BritTorrent | 13 Feb 2021 5:16 a.m. PST |
Hi all, I'm looking to move into 6mm modern wargaming. I've seen some of the minis and boards at shows and I love the idea of being able to actually put Soviet operational art into practice. Big, sweeping battles of manouvre over a large area. Sounds great. Up until now I've mainly played 28mm scale (40k) and 15mm scale (Team Yankee/Seven Days to the Rhine). Obviously, at these scales scenery is a doddle. It's just 1:1 WYSIWYG. That house is an actual house, that field and the surrounding wall are an actual wall and it's 1.5" high because that's how high it physically is. Creating a battlefield is just a case of arranging the scenery to resemble something realistic looking. Simple. However at 6mm I'm a bit confused. So using FFoT3 as an example, because I have the rules, it uses a 1" = 100m ground scale. This confused me at first because that means some of the tanks are nearly 100m long! But then I read that each physical model represents 5ish actual vehicles. Spread out over an area. OK, I get that. But how does it apply to scenery? When I'm making scenery should I be making it true scale to the models? Or making it with the 1":100m scale in mind? It's confusing me. So let's say I built a little house to use. If I make the house in scale with the models, the house might be nearly 100m long in the rules. Which feels a bit weird? Or let's say I build a wall to go alongside a road, that wall might actually be 30m high in game? But on the opposite side of the coin. If I used an actual map, and made a perfectly accurate scale representation of a portion of northern Germany, in a 1":100m scale, then the models will look out of scale on the board. You'd have a 4" x 8" little village for example, with a huge tank sat in the middle of it. This is confounded even more when looking at the optional 1:1 rules in the game (which I'd like to use if possible for aesthetic reasons). At that point it suggests using a 1"/50m ground scale which again causes me a bit of a headache trying to get my head around the scales. Can somebody help me try and understand and visualise this a little please? As I say I'm new to this scale of gaming so I'm not sure of the norms. Should I build scenery and boards to be true scale with the models? Or should I be looking at the board like a batallion commanders map? And my models are just representative of a general area of where my model is and not a true scale. Just creating patches of terrain and scenery that represent the smaller details? Side question, does anyone have any experience with running FFoT3 at 1:1 scale and does it work well with the rules? |
John Armatys | 13 Feb 2021 5:30 a.m. PST |
Try using scenery a scale smaller than the toys, and make area terrain items (like villages) have a footprint which fits the ground scale, so a few 2-3mm houses on a base represent a village. |
HMS Exeter | 13 Feb 2021 5:48 a.m. PST |
+1 Armatys The 15mm rule of thumb for terrain is to use 10mm or N Scale scenics. One scale smaller. In your case you'd be talking 2mm scenery. |
Supreme Littleness Designs | 13 Feb 2021 6:30 a.m. PST |
… or 3mm. link Suitable for World War 2 battles such as Ořechov.
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Yesthatphil | 13 Feb 2021 7:29 a.m. PST |
All of the above ! … (nice buildings, by the way, Supreme Littleness !) I recall a couple of games at CoW, one playing with models directly on a large map … another, rather clever, Normandy game playing on an enhance satellite photograph. Putting scenics on that helps define the elevation and visibility issues better (and generally brings the game to life). Take care not to take Line of Sight issues too literally, of course (don't end up trying to microscale Bolt Action's nonsense for heaven's sake) … Phil |
Extra Crispy | 13 Feb 2021 8:23 a.m. PST |
Long time Fistful of TOws player here. I usually game in 1:1 and it works fine, just as is. Now regarding terrain:
- WYSISYG is not the way to go for all the reasons you stated. Houses would be pin dots at 1" = 100 yards. So you will need to go with some amount of abstraction.
- Think of terrain as areas. Ignore single items. What I mean is, in WYSIWG an out house is a significant piece of terrain. Not in this scale. At this scale you ignore it. So make areas of terrain. I base mine to give them clear edges (important in FFT3). Make a base and put buildings on it for a town. Treat the entire base as a "building." Ditto for rough, forests, swamps, etc.
- Stick to terrain that really matters at this scale. A small stone wall is a big deal in a skirmish. Not when you command a regiment. Make sure terrain that slows movement or gives cover is appropriate to the game scale.
- Dress up the table with "phantom" terrain. If you only do areas the table can look a bit barren. I sprinkle the table with single trees, pebbles, small buildings, wrecks or anything else I like. But these do not exist in game play. If they are in the way just move them somewhere else. But they add a lot to the look of the table.
- When making roads, hedges, streams and so on they will end up out of scale. Just go with widths and dimensions that please your eye.
- Experiment with buildings smaller than your models. It's about an aesthetic at this scale. You can try to go "looks like real life" with super detail, or for a more abstract "artist's rendition." My Civil War battles try to look like the spreads in books I read in middle school.
YMMV |
Oberlindes Sol LIC | 13 Feb 2021 10:47 a.m. PST |
Even at 25mm, ground scale is usually smaller than figure scale, even if all of the figures and vehicles are 1:1 representations. |
williamb | 13 Feb 2021 11:18 a.m. PST |
Some people use maps for games while others use three dimensional scenery. Buildings are usually mounted on bases representing villages, towns, or cities or sometimes a farm or chateau and not individual buildings for FFoT. I use 6mm scale card stock buildings available from PaperTerrain, Iliada (on Wargame Vault) and others. The city in the middle of the picture covers 10 inches by 12 inches and is made of five 4 inch by 6 inch bases.
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BattlerBritain | 13 Feb 2021 11:51 a.m. PST |
I often use areas defined with colour felt, eg grey for towns and cities, then place terrain on top of that. Can also use printouts from Satellite photos, eg Google maps. For roads I've found 1cm wide grey masking tape is useful, but whatever looks good. I use Timecast rubber roads and rivers as well. I'm starting to use 2mm terrain as it can look great. Just need a fair amount of it and it can be fiddly to paint, depending on how detailed you want it. Just do what you're comfortable with and pleases you. |
BattlerBritain | 13 Feb 2021 12:03 p.m. PST |
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Saber6 | 13 Feb 2021 5:14 p.m. PST |
I make a template oh the built up area and use scale buildings that fit in the area. |
79thPA | 13 Feb 2021 5:56 p.m. PST |
The age old figure scale versus ground scale conundrum. If I was a 6mm gamer, I would use 2/3 mm buildings. A structure or terrain feature that is significant in a skirmish game becomes inconsequential in a larger game. |
UshCha | 14 Feb 2021 1:09 a.m. PST |
Personally I game 12mm with a groind scale skew of about 7 , ground is 7 times smaller than the figure. At that diparity fight at 1:1. For buildings I use small model scale buildings, i.e not huge buildings that take up lots of space. Personally I treat then as sort of buildings as to me at any scale real BUA have key routes through them so it is important to represent them. As for roads I make them model scale but small. So a single lane model is just wide enough for one model and similarly a major road is only just wide enough for two. Now you can easiuly clasify than by weight capacity, critical in big games where getting heavey vehivles en-mass means using the right roads. Taking a 70 ton tank over a 10 ton bridge would destroy any credibility in the game. |
Martin Rapier | 14 Feb 2021 2:03 a.m. PST |
For non 1:1 games I use area templates to model the terrain features and scatter appropriate models across them (trees, houses etc). Sub scale works well, some 6mm buildings are huge! Just make sure the terrain is taller than the figures and vehicles. |