"6mm buildings - is bigger better?" Topic

Before you wonder if I have gone mad… well no madder than normal.

Buildings..

Assuming 1 mm = 1 foot in our little 6mm world then a door on a 6mm building should be a little over 6mm high.
Makes sense yes?
Just as a storey on a building should be about 10mm or so to factor floors and room space and roof bits.

Why then do so many correctly scaled buildings look small to me?

I suspect it is because our little men come on bases which can in some cases add 2mm or more to their height.
Thus a 6mm tall doorway appears 4mm as the figure now is effectively 8 feet tall.

Also a building that is small, say like a shed, which may be 4 feet by 6 feet would look daft if just 4mm x 6mm, not due to basing this time but due to figures being fatter than true to scale.

Most 6mm figures I own tend to be around 4mm wide, thus meaning they are 4 feet wide and would struggle to fit into the said shed.
Though in real life people on the whole are not that wide and would fit into that shed easy.

Does this bother you?

I ask as my own buildings <plug plug> are designed over scale so that when based figures are placed next to them the doors are not really tiny.
They take up more floor space too so they seem more ‘realistic' when my 4 feet wide chunky monkeys come to visit.

Brigade Models do some excellent Desert Buildings for example:

link

Some are just mega cool, the Research Lab just screams illegal bio-nasties and what not!
If you have one like me then measuring it and assuming 1mm = 1 foot, then it is fine: 30 feet by 40 feet, plenty big enough for a lab.

But to me it seems a touch too small when a figure is next to it.
The door on their lab is really tall at over 8mm or 8 feet, but with the figures internal base it already looks small to me.

Now, I love Brigade, so don't even think I am knocking them.

But as I continue my adventures in resin and buildings I am wondering if I am better off making my stuff true scale and thus smaller and thus cheaper, or staying true to the oversized, and for my eyes more appealing but a touch dearer as there is more of it?

I prefer the oversized buildings. I like them to match the figure size, or to me they just look "wrong".

The cheapskate in me likes the idea of slightly "small" looking, but cheaper, buildings. However, I do prefer them to be somewhat oversized.

My vote would be for oversized.

Any 6mm gaming I do is 1 stand of 4 or 5 figures equals one platoon so buildings that are a little off (even if actually correct) don't bother me. If I was doing 1:1 I'd probably prefer your slightly over scale version.

I've been tinkering/making multi-storied buildings at the 1/300 scale for awhile now. I prefer slight oversizing of buildings but I have found that it depends on how big you make your windows. Here's some examples:

Here is a very early experiment using polymer clay:

I can't find it, but there is an excellent article floating around about how to match doorway sizes to miniature proportions.

Honestly this kind of minor mismatch doesn't bother me at all in small scales. The larger the scale the more this sort of thing makes a difference. Even then, only for skirmish games. Your photos look perfectly fine to me.

I think your structures are spot on for size, detail, etc. … If I had the extra $$$ I'd get both your range as well as Brigade's …

The larger the scale the more this sort of thing makes a difference.

Really?
I would have thought a 2mm thick base on say a 25mm figure would make less of a difference than a 2mm thick base on a 6mm figure.

The smaller scale you go the greater the 'problem' is multiplied if you see what I mean?

I tend to use sub scale buildings with all scales of figures so they are more in keeping with the ground scale.

I use Timecast 6mm buildings with 15mm figures!

The main thing is to ensure the buildings are taller than the figures.

The 'mass' is important but keeping an eye on the actual footprint can matter more for the 'small' table.

I prefer the doorways and windows to look plausibly in scale with the figures… but if the building overall 'feels right' I'll overlook certain details.

I back the "if it feels right" approach rather than exact to scale representation- a lo of scale buildings always look too small, on railway diorama's they are fine, park a tank nd some figures next to them and your verge three bedroom semi does look small……….military figures are usually fully kitted up and maybe three feet wide or more with webbing and kit….as well as uniforms being loose fit . UK troops appear 'short' on tv because all of their kit broadens them in comparison to others in slender fit clothing..

Most games have a much smaller ground scale than their figure scale. So buildings (which are both figures and terrain) are in an uncomfortable in-between area. And yeah I agree that slightly oversized looks better, especially since a building often stands in for an "urban area" rather than a single structure.

I guess as you can't put a quantifiable value on " if it feels right" as it is subjective between individuals. I like structures to be in proportion with the figures being used. Therefore I like your ' oversized' buildings as they match your range of figures. All that being said, I prefer to put my structure on bases to protect them more during play and transport, so they tend to look bigger anyway. This also distracts slightly from the figures base height as well.
So keep em big ;-)

If the problem is the comparison of the bases under the figs, it seems to me the solution is to raise the height of the building, or give a "visual excuse" to lift the doorway up to figure height— like a small step or "ramp" to the threshold. In other words, find a way to put either the building or the door "on a base", too.

