"representing towns in grand tactical games" Topic

Normaly when I play with my 15mm figs, I use 15mm buildings but thats when I play tactical game.

So if I play a grand tactical game, the field will be so abstracted anyway, I was thinking of useig 10mm or even 6mm buildings or whole towns/villages.

Because when a base of 10 figs represent sevral thousand soldiers, it would be silly using 15mm buildings were a small town takes up more room on the table then Greater London would.

So I was wondering if its kosher to use smaller scale buildings and towns with 15mm figs in grand tactical games?

And were would I get apropriate buildings that would fit into mid 18c Europe?

So I was wondering if its kosher to use smaller scale buildings and towns with 15mm figs in grand tactical games?

It's what we do – 6mm buildings for 15mm figures. Some people argue that it looks odd, but it's no odder than having a peasant's cottage and a shed representing Prague

<edit> This is for M&R and GA

frankly I've found that 10mm buildings work fine for 15mm, as I believe 20mm buildings work for 25/28. Scale buildings, scaled to the figure, dominate the board way too much…..but as to your question.

For grand tactical games we're used a piece of wood, felt, or even black matts to represent the area covered by the town. We then place X number of buildings onto the area. If troops move into town, we just move the buildings around on the matt, since they're a visual representation at that scale and not meant to be accurate. This would work with 10mm or 15mm….if you went to 6mm the buildings would look too underscaled.

John Hill and Dean West do this in their Johnny Reb games (using 10mm buildings with 15mm figures) and it really looks great. You can put more smaller buildings on the same footprint as a larger building and make a little diorama out of it. It can be a very effect visual trick in setting up the tabletop terrain.

Back in 1980 we introduced a Objective Zone system for use with Napoleonics. It divided a village into two or three section-zones and to create a larger town or city several zones could be placed adjacent to each other.

Urban objective zones were round in shape while fortifications were linear in shape with each gun position representing a different section. A special Building zone was used to represent fortified churches, factories, houses or farms.

A similar system can be used for the the 1700s.

Buildings, without a function, could be placed on the zone markers for appearances. Troops in a zone were taken off-board and placed in a holding box for that zone which added to the Fog of War.

I like using terrain under figure scale for most games so I at least would encourage you to go for it.

At 6mm scale I use these link from irregularminiatures.co.uk and like them. They do some 10mm scenics but I have not used them.

x42

Thanks for the input, I think a few of those towns would look good

I think i'd have difficulty reconciling 15mm figures and 1/300 buildings. I think you could get away with 10mm ones though.

Essentially any buildings are a notional representation of a built up area, even more so than the troops are notional representation.

What i think is required is a BUA base on which 10mm or 15mm buildings are placed but are removed to allow movemrnt through or occupatio.

In terms of 10mm buildings, I'd commend the Timecast range.

I use 15mm buildings for my 25's.

6mm buildings for 15's is probably about right. It's the foot print that should concern you.

mjc

We use 6mm buildings with 15mm Napoleonics, and it looks great.

picture

For 15mm Napoleonics, I scratch-build non-scale buildings out of balsa or plastic. I make the roof peaks taller than the fluffy hats on the infantry at least, taller than the cavalry for bigger buildings. And then squidge the footprint to be as tiny as possible and still look semi-plausible in relation to the height.

6mm dioramas on 4"x4" squares with 28mm figures. The "town" is surrounded by a frame and the interior is removable when a unit occupies the town.

I respectfully, but vehemently, disagree with those who mix 6mm terrain with 15mm figures.

Stretching the scale a bit makes sense; wargamers are constantly making compromises between accuracy of depiction and practicality of display. I often use N gauge and 10mm scale buildings with 15mm figures, but I shudder at the sight of troops marching past houses with their bayonets at the level of the second story windows.

Apparently some don't find it too jarring, but after putting so much work into getting all the other aspects of the figures and equipment historically and visually correct, that large a discrepancy of scale is more than my eye can tolerate.

"but I shudder at the sight of troops marching past houses with their bayonets at the level of the second story windows.

Apparently some don't find it too jarring, … that large a discrepancy of scale is more than my eye can tolerate."

It's not that the buildings are too small, but rather that the figures are too big.

Even 15mm buildings, and trees especially, tend to look too small for the figures themselves…

I favor 6/10mm buildings as stated by others… you get it closer to ground scale.

Interesting thread can someone post some links to additional 10mm buildings? Eastern Europe.

A lot of my customers use buildings "one scale down" from their figures. For grand-tactical games it certainly makes sense. Sometimes trying to make historical buildings can be an exercise in frustration. I once started planing to do a 15mm scale La Haye Sainte farmhouse. But then I found some plans with dimensions on them and realized that the real La Haye Sainte was about 300 feet long which would translate to 3 feet long in 15mm scale! Who is going to place a farmhouse on their Napoleonics game table that's longer than artillery range?

The TimeCast link is link

6mm, 10mm, 15mm

Western Europe, Earesn Europe, Southern Europe, Napoleonic

Take your pick scale or location

realized that the real La Haye Sainte was about 300 feet long which would translate to 3 feet long in 15mm scale! Who is going to place a farmhouse on their Napoleonics game table that's longer than artillery range?

