"MICRO ARMOR-THE BASTARD CHILD OF WARGAMING?" Topic

While I think this is a great scale and think a lot of people game it, when was the last time you saw any of the "Glossy Wargame" magazines feature it in a story or replay? They treat it like the trailer park cousin at the family reunion sure he's a nice enough bloke, and fun, but you don't want to claim him.
Opinions?
(No slam meant on the magazine industry, love what you do, just an observation.)

when was the last time you saw any of the "Glossy Wargame" magazines feature it in a story or replay?

Battlegames, issue 25.

Hmm. Quite frequently as it goes.

I will have to look those up then. I am just making this statement on the stack of 20 or so Wargames Illustrated and a couple of other related mags and haven't come across one.

Micro Armor seemed to reach the height of popularity in the 80's but suffered from a distinct lack of infantry in games.

I think 15mm is the new 6mm.

As for magazines, I guess micro armor isn't very photogenic.

I've tried to glue and paint up Mico-armor Infantry…

It's P.I.T.A. if there ever was one. And you end up with tiny blobs of metal that you can't paint well, and get smashed with even the tinest bit of bad treatment.

Then I discovered Yaqunita's old ARMOR/88/ect line and used counters instead.

In all honesty if you look at wargames mags. to reflect the real world of wargaming you will be misled, anything apart from collectors standard painting in 28mm hardly ever appears. As others have said 6mm figures do not always make great picture centre-folds.

Sorry EW, must be on a different planet. Micro-armour is ideal for wargamers who lack cavernous areas to play, or portable-hole deep pockets. It is ideal for the gamer who does not aspire to be an artist when painting models but wants something nicer than card counters, to represent his force. It allows realistic forces to be fielded, and allows a far better representation of the ranges of modern weapons, without variable range mechanism's.

My friend and I decided to micro wargame Vietnam games, within a couple of weeks, at relatively little expense, we were doing just that. A green cloth, lots of railway lichen, home made paddies and card huts and we were ready to spend an enjoyable evening fighting a battle which we actually finished. I painted a company of NVA in the time it would take to paint a couple of 15mm figures and had a battalion ready in a few nights, complete with support weapons. A company of T-72's painted, dry brushed and varnished were ready to roll for the Motherland in a similar time. Close in they looked passable, but at a scale 600 feet above the battle they looked good, especially when leading the BMP's (a doddle to paint as no separate turrets)

I think micro armor infantry have come a long way since I started gaming in the 70s.

Microarmour will never look as good in photos as larger scales. I liked it for the affordability mainly and the space considerations. 3mm makes even more sense and is looking good, but has not enough detail really.

25-28mm is the 'natural' scale for wargames figures and what most people find the best balance between detail and practicalities.

When you start to want to simulate rather than just play, you quickly find that smaller scales work better and better, and indeed no figures is the logical conclusion.

But then we come back to 'toy soldiers' and 28mm wins out.

…I guess micro armor isn't very photogenic.

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You're right. It's not photogenic at all.

…a distinct lack of infantry in games.

Yep. Distinct lack of infantry. You're on a roll.

I'd say that it takes much greater painting skill to make 6mm infantry look good. Plus, a 1mm-thick base under 6mm figures looks more like a 3mm thick base under 15mm: IMO, far too thick!

I also have concerns about the survivability of 6mm infantry, but that's a different story.

I agree that the glossy mags feature mostly 28mm. A few figures are more detailed & looks pretty. Not much use though except if you only do skirmish or have a LOT of money to buy figs. For gaming, the club here has even pretty much abandoned 15mm for 6mm. Our battles look like battles, not skirmishes. No matter how pretty the individual figure, the sheer mass spectacle of thousands of 6mm minis on the table is far better than a few hundred 15mm or a few dozen 28mm taking up the same space on the table.
To each his own, and if you like 2 man companies or lace detail is important to your gaming or enjoyment of the hobby, fine by me.

