"15mm vs 20mm" Topic

When I think I'm all settled on 20mm, I see a video or picture of a 15mm equivalent model and then I get delusions of grandeur (oooooohhhh….I could put so many more 15mm tanks on the board than I could 20mm)!!!!

Someone, convince me 15mm is the way to go :P

I'm going to use a 6'x4' (minimum) table. Just wondering how much more "stuff" I can put on the table :)

Other than PSC, who else does 15mm in plastic?

If you're playing Chain of Command, the ground scale is very close to 1:100. SO for once you get to play at something approaching figure scale.

I'll be playing Battlegroup Kursk or Jadgpanzer rules

15mm is wonderful.
It's exceptionally well supported, there's a huge variety and a lot of the ranges match up pretty well with each other.

Since FOW is really popular, you may even be able to to swing by a retail store and grab stuff off the shelf.

I liked 20mm, but I found I could get some things in 15mm that I had a hard time with in 20mm. I prefer metal figures to plastic. For vehicles plastic is ok. I just found it hard to find good 20mm figures (Infantry) with as many variants as I can for 15mm. Plus, the other bonus is that you can field more on the game table.

Mmmmm, "Battlegroup Kursk" or "Jagdpanzer" rules, could this be the source of the the next big dilemma. Maybe somebody could suggest others.

10 mm!!!!!

15mm pros

Cheaper
Table space
Better relation to height/ space
Easier to store and carry.

15mm cons
Not everything is on scale. Many only if you like ugly bases under vehicles.
Infantry ( in metal, not plastic ones) sometimes post nuclear mutants.
Many funny things do not exist.

20mm pros
You can get nearly everything, you name it some one did it.
If you chose well, most stuff is on scale and truly accurate.
You can see the ranks( well some), variants etc.
You can use plastic. Loads, cheap not bad.

20mm cons
Prices
Space and height ( you know hills that should be higher than the antenna).
Many heavy brittle houses…
Longer and harder to paint / unforgiving if badly done.
Boxes will be heavier, take more shelf space.

Tends to be personal opinion. 15 or 20s are not better tan each other just maybe more suitable for your own criteria.. If your opponents play in 15mm then all is perfect! I like 15mm partially because i can use my 15mm scenery from my other games.There is probably aggregator variety of periods played in 15mm than 20mm? Whatever you choose, good gaming! Probably best to ignore any opinionated person who insists only their favourite size is the only choice you are allowed to make without censure. Why not play some 15mm games with mates and see how that feels?Zvezda can provide quick and cheap masses of vehicles.

martin

A lot of 20mm kits are designed for modellers. Japanese modellers at that, who have little display space, infinite patience and little, tiny fingers. A wargamer doesn't want a 150 piece kit of a tank where each road wheel must be assembled from 3 parts. Then there are the resin kits, where you get to carve the tank yourself out of a block of resin and forge your own track links from paperclips.

A wargamer wants accurate, simple, robust models with a reasonable amount of detail, requiring not too much effort to put on the table. Prepaints are the best! If you can afford them. If you shop, you can find this in 20mm…but all 15mm product is for wargamers, with few exceptions.

Back when I started there was no 15mm, so my collection is 20mm. (Did you know the original Roco models were 1/100 scale? By crackey, they called it 'German HO', but it wasn't. A candy bar was a nickle, and gasoline was 25 cents a gallon…rant…wheeze…)

If I was starting today, I'd go 15mm.

Have you considered MicroArmor? You can get a 5 tank platoon for $12. USD That's the way I'm going. I have 1/2 scale rulers and base my infantry on 1/2 size stands. So a 4x6 table is effectively 8x12!

Even a moderately patient painter can get very good results. Plus storage is easy. Here are some shots of my 6mm stuff:

Martin doesn't mention that he makes some of the nicest 15mm figures and vehicles:
peterpig.co.uk/page8.html

Like zippyfusenet I started a long time ago, and have WW2 armies for the major powers in Europe in 20mm, 15mm and 1:300. If I could only keep one I'd go with 15mm, it is more portable (I often walk to the wargames club), just about large enough to use for skirmish games and small enough to minimise issues of ground scale in larger games.

As to filling a table, I'm not sure that is wise…

15mm plastic? Zvezda are excellent and have some great softskins for the Eastern front as well as plenty of good tanks. Some people rave about PSC – I prefer Zvezda for their simpler assembly.

Although very little is lost in detail, 15mm saves a fair amount of space and is much quicker to paint to the same level of detail. So it wins for me.

