"which microscale to choose for wwii wargaming: 2mm or 3mm?" Topic

well, the subject says it all. I am thinking in going microscale for cheap company level battles (each stand : 1 squad, one company per side, almost all infantry games) and for some "spearhead" games

I had some Irregualr 2mm. I sold it all. I was never happy with the selection or the detail.

I now have a ton of (modern) 3mm stuff. It is fantastic. Great detail and selection in my opinion.

You can see my stuff here: link

Jake

Jake, those are great. What is the base size?

That is sooooo small!

Six of one, half a dozen of the other… that being said Pico Armor is awesome!

Picoarmor 3mm. Great product.

The recent 3mm stuff is amazing, but I still don't think I'd go smaller than 6mm, if for no other reason than compatibility with my ancients, fantasy, and SF stuff.

Doug

Jake has it right! The 3mm stuff imported by Pico Armor IS simply incredible. It's inexpensive and 2mm cannot compete. I do it for WWII and Moderns.

Thanks,

John

3mm. Variety & sculpting are far better than the moder 2mm line.

The bases in the picture posted here are FoW small size (from LITKO). For HQ and sections I use those. The platoons are generally on mediums (you can see one in the picture) and some of the arty is on larges.

I really like these figures. I will eventually do WW2 with them too, but need to finish up my moderns first.

Hey Jake. You are using FOW for your moderns?

Thanks,

John

3mm-1/600 all the way!!! But then I am biased LOL The detail is so much better then 2mm and more and more is being released .I use it for my Air ,Land and Sea gaming. I have miniatures for all three aspects. And that is for WWI SCW,WWII, Korea and Vietnam. I would check out the photos of both and make your decision. Robert

My 1/600 Aircraft Wargaming Yahoo Group
link

3mm_miniatures · 1/600_miniatures Yahoo Group
link

thanks for your answers. I own some 2mm naps, and some 2mm terrain. I am curious about if you can mix 3mm minis with 2mm terrain, as i find the 3mm trees overpriced.
I live in spain. I wonder if Buying from the original manufacturer here in europe would be cheaper than buying from picoarmor.

Picoarmor seems to have these chunks underneath the weapon barrels. Are they easy to remove? Do you just paint them black and hope they don't stand out as more than shadows?

examples:

So what can be done about those? In every picture I've seen of tanks that have them, my eyes instantly are drawn to them and I find that annoying.

Most I have seen just black them out. They are necessary at the scale to keep the barrels intact.IIRC I both Skytrex and Tumbling Dice are produced in a similar fashion.I have seen photos of them but only top views. I don't have any personally. Robert

My 1/600 Aircraft Wargaming Yahoo Group
link

"…almost all infantry games…".

If that is true, I'd go with at least 6mm scale for the minis.

@ John: no, not FoW, jusy those base sizes. I've been going back and forth between Cold War Commander and Modern Spearhead.

Jake

I'm just doing a big 2mm Cold War project as I was too cheap to buy 3mm and Irregular are just up the road from me. I am so cheap I even cut the infantry section strips in half, but an arrangement of infantry blobs looks quite good on the bases.

The 2mm stuff is fine really, takes a wash and drybrush nicely and even the infantry and heavy weapons are quite distinct. The downside is the limited range so you have to do lots of conversion work, which is fine if you like modelling, less so if you don't.

Some of the conversions are quite challenging – turning Warriors into Scimitars isn't too bad, but turning an Sdkfz 222 into a BRDM 2 w SA9 launchers is a pita (or turning a Hummel into a Shilka:)

In retrospect I should probably have gone 3mm, but hey, I've done two divisions already and only a couple more to go:) It partly depends what you want to do and what variety of kit.

It is easy enough to produce nice looking 2mm bases which will do for 1 base = 1 section/platoon/company/battalion or whatever. I'd keep standard SH bases sizes and use multiple vehicles and infantry strips, it looks really good. You can also use different formations to denote different units etc.

2mm terrain will work fine with 3mm stuff, we even use it with 6mm stuff. In such small scales we find woods are better done using torn up pan scrubs lightly drybrushed to make 'clumps' of trees.

A pack of 50 troops will provide you with a full company, assuming 3 troops per squad stand stand, 3 – 4 squads per platoon, and 3 – 4 platoons to a company.

3mm as there will be some amazing 3mm terrain coming out soon.
LOTs of it too!

Terrain can be a smaller scale and seems to look better. I even use Langton 1:1200 scale buildings for 1:600.

I use thinner steel bases from wargameaccessories.com/. for companies and the platoons are on printed magnetic material… wargamecampaign.blogspot.com which also shows some terrain ideas for tiny scales.

The black under the barrels is not so noticeable in person and overhead--remember that the pictures are sideviews much enlarged. I chose to go with 3mm over 2mm.

Buying within Europe seems like it would be less.

I have a ton of 2mm stuff from Irregular Miniatures and am really happy with it. I use it from 1790-2010 so far, and am looking to go further back too.

3mm as there will be some amazing 3mm terrain coming out soon.
LOTs of it too!

Here is the first lot:

TMP link

Michael.