"What are your favourite things about 6mm?" Topic

6mm is a scale that is quite often overlooked by the 15mm and 28mm crowd, but it has some very real advantages. I'm not saying it's better than 15/28mm as I understand the beauty of nicely painted figures and both can be used for largely the same things…it's just a different aesthetic! I'm coming very close to finishing the OOB for Corunna suggested by the Polemos Napoleonic Companion and thought I'd share my thoughts on what's good about 6mm and what I like best about the scale.

1) It is quite cheap to get reasonable sized forces together.
2) The terrain isn't terribly difficult to do, so you don't need to be a master modeller.
3) They are quick and easy to paint.
4) You don't have to worry about what colour of lace a particular regiment wore.
5) The massed effect on the tabletop looks like a proper pitched battle.
6) It's more suited to putting on large battles, such as Borodino or Waterloo (i.e. you don't need a gargantuan table and a hundredweight in lead).

For me, I think I rank the above (from high to low) 5, 3, 4, 1, 6, 2.

So…what are your favourite things about 6mm?

I only use 6mm for scifi & WW2, as it is the only scale you can reasonably field plenty of vehicles in.

phil

I only do Modern in 6mm but for me it's the price and the look/feel of all those minis on the board.

For me it's the ability to put 30 to 60 figures on a single base. It is all about the mass look.

I seldom have to play games with these.

The closest thing I play to 6mm is 1/300 ww2 planes.
I love them as you can have a sky full of planed duking it out!

Larger forces on the table. More maneuver room. Models are closer to ground scale. Easier to paint. Less expensive.

1, 5, and 6. I use painting services and buy terrain ready-made, so 2 to 4 are a subset of 1 for me.

I do wonder if I will like non-microarmor 6mm. I shall find out soon as I embark on this Italian Wars project that was jump-started by a spontaneous ebay buy.

It's all about the Carroccio.

Yes, the ground scale issue is important to me also.

It is the mass for me too – also that the configuration of the figures can tell you a lot about unit types (regular, irregular etc).

Cheap miniatures, so you can afford to buy both sides

So cheap that you can afford to buy both sides for multiple eras

Cheap terrain

Cheap scenery

Small area need for playing, but even better with a big area

Easy to transport to another location to play

Room on table to perform manouevres, cavalry charges, more scope for "tactics"

You can start games out of weapon range

They look ok painted badly due to small size, others sizes show up bad paint jobs more

They ARE detailed so you can paint lots of detail if that is your thing

Uses much less paint/glue/flock etc to prepare than bigger sizes

You can achive a massed battle look with ease

They are cuter

Small area for storage needed

Many 6mm manufacturers offer extensive figures for each range, for example Irregular Miniatures Ltd have over 200 different figures within their 6mm Napoleonic range. – So you should be able to get whatever you need, in the event you can't, at that scale you can probably proxy something without anyone knowing.

You can play 1:1 figure ratio/scale so that a unit of 100 men is shown by using a unit of 100 men, not 5.
Buildings are just that, a building can be a single building and not a village, 10 buildings can be a hamlet and not a city etc.

Check out some of the work in Gallery on the 6mm forum:

link

So…what are your favourite things about 6mm?

It isn't 2mm

Dave

They look ok painted badly due to small size, others sizes show up bad paint jobs more

Yeah, that's a good one, angelbarracks! Quite often if I make a mistake or smudge a colour I don't bother correcting it, as it will not be noticeable in the mass.

Yeah, please include a selection for "I don't play 6mm."

Yeah, please include a selection for "I don't play 6mm."

He never asked if you play 6mm though…
If you don't play and have nothing constructive to add why post to tell us you have nothing constructive to say.

I think 6mm allows us to better simulate the fog of war. The figures look like blocks of troops from 3 feet but it can be hard to tell exactly what is what (beyond formed v unformed v mounted). In this way, you get a "friction of war" command effect without any rules.

