"Starting out WWII wargaming.... should I go 15mm or 20mm?" Topic

I had mistakenly thought that the platoon pack discount was £10.00 GBP GBP instead of £5.00 GBP

It's neither. It's 10%.

…£58.50 vs £54.00

You're obviously looking at a different location to me, all the tanks I can see are £5.85 GBP each. Haven't found any at £5.40. On the other hand our SdKfz222 is only £3.50 GBP so 10 of those are only £35.00, or even £45.50 GBP with shipping, so you might say £8.50 GBP cheaper :-D

Infantry platoons… these don't apply for "platoon pack" discounts AFAIK

Correct, they fall under the IPP platoon pack: link

You're obviously looking at a different location to me, all the tanks I can see are £5.85 GBP GBP each. Haven't found any at £5.40

Ah, just found the box set at £27.00 GBP for 5. No, ours would be £25.00 GBP for 5, less discount, plus shipping.

It's neither. It's 10%.

OK, maybe I'm still sleepy :P

Ah, just found the box set at £27.00 GBP GBP for 5. No, ours would be £25.00 GBP GBP for 5, less discount, plus shipping.

I really don't want to sound obstinate, but wouldn't "less discount, plus shipping" add up to £29.25 GBP ?

All I wanted to do was to show that sometimes there is such a thing as "free shipping", as surprising as it sounds.
I've yet to find any other store anywhere in the world doing that for international orders.

But as you've rightly pointed out, this whole discussion is moot since I've decided to go 20mm (at least for now). ;)

Oh, btw George, your infantry do seem to be a lot more detailed than the collection of lumps that are Battlefront infantry.

Where could I see some pictures of them painted up?
I tried the Guild's gallery, but my searches didn't turn up anything.

Like you Kraussian i dont actually game that much. I'm more of a collector of wargame forces i suppose.

So, the quality of the models for me is the most important thing. I have some 20mm plastics but they just dont satisfy that much. Great if your planning a big game in a club etc, but when its just you and your models most of the time youve really got to be in love with them aesthetically.

For that reason ive gone for 28mm, i also like men to be individually based and more biased towards the PBI than tanks. However, i'm thinking about building up a western desert force, that should be 2 forces, because with few opponants you have to have both sides, so double the expense. I keep thinking that HAT armourfast kits are the ticket and airfix DAK and 8th Army are quite decent. But i know this would only be a stop gap, you just dont get the variety in plastic of troops and vehicles to sustain any interest. I am getting really seduced by the marketing of the Battlefront stuff and fow as it would be quicker to paint than 28mm. But as QDF are only a few miles away from me i would probably subscibe to their 15mm offerings.

When you have friends over for a game, digging out a box of plastic kits isnt gonna be that impressive. Ive never shown anyone my airfix kits but will happily and proudly display my 28mm collection.

All I wanted to do was to show that sometimes there is such a thing as "free shipping"

I can guarantee the shipping isn't 'free', just factored in differently so that the customer at the end doesn't see a separate purchase and shipping charge (I know, too many years in design and marketing).

A customer did ask us to charge actual shipping once (ignoring the packing labour and materials of course, they never seem to appcreciate or want to pay for that… funny), but he said it was more expensive and preferred our method. We make a slight annual average loss on shipping (and that's just on postage costs, without factoring in packing time).

One might say, if you deduct the shipping charge we are considerably cheaper. Or compare one of our cheaper vehicles with shipping. :-)

I'm not disputing that you may be able to buy 10 tanks a little cheaper, but whether by lower profit margins, loss leaders or some other method, you won't convince me that shipping is ever really 'free'. ;-)

Oh, btw George…

Oi!

…your infantry do seem to be a lot more detailed than the collection of lumps that are Battlefront infantry. Where could I see some pictures of them painted up?

No idea. it's taken us 3 years just to get that much photographed! I'd send you a sample pack, but they'll be small next to your 20mm.

But as QDF are..

You at it as well? :-D

Oh, btw George…

Oi!

Umm… I've run out of excuses :P

But in any case, I'll make sure to keep QRF in mind if I ever decide to collect some 15mm!

@projectmayhem
I see what you mean.
But 2 things draw me back from the 28mm scale.
First will be the comparatively higher costs, and second will be the (typically) exaggerated proportions that most 28mm sculptors seem to use.

I'm aware that there are some 28mm ranges that actually keep to realistic proportions, but having to choose only from only a handful of makers would rather limit my options on the models I can get.

I dont believe this result, converting you to 28mm. 28mm is a little limited but expanding all the time, for russian figures youve got Bolt Action, Artizan, theres also Black Tree with vehicles from Army Group North, Bolt Action, JTFM, Company B.

