Chainmail Combat for OD&D: A Reflection

In my ongoing Murdicog's Manse Antarctic Hexcrawl campaign, I decided to try resolving combat using a derivative of the Chainmail "Man-to-man" combat matrix, which supplies a target number for each possible paring of weapon vs. armor. I've seen "OD&D + Chainmail" come up as a topic of discussion fairly often, but haven't seen as many reports of how it goes down in practice, so I thought it worth writing up my sliver of experience. You can read my house rules here, including the Chainmail-inspired tables. I compiled my version of the table by hand, using both the original Chainmail numbers and those drawn up by blark for Meatheads as a reference. Gygax & Perren originally designed this matrix to simulate fights between two regular dudes; the Fantasy Combat matrix was intended to resolve clashes between heroic types and monsters (and the "alternative" combat system in M&M may have been intended to replace it). To make M2M work for human vs. monster, I adopted the Meatheads approach of…