"I prefer 15mm for ACW" Topic

It's strange I started with 15mm, and I'm not more or less competly a 28mm guy.

But for acw I think 15mm just looks better.

I think it's 3 fold.

1. Uniforms don't that that much detail anyway,
While I do like painting 28mm ACW, getting details ect, the uniform are quite easy to paint, and so is easy to make look good in 28mm, But you do not have lots of facings, shakoes ect.

2. Thinner, even the big bluemoon ACW are still more realistic in proprtions then even perry 28mm, and this lets me shove alot of them on a base and make the formation thinner. To me ACW formations were thin thin lines. And this gets the best effect with 15mm figures shoved really close to eachother. It looks like the soldiers are trying to keep the close formations.

3. Gettysburg, I've watched that movie so many times, and 15mm looks most like the scenes from the film with thousands of troops marching in thin lines.

It probably won't come as too much of a surprise if I say I like 15s for ACW, and I started with 25s. The fact is I like 15/18mm for military and 25/28mm for Pulp/ Adventure/Gothic Victorian… That probably stems from the fact that I love the look of big armies and big battlefields and 15s give me that, and I love the personality available with the figures that are 25/28mm. Lots of options available in lots of scales and that's a good thing too.

Yeah me too, gave up on 25mm decades ago and the quality of 15mm is pretty high.

I sold off my 15mm ACW armies and went to more 6mm figures on the same size base. The extra figures makes the games with them appear closer to the pictures and drawings of the real thing. The 'mass effect' you get with so many figures can be quite spectacular.

Yup, I sold off all my 15mm figures for 10mm. 15mm would be my second choice for ACW.

I've long been a proponent of smaller sizes ..10mm on down. However lately I've been sculpting a set of 15mm ACW with the thought that, if the figures are sculpted more or less to scale (with obvious exceptions to bayonets, swords, etc.) the whole "mass effect" look can be very nicely represented even at this 'large' size.

When I see these placed shoulder to shoulder they take up far less space than I had assumed, compared to my much-admired AB Napoleonics, and even when placed next to some of the "bigger" 10mm lines they are very close in footprint.

I agree – 15mm is best here.

At a Hurricon in Florida a number of years ago, they had three games of Fire and Fury going at the same time. One was in 25mm, one was in 6mm and one was in 15mm. Quite an impressive sight. i enjoyed the 15mm one the best.

with such a statement I would like to see pictures

I do 28mm for skirmish, 15mm for regimental and 10mm for brigade level. Any smaller and I feel I may as well go back to board games. Yes, I've seen some 6mm and 3mm games that looked good, but all you can see are flashes of color on a nicely terrained base. I have to get extremely close to see the detail of the figures. What's the point! 10mm is small enough and it gives the mass effect better than the other scales.

Your reasons for giving up 28mm for 15mm are my reasons for giving up 15mm for 10mm.

I don't understand this giving up one scale for another. I have 15mm ACW for F&F, 10mm ACW for JR3, & 1/600 ACW Naval as well as one unit of 25mm ACW for skirmish.

With the nice new 10mm ACW lines available i now wish I'd done 10mm instead of 15mm.

I much prefer 25/28mm for ACW. I play with one base/unit and the diorama potential is so much better than in smaller scales.

But, there is NO one scale that is "right" for any game. It is completely, IMHO, subjective and rests fully with the player's tastes. Your minis. Your game. Your scale.

Got too many 15mm to change. If I were just starting I would probably go 10mm.

BW1959 – I find that the more I love a period, the more the scales seem to proliferate. So many different levels to game, even is so called 'simple' periods.

I had 6mm sold em, got 15mm sold em, got 28mm soled em but my 10/12mm are keepers each stand has double rows of inf 10 figs to a stand. I now have brigade flags to identify my units and so many limbers it looks pretty good.

I love all scales but for effect 12mm kallistra are so good, even talked them into expanding the range.

I also like 15mm. Started with 15mm Peter Laing. Nice little figures. Then I went on to use the minifigs strips. Really enjoyed them. Use other 15mm now. All figure choices are subjective, but 15mm gets my vote for all the land games I play.

martin

I prefer 10/12mm for WW2, but for the ACW (and AWI too) I still prefer 15mm. I think when the unit stands start tending to model "elements" using the smaller scale figs (like with 6mm & 10mm), the miniatures tend to "blend" together. That is to my older eyes, I tend to see the miniatures less distinctly at scales smaller than with the 15s.

28s are best for skirmish gaming IMO.

Probably just personal preference, but ones eyesight does obviously have a lot to do with the enjoyment factor too.

Btw, I mount (7-8) X 15mm minis to a 2-inch square base for my ACW collection, and with the sculpted animation of the figures, plus the room for more fluid placement, they achieve a degree of the "element" affect too. The bigger base size can work to protect the figures within its larger area, and with ample shoulder sides, players can move the stands around by themselves, rather than having to directly grab the minis to do the moving.

Nothing special with my figs, but the basing just makes sense (to me ;) ) for looks and tabletop utility – btw, I think so many rulesets (older editions mostly) require players to mount their figures in ugly ways (unprotected too if you want arms, legs, & bayonets sticking out).

Brunet, I do not run around and take photos at conventions. I have been going to shows since 1983 as a vendor, so that is a lot of shows.

IIRC the designer of the rules may have been a special guest at the show in Florida. More than likely it was Recon or Hurricon. But a nagging thought lingers that it may have been at nashcon in nashville but I do not think so.

Maybe someone has an old program from that show?

I've mostly got figures from the old 15mm range, Confederates from Heritage and I'm very happy with them. If I was to redo the range now I'd probably use 10/12mm since the mass effect would look even nicer, and the basic uniforms wouldn't lose anything in the smaller scale.

For something like napoleonic or AWI I'd still stick with 15mm just for the color and uniform details.

Dan55 my 15's are also the old Heritage Confederettes. And for WW2 my US and German infantry are also the old Heritage Panzertroops range.

Many of my Napoleonics are from that line. Great little figures. My ACW figures are from Scruby's so-called 9mm line(actually about 13mm).

Ditto with 15mm. I used to collect 28mm for a lot of periods but sold most of it off to concentrate on 15mm. I now have close to 10,000 painted ACW and AWI figs in my collection. Not likely I will switch to another scale soon… :) For all the reason already mentioned 15mm is just a perfect scale. Great middle ground between the other scales, allows for good detail but smaller formation sizes. In tandem the scale allows more maneuver on the board which is critical. Less than 15mm the detail really begins to fade to the point as others have said I would rather use a board game.

A nice thing about 15mm is that 15mm is about the smallest size that you can paint to do credit to SYW and Napoleonic uniforms. ACW in 15mm means that a lot of scenery can be reused.