A platoon each side of 3 sections + supports and only 1 or 2 tanks makes a great skirmish game, using something like Rules of Engagement.

I definately think youll appreciate their collectability and quality more, certainly over plastics.

@projectmayhem
Well, not a full convert yet :P
Maybe it isn't so surprising if you consider the fact that I come from Warhammer 40K, which is in 28mm.

Oh, and another strong advantage for going 28mm is that 1/48 scale vehicles can be easily found at local hobby stores here. (Similar to the advantage for 20mm and 1/72 vehicles)

I just came across this webpage (found in an older TMP post), that wonderfully illustrates the difference between "realistic proportion" 1/48 scale Tamiya plastic figures against 28mm Artizan, Crusader and Black Tree metal ones.

link

Looking at this side-by-side comparison, I can't believe I actually thought that Artizan/Crusader were anatomically correct. All that time with 40K 28mm figures must have really screwed my sense of aesthetics.

These Tamiya figures look absolutely stunning!

I think I've finally found what I've been looking for.
They look fantastic, are 100% compatible with 1/48 vehicles, and they're cheap! (10 figures for around $9 USD )

Best of all, both 1/48 figures as well as 1/48 vehicles are readily available at my local hobby store!

Kraussian wrote:

I just came across this webpage (found in an older TMP post), that wonderfully illustrates the difference between "realistic proportion" 1/48 scale Tamiya plastic figures against 28mm Artizan, Crusader and Black Tree metal ones.

Wow… so modern "28mm" figures are 1/48? At least it looks close enough. I've got a few metal 28mm WW2 figures, but I don't think I'll bother at this point. That gives me some alternatives for my 28mm 1920's gangsters as well.

- Bob

If I were starting over right now, I'd go with 10mm or 12mm. But then I'm not a skirmish kind of guy.

Dear Kraussian,
I'm a WW2 gamer in Korea as well. I had the exact same question as you with the same pros & cons for 15/20mm.
I would dearly love for you to get in touch with me ASAP. My email is fareast51@hotmail.co.uk I have my own English school and would like to set up a games club. After several years deliberation, I decided to go 20mm/1-72/1-76 for ease of access to kits and figs here and cost too. I also chose to go with Rapid Fire! rules. Mainly because of the ease of teaching the rules to non native speaking kids (elementary school mainly), and also because Rapid Fire seems set up well for 20mm/1-72/1-76. The rules have a enrty set free (rapid fire for rookies. There is a games shop in Seoul near Hongik uni which sells/games mainly FOW and GW stuff. There seems to be a following here. I would happily consider going into fow to a limited degree, too. I bought the rules and two supplements too when I was still undecided.
Anyway get in touch and lets set up some gaming in Korea!
Regards,
Tony Banks,
Sanbon, Kyongi-do
Korea fareast51@hotmail.co.uk

Just to confirm my email address:
fareast51@hotmail.co.uk

@manzikert1071
I was searching all over for you (the other TMP guy in Korea), but TMP was giving me way too many "Korean War" topics when I searched using the term "Korea" :P

Let's hook up! I'll be dropping you an email shortly.

Kraussian, be very careful of 28mm – a lot of the figures are just ghastly abominations of human anatomy. And 28mm doesn't go with 1:48, the figures look ridiculously small in all the magazine pictures I've seen of these.

With the greatest of respect to our friends here who love the scale, I really and truly have no idea what is appealing about them when they are so non-human looking.
--
Tim

Tim, I actually came to a similar conclusion after looking at the side-by-side comparison at NapNuts (link provided in my post above).

If I'm not going either 15mm or 20mm, I think I'll go with the 1:48 anatomically correct plastic Tamiya figures.

But then I noticed that 1:48 doesn't seem to be as well supported as the 1:32 scale…
For example, I won't be able to get all the different versions of the T-34/76 (1941, 1942, 1943, etc), nor would I be able to get Russian infantry in winter uniform.

Guess it all comes down to what I'm looking for.

15mm: Exhaustive selection of a wide variety of figures and models. There are models available for almost every vehicle of war (with their various versions) and infantry type.

20mm: Variety may be as wide as 15mm, but need to "mix and match" between many different manufacturers. Quite a number of them don't match well, so lots of research as well as trial-and-error required.

1:48: Extremely detailed, looks fantastic and well-proportioned, but limited selection.

One thing I've noticed during my research is the surprising lack of pictures of painted 20mm figures.
This makes it really difficult to judge whether a particular model/range will look OK next to another.

I've tried The Guild's "Living Catalogue" too, but they don't seem to have many pictures either.

