"The scale of your wargames scenery" Topic

I'm getting into the Sengoku era of samurai wargaming in 15mm. I'm using Peter Pig's excellent range of miniatures but for scenery I'm considering the smaller 10mm scale buildings from Castle Arts. This is because 1) I like the models and 2) it'll give me more room on the table for maneuvering while still having room for villages and castles in the back ground.

My question is are there other gamers that do this and what kind of advice do you have?

I normally use terrain in a smaller scale than the figures. It means that a village or town can have a respectable number of buildings. 5/6mm buildings work well with 15mm figures.

Heretics!

Dan

John,

Do you mount your buuldings individually or in groups?

But I guess I could use 6mm miniatures and terrain, base then individually at a 1:1 figure ratio! Would that satisfy your sensibilities Dan!?! I know it would make Peter over at Baccus 6mm esctatic 😜

I sometimes run just a hair small. Not "my figures tower over the building" small, but "My figures would have to duck to get through that doorway" small. And it's actually rare to find a wargame table with trees to scale with the figures. (Understandable: you'd lose the figures.)

I've seen the more extreme, and it tends to work better with mass battles than with 1:1 engagements.

I can use FOW 15mm buildings for my 20mm figures and vehicles.

I use HO buildings for 15mm & O scale for 25/28mm.

10mm buildings with my 15mms figures, except fortresses

I use 6mm buildings with my 15s. The /BUA gets a footprint and the buildings are placed on that. If needed they get moved to accommodate the bases of troops or temporarily removed from the board. Much like, I expect, many people treat trees in non-skirmish games.

City walls and other fortifications aren't moved around but stay in place.

For the Sengoku period I am using 3mm terrain and models.

I use everything in scale with the actual figures, not the figure ratio??? Same with roads, rivers,etc. If my figures represent 20 humans, then the building represent 20 buildings.
If my game does not LOOK like a diorama then I hate it.

Regards
Russ Dunaway

I typically go a bit smaller for buildings. Bruce Wriggle's games look like beautiful dioramas but the scales between figures, buildings and ground scale are not consistent. He told me that his buildings are really around 1:400 scale and the miniatures are 1:300. The ground scale is very much greater than 1:400.

When I translated this to my 18mm Napoleonics the buildings I made and the ground scale of the rules I use, the ratios were very, very close to that which Bruce W. used.

The problem typically arises that if you are modelling a farm, as you might for a Waterloo game, in my view it's far more important that the footprint of the model is in keeping with the ground scale of the rules than the figure scale, otherwise you end up with a farm that is perhaps four times as large as it was in reality. That then total skews the actual game and the relative importance of the terrain feature on the battle. Of course that means some compromise over how you represent the farm to make it small enough, is needed. Not easy to resolve and you'll typically see models of the Waterloo farms in games that are far too large for the ground scale.

For my own Napoleonic collection that calls for built up areas that are multiples of 6" square I've made my own blocks of multiple buildings to fill that space. I make my roads very narrow (1") and employ similar visual tricks to make the table look as large as possible. If you model the roads to be wide enough to take a base of figures it makes the table look a much smaller area. I've never seen a wargame with scale mature trees – they would be absolutely massive in 28mm and scaling them down a lot still seems to work well. Really it's a visual balancing act and the only person you have to please is yourself.

The short answer to the OP is yes I think what you suggest would look good and as you write it goes a long to resolving the tricky balance of relative scales used in the game. Buy a few buildings and see what you think when you can pose painted buildings next to quite a few painted figures.

As a side thought – some of the best dioramas I've seen in museums use multiple scales…

My approach is as follows, But it helps that I use simple card buildings,as few of which are for sale as images.

link

They are typicaly about 90% groundscale in terms of size of doors windows etc. relative to the figure scale. However the basic size is significantly smaller, tgan the real building would be. Proably 1/4 or less at the building scale. You could not put sensible sized rooms in the buildings. However they look OK (to me at least) and they don't look like the figures walking round in a model vilage.

In the end its a compromise between art and science. For instance to me a built up area needs 10 buildings. This takes up too much table at figure scale. However with the floorplan shrinkahe it becomes possible. Ifyou want the buildings for show and not to play around then smallet scale ones at the back is fine, forced persective.

I base buildings individually. They can then be put on a piece of felt to represent a built up area or used as single buildings as necessary.

While I understand the rationale of ground scale, for me the game's visual charms conquer all and, like Russ Dunaway, my terrain must be "full size", or close to full size, of the figure scale.

I think that using a slightly smaller scale for your buildings works best with smaller scales. So 15mm troops with 10mm buildings looks better than 28mm troops with 15mm buildings. At smaller scales you don't need the troops to physically enter the buildings in order to have "inside" combat.

I usually use the same size for buildings and troops (28mm or 1/56 in my case). However, I understand the concern. The storage of terrain and buildings is far greater than the storage footprint of the troops.

It is a case of to each their own. I struggle to see a couple of buildings as a town or village….

Getting back to Mr. Stalwart's concerns, why not look at Oshiros beautiful 15mm range?:

link

The rule of thumb is "one size down" – unless you are doing skirmish.

Bowman,

I did consider Oshiro. Their pieces are really good.

I think the rule of thumb is "to each his own", not "one scale down".

+1 to corona66

Thanks to everyone for your input.

The Major