The most fun I have ever had in a WWII game was in a system of micro-armor rules in the 70's. Tank vs tank for about four years or so. Added infantry using left over unit counters from a board game. Proved to be a very workable system with the infantry and popular since it is known Squad Leader.

Lion, agree if you are talking about close up, disagree if you are talking at scale ranges on the table. Lightened top coat and a darker wash with a few key areas picked out, dry brushed, if you must, with an emphasis on the uppermost surfaces (helmet, arms etc). Just finished some H&R Vikings, took me as long to paint a strip as it did to partially finish one Emhar figure.

Micro-armor if for those who want to game more than line up and photograph their models.

25-28mm minis is just playing with dollies.

15mm is for their country cousins who are sold pop-up like color rule books. Battles look like rugby scrums.

More like the hot, legitimate 18 year old daughter of wargaming. Popular, fun, and creepy old men on forums are constantly pressing them to appear in glossy magazines more often.

Wellsaid Wellspring. So it's not just me then.
ALTIUS did you painty hose tanks they are awsome! I like the shell marks as well. Makes my drybrushing look like trash, but at 50+ they still look like blobs to me-but they are my blobs and there are lots of them.
I agree with the infantry comment, but GHQ does a pretty good job of representing foot at that scale.

GHQ has been improving their existing lines of infantry and adding new ones. I also like Adler 6mm for WWII. Their "big-headed boys" have a lot of character and dynamic poses for that scale.

Grossman, no. I wish I could claim credit but I didn't paint those. The guy that did paint them is a real artist. I have some photos of microarmor on my own site, but modesty prevents me from posting them here.

PM me Altius I would love to see it, I won't tell.

For WWII, I use Micro-Armour for tank heavy battles, like North Africa and Russia, and 15mm for infanry heavy battles, like Normandy bocage.

Well I'm just starting in 1/285. Done WW2 in 28mil, great models but a bit too dear for my paupers purse, lovely to paint though. Done WW2 in 20mil and 15. 20's my favorite, Milicast top drawer (Tom top geezer!) but £12.00 GBP-£17 squid a tank, the kids would be on bread and water! Been looking at doing 'modern', Germany 1970's (when I was there!) and GHQ fit the bill, including veh that would have been dragged out of heavy pres, (If time had permitted?)So, inf from H&R and veh from GHQ for £25.00 GBP notes I can have a Trp/platoon game and the kids get to eat as well, bonus!

I primarily game in 6mm and have stopped buying glossy magazines . Coincidence ?

IMO many of the glossies today have taken the roll of in house publications for larger manufacturers and concentrate on their products. As more people buy from the larger manufacturers then specialist 6mm manufacturers the magazines are catering for their readership. There is nothing "wrong" with this it is just business.

Altius – close to the limit for microarmour and it does look great.

But it's not the typical standard and compared to what is possible in 20mm/28mm much less photogenic.

1/300th of 1/285th wins out when you have a lorge tabletop with hundreds of vehicles and figures and anywhere you zoom in looks superb.

I can see why the magazines usually go for 20-28mm, though I prefered to collect and play in 1/300th.

i was heavy into micro armor in the late '70's to about 1986. on my 8x8 sandtable. best gaming, and friends i ever had…

I reckon 6mm can look good close up and en-masse.

Cuffs, buttons on the sides of trousers, socks on horses, all possible.
This has more detail than some 25mm that you see in magazines..

Nice work Altius!

Having been on a 2mm jag recently, I find 6mm stuff be surprisingly gigantic….

Lack of photos of 6mm in wargames magazines bothers me not one bit though.

Since I have a lack of wargaming mags, their lack of 6mm bothers me not one bit.

1/300th of 1/285th wins out when you have a lorge tabletop with hundreds of vehicles and figures and anywhere you zoom in looks superb.

Our battles look like battles, not skirmishes. No matter how pretty the individual figure, the sheer mass spectacle of thousands of 6mm minis on the table is far better than a few hundred 15mm or a few dozen 28mm taking up the same space on the table.