I have WWII in 15mm and 20mm. I'll keep the 20mm stuff and one day I'll find a proper use for it (probably a Winter War, dedicated snowscape PBI set up) but for now it is just boxed up and if I was starting from scratch it would be just in 15mm (mostly it would mix PP metal figures and Zvezda vehicles and aircraft) …

Phil
P.B.Eye-Candy

15mm in plastic? Wargames Factory does USA and Germans IIRC. Quality casting by Battlehonors are reasonable in their cost for metal. 24 foot castings for $10.00 USD the last time I checked.

For decades 20mm was the dominant scale for skirmish gaming and 15mm for tactical levels. In many places in the USA South 20mm for skirmish (one man per base) is still common.
I have seen games of Bolt Action played in both 15mm and 20mm as well as 28mm.

I get delusions of grandeur(oooooohhhh….I could put so many more 15mm tanks on the board than I could 20mm)!!!!

Delusions of grandeur? With 15mm? Pish posh! How many companies will you put on the board?

I'm with ExtraCrispy on this one. If you want to role with the armored spearhead, you need to see companies, even battalions, of armor and infantry on your board. That means 6mm, not 15.

No offense intended. To each his own (with regard to scale, at least). But grandeur with 15mm? It is to laugh!

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

If starting from scratch, I'd go 15mm all the way. Ideal compromise of cost, looks, and most important, ease of storage and transportation.

I'm not starting from scratch however.

Jamming the table with tanks is silly, why would you?

Our club does 20mm but the 15mm tanks that tend to have just few odd pieces versus the plastic models on 20mm (UM's T-26 has like 120 parts!) are so very tempting!

I've been doing plastic models since mid 70's but for wargame purposes you don't really need/want fiddly bits…

I'd go 20mm. 15mm is neither one thing nor the other.

If you want large formations – like 2+ companies a side go 6mm. If you want detail go 20mm.

Remarkable stuff is done in 15mm but generally it never looks as good as the good 20mm stuff.

I'm going to post a contrarian view. Although the 'micro-armor' genre was originally developed for WWII and modern fighting vehicles, I think 6mm scale actually works better for black powder era gaming, where there are no vehicles, than for 20th-21st century.

I say this because I find micro armor figs too small to *see* on the table among the terrain, if they're camouflaged. Put blocks of 6mm infantry figures in bright colored black powder era coats, and they stand out better against the terrain. Modern era uniforms and equipment paint schemes are *designed* to blend with the terrain for camouflage. Standing 3 feet above the table surface, if figures and terrain are well done, all I see are little indistinct lumps among the terrain.

In my experience, it's common for micro-armor to actually get lost in the terrain among the lichen and not be found until after the game! I have the same problem skirmish gaming with single-mounted 15mm and 20mm figures. They're too small, I can't see them from three feet, they get lost in terrain.

The problem is less if the small figures are painted in bright colors that contrast with the game terrain, and/or if there's little to no terrain, such as a North Africa 1941 game.

With small figures (3mm, 6mm and to an extent 10mm) I sit down closer to the table, since we play those on small surfaces (2x2 feet often)

I thought about 6mm…..

I think my issue is one of what is it that I want? Do I want to game? Do I want to build beautiful models? Do I want to game with beautiful models?

If I can think "gaming" only, then 6mm is my choice, but the modeler in me wants the larger scale to say "ooohhh….pretty"….but who says that on the battlefield???

I don't think the answers will have changed much since you asked the question last week:

TMP link

Nor, in fact, when you asked the question 3 years ago:

TMP link

Or from the responses to all the other WW2 scale dilemma threads you've posted in between.

It's great too see so much enthusiasm for WW2 gaming, but dude, if you had spent those 3 years collecting and painting instead of procrastinating on TMP then you could have done armies in 6mm, 10mm, 15mm and 20mm by now and have answered all your own questions.

Do you intend to be asking for scale advice in another 3 years or would you rather be gaming?

Here's my honest and benevolent advice – buy some figures and vehicles. In any scale, it doesn't matter. Paint them. Game with them. Then buy more. And do it now, as in today, either online or at your FLGS. As a wise man once said, doubt of any kind cannot be resolved except through action.

To the OP. I seem to remember that you recently said that you were not really keen on doing much terrain and were mainly interested in what figures to use. Against that background and the fact that you have at least 6' x 4' to game on (which I consider generous), then i think you could progress you your investigations by simply buying a single box of Plastic 1/72 (say Russians from Plastic Soldier Company for about £12.00 GBP GBP) infantry and an Armourfast tank set – they are 1/72 plastic vehicles with very few assembly parts and you get two models per box for £8.00 GBP

So for an outlay of £20.00 GBP GBP, you wold have the basis of your first army or at least an on table guide to see whether you would prefer to go smaller or not.