And so the verdict is… that I don't have a verdict yet

Kraussian,

The anatomically incorrect 28mm figures from Artizan/Crusader/BAM et al. are due to the so-called 'Foundry school' of sculpting that have been popularized by Games Workshop's Perry twins as well as other sculptors who apprenticed at Wargames Foundry and since moved on. This style is characterized by an exaggeration of the limbs, head and torso, making the figures look chunky and squat. 28mm (or 15mm or 20mm for that matter) are not true scales because they should be expressed as fractions like 1/72, 1/48, etc. Hence, any figures you see in 1/72 or 1/48 tend to be more realistic representations of the human anatomy proportion-wise.

Now if you look again at Battlefront's 15mm miniatures for FOW or some of the 20mm figures at the Prince August site I pointed you to earlier in another thread, you'll see the same problems of anatomical exaggeration as 28mm figures. This is becase scale expressed as millimeters represents the height of a figure from the top of the head or eye level to the feet. Of course, due to 'scale creep' even that's no longer a reliable yardstick. GW figures are still called '28mm,' but generally exceed 30mm even for a humble Imperial Guard Cadian infantryman. Fact is, most figures expressed in millimeters are caricatures to a certain extent. I've grown to actually prefer them over the more realistically proportioned figures because they have more 'character.'

As good as the 1/48 Tamiya figure sets are, I don't recommend them because they don't hold up well to the rigors of wargaming. They are meant for modelers and diorama display, not for gaming. These figures can be very fiddly, have a lot of parts for one figure, and are easy to break; the guns are very thin and you have to be careful in handling them. Another disadvantage is that these box sets aren't designed around standard TOE's. You'll need 2 or more boxes to build a standard squad, and the poses are likewise limited.

If you decide on 1/48, however, there may be better options soon. The guy who started the thread below seems to be ready to start releasing a full range of 1/48 figures meant for wargaming, TMP link And for almost 3 years Tom Meier and FOX Miniatures have tempted, then broke our hearts with their delays in releasing their awe-inspiring 1/48 WWII lines, foxminiatures.com/serendipity/. If they do finally release their promised range of Airborne and Waffen SS figures, even I would be hard pressed not to convert to 1/48 from 28mm.

@WW2Fanatik
Thanks for your extremely informative comment. I didn't really think about how fragile the Tamiya figures would be.

Aesthetically, I stand on the somewhat middle ground between you and Tim.
I don't mind the stylized "heroic" proportions used in GW and most other 28mm figures. In fact, I find them pleasing to my eye too. My take is that they're supposed to look like comic book heroes, and they do a wonderful job at that.

But when it comes to representations of real-world battles and men, I prefer to see the figures scuplted with more realism. As Tim points out in another thread, it doesn't make much sense that the vehicles are modeled with such painstaking attention to realism, if you're going to stand a "gorilla" next to it.

I did notice that most of the 15mm or 20mm figures share the same exaggeration (to some extent) with 28mm, but then they're in most part too small to really notice such incorrectness.

After further consideration, I don't think I'll be going 28mm after all. 1/48 doesn't sound like a good option either.

I'm actually gravitating towards 15mm now.
Maybe I'm getting tired with all this "research", and just want to settle down with the "one-stop shop" that the Battlefront guys have set up.

If you go with 20mm, give Fantassin a look at warmodelling.com They are metal miniatures, and are a little on the large size for 1/72 scale. They mix nicely, imho, with the huge selection of 1/72 scale vehicles that you can buy unassembled as well as the die cast variety. They carry a wide range of WWII infantry figures, and nice box sets too. That is what I use for 20mm.

OK, I've finally decided to go with 15mm.

The greatest advantages of 20mm are commonly thought to be the comparatively cheap cost (if you use plastic infantry), and the availability of models.

But once I started considering metal infantry figures (as I didn't fancy the static poses of the plastic ones), I realized that the cost advantage pretty much disappears.

And regarding availability of models, I realized that with the explosive growth in popularity of FoW, it's actually easier now to find a model in 15mm than in 1/72 scale.
If you take Battlefront, Peter Pig, and QRF together, models of practically every vehicle/figure you may want for WWII wargaming can be found.

To finally convince myself, I worked out a quick spreadsheet to compare the cost of the different options.

