"20mm sci fi?" Topic

Hi guys, is there much gaming going on in 20mm these days?

My impression is that there is a fair amount of Moderns happening in 20mm, and there's definitely people dedicated to 1/72 for historicals, but I'm assuredly not an expert.

-Will

Good question. Not around here (central Illinois). I thought about gettting into 20mm scifi years ago but there wasn't much stuff out for it. Now with the huge influx of 15mm I'm not sure I'd go to 20mm, unless there were something really cool, and it was a whole line, not just dribs and drabs.

I'm hitting the 20-28mm range since I'm kit and range bashing for my games. 20mm are smaller people, and 28s the brutes. You'll get size variations anyway so don't get too hung up on it….

Not in Sci-Fi.

15mm and 28mm seem to be the preferred scales.

My group uses Starguard figures, which are true 25mm figures.

Are there many 20mm sci- fi ranges available?. The only ones I have seen were produced by Blade miniatures,now owned by RH miniatures I believe.

Yes RH has their listing here: rhmodels.com/7.html

If you join the forum there are lots of pictures.

MJ figures does some handy figs:

mjfigures.co.uk

I kitbash much of my own stuff. Would certainly buy anything made.

There are people playing in 1/72 for sci-fi, but due to the lack of sci-fi miniatures in this scale, 1/72 modern plastics are commonly used, along with a lot of conversions and in some cases use of 15mm (for aliens and robots, etc.).

Some examples,

link

link

coincidentally – this went up today on PSR : link

Not currently, but if a range came out that I liked I'd probably get it.

Not much at all, Back when I was looking for a new smaller miniatures size 20mm was the leading contender over 15mm, but there was pretty much nothing there thus 15mm was chosen.

An amusing side point is that I am using the same ground scale/base size with 15mm that I had chosen for 20mm. Which is 20mm rounds (read pennies). Though to be honest most of my old 25mm figures where based on pennies as well.

Our Topgun Heavy Grav Tank will work with 20mm figs, though the IFV/APC Hatches are probably too small for that scale (our tank turret, and main hull hatches are certainly large enough to accommodate a figure though):

The figure shown in the pic is a 1/72nd scale NATO trooper from one of the plastic figure manufacturers.

20mm would be perfect for sci-fi! Although I play 15mm I always feel its too small for public demos as it lacks that punch that 28mm sized figures can give. If all your 20s were as detailed as that xenobiologist figure I saw the other day, well then I think a company in UK would have to close up shop. Being that its not a current prominent scale for Sci-fi would require some excellent Khurasan miniatures along with ongoing support to break the current trend away from 15mm and 28mm. You almost single handedly are converting 28mm players to 15mm because of your excellent offerings. I can't see why you couldn't drag more away from 28mm that think 15mm is too small but would accept 20mm as just right. If I could get most of your current 15mm range in 20mm I would sell everything I owned in 15mm on Ebay ASAP to convert over. All that said its a risky proposition to have to consider.

Critical Mass Arc Fleet tanks are very large and work for 20mm:

link

I play SF Tomorrow's War in 1/72 using a mix of Orion SF figures, modern figures and metal SF figures by Rolf Hedges. Vehicles are usually modern kits and the larger 15mm resin vehicles by Critical Mass and Khurasan. Some pictures below:

More on my blog if you're curious pijlieblog.blogspot.nl

there is not much on the market, wich is really a shame. here are some of mine attempst to some 20mm sci fi stuff

link

and some weird ww2 (now there should be a market, with all that 20mm ww2 stuff available)

link

20mm Sci Fi is in a place where 15mm was a few years ago with the exception that in the last couple of year a lot of ultra modern infantry and vehicles have come on the market to bolster bleeding edge/lower mid tech forces.

20mm can also benefit from elements taken from 15mm and 28mm ranges as pijlie shows above.

Older 25mm ranges tend to fit quite well with 20mm Sci Fi. So my pre-slotta Citadel Starguard and Ral Partha Galactic Grenadiers are getting a second outing.

Rolf at RH Models has a slowly growing range of 20mm Sci Fi. Matt at Elheim has some also, plus Mark at MJ Figures has cracking 20mm Sand Wars figures:

link

20mm Sci Fi allows te Modern gamer to expand into Tomorrow War very easily or the dedicated Sci Fi fan to bolster the current limited ranges with ultra-moderns.

It's a new frontier ripe for exploitation Jon.

Cheers
Mark

Mako11 – that could make a good robotic support vehicle though – hatches are then just access hatches for the maintenance crew !

