The game rules state that it was designed to be played with either 25 mm or 15 mm miniatures. However although the game did not require a certain size of miniatures, the official Battlesystem miniatures that were released at the time, except for the two in the box set that were 25 mm, were all in 15 mm scale. Also at the time many companies producing 25 mm figures were starting to make larger figures, sometimes even officially called as 'Heroic 25 mm' or 28 mm, that were hard to fit on the official Battlesystem base sizes.
Second Edition
The second edition of Battlesystem, for use with 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, was available in the form of two books Battlesystem (1989) and Battlesystem Skirmishes (1991)
One significant change was the move to assumption of using 25 mm miniatures as standard. 15 mm could still be used according to the rules, but the base size was increased to allow for larger 25 mm miniatures and all photographs int he rule book were of 25 mm miniatures.