It is ideal for the gamer who does not aspire to be an artist when painting models but wants something nicer than card counters, to represent his force. It allows realistic forces to be fielded, and allows a far better representation of the ranges of modern weapons, without variable range mechanism's.

Surely all this applies, only more so to 2mm (nano armour??). Even more mass effect, cheaper, easier to paint, ranges look even more realistic. Instead of 1,000's of 6mm you can have 10,000's of 2mm. in fact for WW2/modern any ruleset that uses a 1mm=1m ground scale your minis are going to be almost equivalent – 1/1000 vs 1/900.

Indeed agree that "micro armor" hit its peak in the 80s. One reason, not stated by those here, is the availability of a wide range of vehicles. My first exposure to the scale was actually a decade earlier and with Ros Heroics. Through the 70s and 80s if one wanted to game a wide variety of forces and countries micro was really the only way to go.

In addition to micro we used 1/72 model kits mixed in with the old 1/87th stuff to field armies but even then many limits.

However with the wide variety of both 15 and 20mm figures available now micro began to lose its steam.

Yes, those pictures are amazing on all the detail one can get on micro armor. I still have some 3 color camo German vehicles I did with an airbrush. But the sad fact is, on the game table, at normal distances, no one can really make out that detail. That amazing detail and work is brought out only with clear color photos where the vehicles appear, well, the same szie as today's 15 and 20mm!

Another factor is the aging of the average historical gamer. Based only on personal observation the average WW II gamer appears to have aged. This is a combination of a large "baby boomer" group moving on and also competition for younger gamers with other genres. Yes, FOW has resulted in more youth injected into the period but the sad fact is many of us are more mature for want of a better word. As such 10/12mm is probably as small as we can handle, decently paint, with 15 and 20mm much easier to not only paint but to identify from normal distances on the game table!

I do know that at most regional conventions I attend, like Hurricon, Recon and Rapier, the WW II micro armor game has become something of an endangered species where years ago they would dominate the period.

So I dont see any grand conspiracy by wargame magazines, just reflection of reality.

Love my 6mm figures.. easy and quick to paint…

And I find that it is so easy to get an acceptable standard, unlike this bloke who is just amazing..

I agree with Marc, I think the "greying " of the hobby has impacted the scales that we deal in, as in the 80's I was in my 20's and could see a fly at 100 yards so micro armor looked huge, now I struggle to paint 28MM- are we headed for 54's next?

Greying indeed. Used to game WW2 in micro scale. Used counters for infantry as a few others have said. Now I have a small collection of micro armor. Isrealis and Egyptians plus a few buildings. But I game mostly in 15mm scale. More fun when one can see what one is doing.

When you hit your mid-40s, it is difficult to paint the micro stuff. Add to this the availability in other scales such as 1/100.

I am not going to agree that 25mm/28mm is a natural scale. I would say that 1/72nd is probably a more "natural" scale. Figures in 20mm tend to be better proportioned than their 25/28mm or 15/18mm cousins. If 20mm were more affordable in metals, I think it would be the more dominant scale. AB 20mm is just stunning as well as quite a few other lines from Germany, etc.

Balancing cost and availability, 15/18mm has quite a following. I happen to like 28mm but my wallet doesn't and neither does my storage space or cartage ability.

Just rebased all my 6mm for Spearhead, great scale to understand manouvre, 15mm is just too big for large battles.

Good topic. I'm still youngish so for me 6mm is the most natural scale. But I have become a fan of 3mm for quick intense battles. I'll probably start digging out the 15mm army that is stowed in a box somewhere when I reach my forties. And at 60 I might even consider 28mm again.

Wow!! At 51 and with Bifocals I dont have a problem with either 6mm or 3mm miniatures. Either gaming with them or painting them. I started out in 1/285-1/300 back in the 80s and never used any lager scale. back then it worked for me. Now a few years back I totally converted my Air ,Land and Sea gaming to 3mm-1/600. Robert

I think microarmor is more like the revered grandfather of wargaming. It was around years before the likes of 40K or FOW.