Assuming that you want to make an infantry platoon of 40 men, the costs involved will be:

Item Name                    Packs  Price    Reqd  Total
----------------------------------------------------------------
28mm Infantry (Artizan)       4     £  5.00  10    £ 50.00
20mm Infantry (AB Figures)   10     £ 10.00   4    £ 40.00
1/72 Infantry (Revell)       40     £  5.00   1    £  5.00
15mm Infantry (Battlefront)  40     £ 10.80   1    £ 10.80
15mm Infantry (QRF)           8     £  2.00   5    £ 10.00

One important point to note is that while Revell and Battlefront packs all the figures necessary to make up a platoon (i.e. command, mortar, rifles, etc), you'll actually need to buy and mix separate packs with the other manufacturers.
(e.g. 1 pack Command + 1 pack Mortar + 1 pack SMG + 1 pack LMG + 4 packs Rifle)
So unless you're fitting out several platoons at once, you'll need to buy more packs than what I've calculated above.

Now we'll come to tanks, assuming you're building a 3-tank platoon:

Item Name                    Price    Reqd  Total
---------------------------------------------------
1/56 Tiger 1 (Hobby Master)  £ 10.00  3     £ 30.00
1/72 Tiger 1 (Revell)        £  5.00  3     £ 15.00
15mm Tiger 1 (Battlefront)   £  5.85  3     £ 17.55
15mm Tiger 1 (QRF)           £  5.00  3     £ 15.00

So, if you're planning to build 2 infantry platoons (40 men each) and 1 tank platoon (3 tanks), the total cost will be:

Composition               Price
---------------------------------
2 Inf + 1 Tnk (28mm)      £ 80.00
2 Inf + 1 Tnk (20mm)      £ 55.00
2 Inf + 1 Tnk (1/72)      £ 20.00
2 Inf + 1 Tnk (15mm BF)   £ 28.35
2 Inf + 1 Tnk (15mm QRF)  £ 25.00

So, if I rule out the option of using 1/72 plastic infantry, the cheapest and best option would be 15mm.

Hope all this research I've done will prove useful to others!

Oops, the final table should have been:

Composition               Price
---------------------------------
2 Inf + 1 Tnk (28mm)      £ 130.00
2 Inf + 1 Tnk (20mm)      £  95.00
2 Inf + 1 Tnk (15mm BF)   £  39.15
2 Inf + 1 Tnk (15mm QRF)  £  35.00
2 Inf + 1 Tnk (1/72)      £  25.00

A very useful summary Kraussian. It would be nice if this could be 'stickied' somewhere. Peter Pig prices will fall somehere alongside QRF & BF in 15mm.

You'll find that someone will criticise you for using AB as your 20mm comparison range as they're more expensive than some other ranges (also a lot nicer IMHO!).

"20mm: Variety may be as wide as 15mm"

Thats a joke right?

Price wise… ha..you might as well argue that youll ride a motorcycle because you cant afford a £150,000 Ferrari.

YAWN..

@Daryl

"20mm: Variety may be as wide as 15mm"

Thats a joke right?

I fail to see what's so funny about that statement.

From what I've seen, there seems to be a 15mm equivalent for almost every 1/72 scale WW2 AFV… almost to the point that I'm not sure which has more variety any more.

Price wise… ha..you might as well argue that youll ride a motorcycle because you cant afford a £150,000 Ferrari.

All I'm trying to say is something like "A 2,000cc Hyundai sedan is cheaper than a similar car made by Ford".

Your point would have been valid if I had said something like "OMG miniature wargaming is SOOOOO expensive! I can play all the wargames I want with cardboard chips and hexes!!!".

I actually find it easier to get 15mm figures & vehicles than their 20mm equivalents & I agree that the range is just as wide.

Kraussian,

Just wanted to chip in that Caliver Books (www.caliverbooks.com) also do free shipping if you spend more than 16.50. They do Battlefront and Peter Pig (as well as whole host of others).

I currently live in Dubai so shipping is a big factor for me as well. I don't know why but I hate working out how much the figures are going to cost and then adding shipping on top just feels worse!

Still, I'm moving back to the UK next month so will definitely be getting more of Geoff's excellent stuff then.

@Huw R Davies
Oh, I didn't notice that AB Figures cost more than others.
Looking at SHQ Miniatures, I can see that they're £1.85 GBP for 3 figures a pack.
Since you'll need around 14 packs of these to build an infantry platoon, the total cost will be £25.90 GBP – more than twice the cost of 15mm equivalents, so my point still stands

@Buzzard Keeper
Someone else has already mentioned Caliver Books.
But when I searched TMP for reviews, I came across a number of "horror stories" where customers were cheated for their money.
On the other hand, there were also many positive reviews.

That's keeping me on the fence as to whether I should buy from them.

Kraussian,
I know that this is hard to put a dollar value on, but at skirmish levels, 15mm troops may be hard on the eyes. Especially if it is important to know what hand held weapons each soldier is carrying. Anyway, thanks for posting this breakdown.