I think it's more than just bases that cause this weird perception issue. It's because we live within the world, rather than looking at it from outside, that we have difficulty getting our heads around comparative sizes. Taking 1mm = 1foot, draw a perfect scale plan of your front room, draw in perfect scale furniture and then stick in a few 6mm figures. Looks really tiny doesn't it? I mean even tinier than it is in real life… If that's too teeny, try it with 28mm figures and call it, oh, 1/55th scale). This is one reason architects only put model figures in the big public spaces of their fancy cardboard models. Putting them in the living spaces would make them look too small. For the same reasons we always overestimate the size of cars (they're smaller than you think) and underestimate the size of vans and trucks (they're a lot bigger than you think). Which, in the end, means that, since this is tabletop gaming and not scale modelling, the correct answer is to use what looks right to you. 1/43rd scale cars with 28mm figures on "half-meter thick" slabs of plastic? They're FAR too large but they do look right…

The larger the scale the more this sort of thing makes a difference.

Really?
I would have thought a 2mm thick base on say a 25mm figure would make less of a difference than a 2mm thick base on a 6mm figure.

The smaller scale you go the greater the 'problem' is multiplied if you see what I mean?

Maybe, but the smaller the scale the less I care about things like this. I'm looking at it at a distance so to speak, approximations are okay. On the other hand, a small doorway is obvious in 28mm and might be annoying if that kind of thing bothers you. I'm not looking to make dioramas in 6mm.

I agree AB, keep making oversize stuff.

Your MHU's are about right.

Has anyone seen that new cityscape from Hawk Wargames? Now we all know that DZC is 10mm. But I think that their cityscape would work very well for 6mm.

I'm in total agreement that oversizing should be used – especially at these small scales. I'm not a fan of basing buildings and IMO, this represents the problem – I like my scenery to be flush with the underlying terrain but realise that having unbased figures is completely out of the question thus exacerbating the problem so I would prefer the manufacturers cheat a bit to bring buildings 'back into proportion'. Unfortunately it seems to be that the eye (brain) associates the model representation of a (human) figure first before applying it to its background (such as a building) so if your mini figure appears to be 8-9ft tall in relation to adjacent (even if accurately scaled) building(s), it's the building that looks out-of-whack and not the figure.
So manufacturers, if you want to increase your uptake (and therefore sales) consider doing (for example) 1/300 unbased figures but 1/250th building scales – trust me it'll look great! And I should point out that for a small consultancy fee, I am available to assist you in getting this 'just right!' :-)

There is a picture somewhere on the internet showing a Sherman tank with a bunch of infantry standing next to to it. There is another picture of attempting to replicate this with models that shows the problem stems from the proportions of the toy soldiers.

So, either use true scale figures, which will look skinny and limit you to stuff from Preiser and the like, or make the buildings in proportion to the figures, or ignore the problem. Your choice, but you will have to make a choice.

PS: I should add that I hate buildings that are too small and prefer building to have accessible interiors too. Just to answer the OPs question.

I suspect it depends upon if you are doing skirmish and how important the physical building as regards is it a real building or just represents a town block.

So in 6mm skirmish I'd want the building to look right and it matters where the doors and windows are in relation to the figure.

In 6mm FWC larger battles I'm not so fussed as I'm more interested in the templated area looking like a town/city block.

Ditto in 25mm FOG AM I use 15mm buildings in a template to represent a BUA.

Basically as stenicplus says.
I think it depends on if you are doing skirmish or mass battles. In skirmish, I would want the figures to scale well with the buildings, so that they look right. Whereas with massed battles, I'm more keen on buildings representing what is there, but not getting in the way of all those figures moving about, but still letting me know what terrain I am moving/fighting through,

Well I use the big n-scale stuff which is 10mm. It still looks OK for 6mm.

If you have ever been to New York and walked through Manhattan you will notice that the buildings are much larger than you expect. Many many times bigger than what we normally game with in 6mm.

I am a regular user of the various Japanese N-scale buildings in my 6mm games and think they work fine.

Here you can see them on a 15mm layout:

If I am doing a game in close up city street type environment I might go for more of the flat roofed type buildings from Old-Crow and Snapdragon. However they are limited in size and height, mostly because really big resin buildings would not work be cost effective to produce.

There is an issue with tall buildings though because they get in the way of the game and can be annoying to move about. So perhaps striking a balance depending on the layout and using them in a restricted way is handy.

Also just thought! I often want to put models, VTOL, Mecha etc on top of buildings which is why I like the flat roof variations like the Old Crow ones because I can rest models on top.

Michael,

The 10 foot/3m per storey is probably fine for smaller residential/retail/office buildings. For industrial, scientific and taller residential/office buildings, you will typically find that it is around 13 foot/4m per storey as that allows for between-floor service voids for ventilation ducting, pipework, cable runs etc. I know that from being heavily involved in the design and build of a 4 storey laboratory building a few years back.

So, "oversize" is good for sci-fi buildings, regardless of how many storeys they are.