Milites – re-read my post, I was specificlay talking about Microarmor INFANTRY. I paint up and use Microarmor all time, I just don't waste my time on the infantry.

6mm can help with the greying of the hobby. For one you can play a full sized game on a 2'x2' table which means less bending and reaching. Second, an entire regiment weighs less than a loaf of bread.

Here are photos from a game run here in Nashville. I don't game at this scale very often but it used to be my favorite scale for WWII.

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Surely all this applies, only more so to 2mm (nano armour??). Even more mass effect, cheaper, easier to paint, ranges look even more realistic. Instead of 1,000's of 6mm you can have 10,000's of 2mm. in fact for WW2/modern any ruleset that uses a 1mm=1m ground scale your minis are going to be almost equivalent – 1/1000 vs 1/900.

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But does anyone make stuff in 2mm (other than armour) – I ask because presumably your comment re having 10,000s is not to do with WW2/Moderns unless you are fielding a country's entire tank production on one table which would seem a bit odd – and actually aside from Napoleonics and some other periods a lot of battles are not that big. had a friend who played games with hair roller armies – I think by the time you get down to 2mm (other than for tanks) you might as well use rollers. The other thing that i don't like about ultra small scales is that in modern/WW2, infantry are counters for some people etc which seems to both degrades their role in favour of tanks and also not sure about the aesthetic

EW, half my post was on painting infantry, cannot see why you would bother with the tanks but not the infantry. Easy to paint, easy to base and with a good varnish pretty tough, granted, they can be fiddly to move though!

When I started wargaming in the early 1970s Microarmor was just taking over from 1/72 and HO for WWII. The ground scale for the larger scales was ridiculous. I remember going to Gencon and seeing twenty HO tanks fighting over a bridge with the barrels of the Tigers touching the barrels of the T34/85s.
I really like the idea behind FOW for skirmish gaming. Micro armor is better for bigger battles. After playing it for 40 years I can say it is the best for WWII, especially early war and is especially awesome with large masses of infantry and few vehicles. Several companies make excellently detailed vehicles and infantry. GHQ, CinC, Adler, Armstrong, and Scotia are what I use. RosHeroics armored trains (German, Soviet and Polish) all manner of American, British German and Japanese Landing craft.

I think Micro Armor is perfect because it's the easiest scale to make realistic looking terrain (in my opinion) and you don't need to make or store much of that terrain :) PVA, Sand, a little Airbrushing and Drybrushing…

That as a result, makes it very photogenic. That and the incredible detail (it's much better than 2mm)…

Agesilaus, I think you get a -1 on your to hit die when you are touching the barrel of your target.

Nicely done Central. Do you use the blue board for you terrain boards?

I think that Micro-armor has been hurt by rules that are too detailed in their vehicle-damage models. I mean, one of the vehicle-damage models I saw was more detailed than Battletech! (If you *really* want that much detail, play a computer game!) This is complicated by the fact that it's utterly impossible to include all the real terrain that a tank would use to take cover on the tabletop.

As Ambush Alley says "Just because our games are fought on a table-top, doesn't mean that the actual battlefield is one!"

Games like Flames of War or Heavy Gear Blitz, with their 'OK, minor damage, heavy damage, Very Obviously Dead' level of detail are much more conducive to having lots of vehicles on the table.

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And Central, that's some beautiful work you've done!

Interesting discussion. I think 6mm is great except for infantry. I can't paint it up anywhere near how several of you have! I agree I get tired of several of the magazines primarily showing 28mm; particularly in reviewing figures.
I think 15mm is the best all around scale. I have a 2 page article on it coming out in the next Wargames Soldiers and Strategy. I will be prepared to take arrows!

Lion,

Agree that the trend towards skirmish gaming rules has hurt micro armor.

Cheers

Joe

All the micro-rules I've ever played, with the exception of Combat Commander had very simple damage models, usually KO, neutralise/damage or suppress. I think the boom in micro gaming was also a reflection of the smaller homes gamers often lived in, and the rising costs of white metal.

Central, more please!