Probably the same person who would insist on representing every battalion with 600+ figures.

We don't represent units at 1:1, and it doesn't make any more sense to try to represent buildings at 1:1, especially with the discrepancy in vertical/horizontal scale present in virtually every miniatures game.

A La Haye Sainte can be adequately represented on the game table by a small walled enclosure with a farm building or two in the correct architectural style. Using buildings that are dropped down a level in scale (without doing too much violence to the visual aspect), which have a deliberately reduced footprint, and reducing the number of buildings, is a perfectly reasonable representational compromise.

Using a building whose door only comes up to the belt buckles of its defenders is not.

Ok – not Napoleonic but when I have gamed WW2 Spearhead in 6mm I made up town sectors in irregular shapes (but still big enough to take a unit base)with buildings represented by squares or rectangles of plasti-card arranged along a street pattern, some with another square or rectangle placed on top to represent additional stories. The only tricky bit was painting the walls and streets trying to keep some uniformity whilst varying the roof tops to make it look as varied as real towns often are. Trees and parks represented by tufts of flock sprinkled over white glue.

The effect on the table-top was similar to air recce photos and looked quite effective.

See no reason why you couldn't use a similar style with Napoleonics

The scale for wargaming should not be the height of the figure but the size of the base. You use bases to represent a battalion in line or column and then place 6mm or 10mm or 15mm or whatever figures on it. Then you compare that to an area you set aside for a town and fill that area with whatever buildings and stuff you want.

Personally I use the sector method mentioned earlier above. A size 4 town has 4 sectors with each sector being a 4 x 4 inch area. Then i put 1 large or 2 small buildings in that sector and when troops move into that sector it will hold as many and you can fit and you can move or remove the buildings for that time if you want. Sometimes I use only the area around the buildings and sometimes I remove the buildings. the buildings are just doing what the figures are doing, representing the contents of that area covering the table.

Even then the size of a town may still take the entire board so an extra scaling is needed that fits with whatever ground scale you are using. This reasoning goes with most other things as well, width of rivers, lengths of ridgelines, areas of woods and swamps and more.

Anyway just my 2c. Hope it helps someone.

Regards, David
wardepot.blogspot.com
milsims.blogspot.com

The reason that I go with 6mm blocks of buildings for 15mm grand tactical games is that it helps us to always remember that we are fighting for villages not single buildings and that, in turn, always keeps us mindful that our units represent brigades and not battalions.

It helps to keep us mindful that it is indeed a grand tactical game.

Now that is a very valid point. If your formations are something other than at the battalion level then that whole ground scale thing I mentioned would need to be refined even further. Putting 6mm buildings down for 15mm figures may very well be a way to help manage that afterall.

My games are all with Empire V which is battalion based so the system I mentioned works very well.

Regards, David
wardepot.blogspot.com
milsims.blogspot.com

This is something I am exploring for Grand Tactical in 28mm

I play DBA based games in 15 MM and usually go with 10 or 6 MM buildings to meet my objective and still fit on the allowed space/base. Seems to work fine for me.

Terry

I see that this thread is eight years old and has since been discussed elsewhere, however, here is what I do in 6mm. You can rationalize the same logic for any scale.

This is actually a footprint or ground scale problem not a vertical problem. So using smaller scale buildings with larger figures works, but certainly looks odd with cavalry looking over a town.

Just as our figures represent more than one man so do our buildings. You can't use the same ratio, but you can get a lot closer by comparing unit footprints to building footprints. That also helps you to determine how many units can occupy a building.

The other problem is the scale itself. The bigger the scale the more pronounced is the problem. As Scott mentions his 15mm La Haye Sainte would be three feet long. I think LHS only held about a battalion so he can certainly use a 15mm scale building, but it shouldn't cover anymore table space than one of his battalions. So probably just a single nice looking period structure.

Even in 6mm the models I obtained for my Waterloo project when assembled covered way more ground than they should compared to my units. So I had to remove some of the buildings and shorten the walls and garden areas. They still looked very good, but had a much smaller footprint than what they would have had if I had used all of buildings, walls, etc.

To make everything come together and look as good as possible this is what I have done.

1) Measured out my units. That was easy for me as they are all battalions or regiments on 60mm x 30mm bases.

2) Used the same bases for my buildings. That keeps them the same height compared to the figures, and gives them the same footprint as one of my units.

3) I also use a slightly bigger base 60mm x 60mm to represent some bigger buildings, but still only allow one unit of figures to occupy it. It simply represents a larger area.

4) I do build some custom sized bases (Waterloo), and advise the players how many units can occupy it.

5) For a small town or village I generally only use a single base, but put some fields, etc. around it to create the illusion of a farm.

6) For a bigger town I will use two to four bases and again add some small fields, etc. to create the illusion of a very small hamlet.

7) For major towns I use more bases, but always try to keep the size down.

8) For situations where you might have a single historical building I of course only use one base, but don't use much else around it, as it's assumed that any out buildings etc. are included on the base.

As long as you restrict the footprint of your buildings to match up with the footprint of your units you can use the same scale of buildings and greatly enhance the look of your table.