Wow, there's some great work being done out there. :) The Khurasan APC looks really good with 20mm miniatures. Pijlie or Dropship, are there any close-ups of the RH miniature ranges, especially with comparisons to 1/72 plastics?

Ye stars and little comets! You young pups! 1/72 scale (aka 20mm scale) sci-fi is still very much alive and well! The granddaddy of all sci-fi miniatures lines is still very much in production and available direct from the manufacturer, and it's all in 1/72 (aka 20mm) scale, with over 200 different figures representing multiple human and non-human factions, robots, support weapons, and vehicles:

tin-soldier.com

Starguard was first published in 1974. It's available in it's current edition from the same source as the figures. The figures are still quite nice, and are quite handy for conversions, as they're still cast IIRC in a lead-tin alloy (so don't eat 'em, OK?!).

Check 'em out, space possums!

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Pijlie or Dropship, are there any close-ups of the RH miniature ranges, especially with comparisons to 1/72 plastics?

In the middle picture of my post the three left figures in the image are -top to bottom- an metal RH Colonial Marine, a plastic Caesar Special Forces guy (a Somalia Delta Force dude) and another RH Marine. The third figure from the right in the same picture is also a plastic Caesar figure.

The rest are metal RH figures. There is hardly any scale difference except the metal figures being somewhat bulkier.

I'm a big fan of 15mm sci-fi and have quite a lot of stuff in that scale – I like that you can field decent company sized forces without breaking the bank.

However, I must say that recently I got hold of some 20mm modern US and Russians and I'm loving that scale. They're more fun to paint than 15s and have better detail – especially faces, which I like painting – but are much cheaper and faster to paint than 28s and you can get more on a table without it looking like 40K i.e. bloody stupid. If all the ranges that were out there now were in both scales – I'd got 20mm personally.

Thanks Pijlie. I was looking for more of a set of display photos for the RH range – something like a catalog. That seems really hard to get a hold of.

There isn't one. If you email Rolf he might register you as a user of his forum. There are some pics there.

Being a big 20mm gamer for WW2 and Moderns, I'd love to see a decent 20mm sci-fi range…

Only question would be do I sell my 15mm or 28mm sci-fi to fund it!

i always wonder why we refer to 1/72 scale as 20 mm?
i have done a lot of 1/72 figures and most of the more recent stuff is closer to 25 mm with accurate proportions.

1/72 scale is 1 inch = 6 feet. This translates to 1 inch equals 25 mm. A figure that is scaled in a mathematicaly accurate fashion means a 6 foot tall man is 1 inch tall measuring from the bottom of the feet to the top of the head not counting headgear or footwear.

The whole "Barrett scale" thing is the result of an industry in which the majority of manufacturers preferred not to aim so much for accuracy, as for "what looks close enough to pass on the tabletop."

Over 30 years ago John McEwan wrote to his fellow figure manufacturers here in the US proposing that they all follow the model railroad manufacturers lead and standardize sales for wargame figures. Well, no one was interested, so John kept right on making 1/72 scale/25mm scale figures while everyone else kept right on churning out artistically wonderful, mathematically all over the place figures that ultimately led Mr. Barrett to issue his "Barrett scale" attempt to make sense of the resultant muddle.

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

The 25mm Mongoose pre painted modern figures are good for near future sci fi and mix in well with the "larger" 20mm figures.

They also go well with 1/72 vehicles etc

I'm knee deep in development for my game, Exoshift (exoshift.org), a mass battle tabletop wargame with a full range of 1/72 scale miniatures.

I'll just leave this preview here for a bit, just for the TMP folks who love 1/72 scifi:

There's more concepts and info on the website.

The kickstarter to turn this into a plastic kit should start in a few months, along with its infantry support. I should have the 3D printed prototype soon.

I'm not posting this in the news section yet since some aspects of the game are in flux right now. The real news flurry should come next month after it gets sorted out.

Turtle, WOW, looking very good, can't wait ot see the first pictures. but if all your stuff is going to look like this (and is in 20mm) then you can count me in as a customer!!

I started some of my earliest miniature journeys with 20mm plastic figures, and plan some gaming this year with some Warhammer Ancients in the scale, but I'd prefer more scifi 20's and even some zombies & survivors in the scale. It's a pity 20's have been overlooked over the years.
On the plus side, with scale creep over time the humble 15 will eventually end up more or less that way!

Oh dear. My budget for 2013-14 seems to have been slightly undercalculated…..

I'd love to see more 20mm sci-fi, especially a dedicated line. So looking forward to seeing what Exoshift comes up with.

there are also these guys,

link

from italy I believe, the new sculpts look promising

jack