I have a small table, so I know the smaller scales are sensible for me, but I yearn for the bigger stuff, so I have 10mm, 15mm and 1/72 and even some 28mm on my table at the moment. i know the point will come when I must focus on one scale (simply for terrain considerations), but for now, i am heavily distracted by it all, so understand your state of confusion – but as the previous poster says, I think at some point you simply need to make a start somewhere. Good luck.

EDIT ----- Here is a link to a page for the ruleset that you like, it gives anode what you can get onto the table. LINK link

Somewhere between 15mm and 6mm sounds best to me -- but I have so much invested in 20mm that I doubt I'll ever switch.

I've generally found that 15mm is more expensive than 20mm (I found out when I tried to field a couple of Flames of War armies).

I have lots of 20mm and have not had any storage problems. It works well for platoon level games where you want the model to occupy roughly the space of a platoon. We play on 6X4 for small games and push two talble together for larger games.

Plastic figures make it easy for young gamers to break in.

I'm way too old to be able to tell one 6mm tank from anyother 6mm tank on the table top.

TomT

20mm for me as its all about the visuals…

Jagdpanzer was written for 6mm but the 2nd Edition rules allow for everything up to 15mm. I imagine 20mm would work too, if you ramped up the area templates and movement speeds.

I play 10mm, as I find it a happy medium, but yeah, you do lose that detail we all love. 'Guess I'm more gamer than artist. :-)

Zippy for the win……. But it really depends on what level of focus your looking for… Do you want brigade regiment level operations at kampgruppe level? Go with micro armor. Micro armor tends to be totally tank heavy, if your looking for the infantry focus which is what the vast majority of WW2 combat was fought, I would go with 20mm or 15mm. A good set of WW2 rules may work very well in one scale but fail epically in a larger or smaller one. The hardest part I think might be finding where you want to be in your battlefield and how big of a command you want, then finding that rule set for you. Me? I'd rather run a company maybe a battalion, not interested in anything higher than that so micro armor really isn't my thing man.

Oh, 15mm. Peter pig troops and plastic soldier company vehicles and peterpig towed heavy weapons. Sweet models

I play man to man combat on a 3 x 3 table, about 10 guys a side and maybe a vehicle or two, so 20mm works well for that.

Real men of course play 2mm skirmish :-)

I think 20mm is the oddball scale, too small to have the fine detail of 28mm and too big to make effective use of space like 15mm.

15mm everytime.

Nice cows though …. only kidding, a lovely scene and your site must have inspired many to travel the 20mm route.

Tim, you are one hella modeller. And that looks like a perfectly reasonable shade of Russian baby- green. They were just feeding the babies an off-brand of kasha that week.

If I can make "mistakes" of the same calibre Tim, I will die happy. Thanks to yourself and Piers, I have spent far too much on 20mm WWII figures which I still hope might see the light of day at some point.

Tim, what ordinance green did you use?

I sold off my micro armor collection last year & got into 15mm. Micro armor was so small I was having trouble seeing the models and losing patience mounting infantry with tweezers.

My gaming partner plays 20mm (1/72). I looked at cost, which I thought was comparable, but went with 15mm because there's a much larger variety of different models. I don't call a T-26 from Hong Kong with individual track links to be a "readily available" kit for a wargamer. That's what my fiend has to deal with.

For those who say the 1/72 models have a large variety, show me where I can find British A9 cruisers. My buddy needs them while I have no problem sourcing them from Battlefront.

I play on a 4x6 table with a standard FOW organization (but used to play Spearhead rules & org charts in 15mm). When I make up a 15mm scenario he has to cut his force in half and his table has to be 5x8 for comparable maneuverability. He wishes he was in 15mm now, because everyone else is and due to the ease of building armies (I use FOW infantry and PSC vehicles when possible).

A9 Cruiser in 20mm?

In rapid build format- a total of six metal and resin pieces?

link

In two-piece resin?

link

In nine-piece resin and metal?

link

Or if your definition of 20mm stretches to 1/76?

link

Or for beauty try Milicast- expensive but stunning models and still very wargamer friendly and not an individual track link in sight…

link

Or the equally lovely MMS…

link

@Leigh… LOL.

;)

LOL. Yes, he also corrected me that he could find the A9's. What about the Italian tanks?

Which Italian ones? An awful lot out there for 20mm…

Any of these?

link

link

Lots here…

henk.fox3000.com/Italy.htm

Mirliton do 45 vehicles and accesories…

link

Lots more such as from various makers in resin and I havent covered the plastic kits properly.

What are you looking for?

To the 6mm advocates….thanks, but at my age I'm starting to squint at smaller items sitting on my table. 6mm is for the young and quite frankly, it's just too small.

Mind you, I can't say a swarm of 6mm tanks doesn't look cool on the table, but they're just blobs of metal to me.

15mm is the scale I'm going.