In several 6mm biplane games I have played, the small planes make it hard to pay much attention beyond the dog fight you are involved in which simulates how your attention becomes focused in a dogfight.

Right now, 5-4-3-1-2-6.

I like the notion of lots of the little fellers on an element meant for 3 or 4 larger miniatures. I can appreciate massed effect for the Big Battles, but that's out of my scope right now.

Following the other plonkers' comments …

They are not bigger than 10mm.

In reality the mass effect is probably the first that you notice in a 6mm army.
They are big enough to do uniforms with correct colours and facings – even the flags are recognisable – but not so large that a few short-cuts really make a lot of difference at 'table' distances.
The depth v frontage issues with larger figures are less pronounced – quite a bonus if you are a bit of a stickler for ground-scale issues (like me). But then I go an base them 2/3 deep and muck it up again – just because they look better.

Practicality is where they really score for me though.
I can store a sizable army in a few trays and my magnetic bases keep them very secure. No top heavy 28's toppling over when i drop a box.
It means that i can actually field an army in the same time I'd be able to do a regiment in larger scales AND the terrain won't fill a basement or cost a bomb.
I can fight decent sized battles on my 5x4 table and still have a pike unit that doesn't look like Billy-no-mates with a flag – which is about all that would fit on a 40x40 base that has 30+ Landsknects in 6mm.

I could go on but why bother, I'll never convince some people.

6mm for the average gamer is dificult to beat on options 5 and 6 in other scales.

All of the above, except for 3 – I'm such a slow painter, that that is not really a factor.

Doug

For fantasy (Hordes of the Things) I like that big things can be really big. It's hard to play with a big castle or dragon in 25mm, but in 6mm you can have (comparatively) *huge* things on the table.

Andrew

What Andrew Walters said…
In scifi you can have crazy huge things like landslips, big landers, huge alien creatures, mecha, strange alien landscapes that dwarf the armies.
In fantasy you can have giant demons/monsters, floating castles, enormous magic FX.

I like the mass appeal of not only larger units but also larger battles on a common sized table. Flank attacks actually do become flank attacks.

I also like the speed in which you can paint and get units on the table, the prices per figure and the small amount of space required to store them.

David
wardepot.blogspot.com

He never asked if you play 6mm though…
If you don't play and have nothing constructive to add why post to tell us you have nothing constructive to say.

Welcome to the poll suggestion board! :}

For me: 1, 5, 6, 3, 4, 2.

Plus the ground scale in WWII, Modern and Sci-Fi looks "right." With the larger scales you end up with the Parking-Lot Effect.

Ted

I use it for WWII micro armor. I believe it is the optimum scale for WWII tank actions, when doing 1 vehicle = 1 mini. I understand that larger scales have become very popular for WWII, but I prefer those scales with small unit infantry skirmish games. Back in the 70s I got involved in micro armor after going to a couple of conventions where people were trying to do the battle of Kursk in 1/76 scale. It just got too busy.
To each his own. I would play in any pickup game that looked fun, but the ground scale of 6mm seems right to me for WWII armor, and putting individual infantry on stands of 3-4 figures makes the game quite playable and modular.
Also, I like the painting. You can do a lot of detail, but you don't have to paint eyes and lips.

My sucky painting doesn't show as well.

I use to base 6 mm figures for skirmish games because I think it makes Scicenec Fiction weapons ranges more "realistic" – yeah "realistic" Science Fixtion – butI have moved to 1/600th for jets, planes, and AFVs.

Gracias,

Glenn

Easy to store.

All 6 in no particular order plus #7 Easy to store.

All of the above, plus the weapons ranges are more realistic, and it's easier to field forces on a 1:1 basis, if you like that sort of thing, e.g. one mini for each vehicle.

6mm is better than 28mm in every possible way except for roleplaying. And I hate roleplaying. The storage advantage comes in handy if I want to get to a game quickly after work, using the big Yamaha to cut through traffic. I can take 2 armies without being forced to use my car.

Here is an example of 6mm looking good.

TMP link