"Why You Should try a Smaller Scale" Topic

In this article I try to convince you of the glory of tiny toy soldiers. Enjoy and subscribe
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If I would start over in WWII, I would use 10mm. But I am a 15mm man, and the big problem to me of anything smaller than 15mm is 1) no resale and 2) I really can not tell the differant figres apart while gaming. I agree that they do have merit and if it works for you, enjoy.

My eyes just stopped getting younger.

I prefer 28mm but for those who prefer smaller scale then I wish them well with that.

I think it depends a bit on what makes your crank go – I like Grand Tactical, so for me 6mm Napoleonic is great – if I was starting again in ACW it would be perhaps 6mm but more likely 10mm – but given that I have 2500 15mm I am not going back! For SYW though I am 28mm all the way – mostly because I love painting the extreme detail on the uniforms (and you gotta love an army where the dragoons have four different coloured uniform coats)

I have both 3mm and 54mm Napoleonics. I started experimenting with 3mm last year. I have been working on Austrians, so I need to get some opponents painted up. About the smaller footprint thing. Yes, and no. I do not like small figures on small stands. I am basing my infantry for Volley and Bayonet, so I have roughly 100 infantry figures on a 3" x 1.5" stand. Cavalry are 20 some to 40+ per stand, with lights having less troops to help give some visual distinction between the types of cavalry.

It's not possible. I'm already at 2mm, and no one makes anything smaller.

More seriously, lots of factors enter in. I'm not giving up my 28mm horse & musket armies. I can afford them--often in hard plastic--I have the space for a 6x8 table, and there's no better way as well as no better-looking way to do small horse & musket battles. I can change formation without markers and show attrition without rosters.

The 6mm comes into its own at corps and above, not just reducing costs and painting time, but permitting a ground scale compatible with room sizes and human reach, and providing a much better-looking table than the "six castings to a brigade" school of 28mm play.

The 2mm is the "travel army" scale, the "minor period" scale and the "bold experiment" scale. But if you let your stands get smaller than 3/4"--well, don't say you weren't warned.

If your idea is to just keep shrinking stands because the castings you put on them are smaller, watch out. They'll be harder to identify and harder to handle until you hit a limit. I've seen Empire played with 6mm figures and tweezers, just cutting all distances in half, and as far as I'm concerned that gamer had already passed the limit.

Small can be beautiful--but remember they have to be identified and handled.

I am keen to restart my 6mm WW2 armies, just because I keep seeing small, beautiful cottages in the charity shops.

Of course they would only work for Sealion, but …

Just finished five armies for the Seven Years War. Each army took me one day to complete. Fast and ready to play.

At what point do we just have a painted block of wood or color cardboard counter?

Im all for smaller massed looks – but other than for tanks and planes – 15mm is about as small as I want to go

"At what point do we just have a painted block of wood or color cardboard counter?"

At somewhere VERY small I should think, DisasterWargamer. Because in 2mm, my 2" stands of ECW troops are clearly brigades of three pike and shot battalia, my Napoleonic stands on 30mm bases contain recognizable infantry formations and my SYW (40mm base) and ACW (30mm base) armies are identifiable by army and arm of service, with flags flying. That's not to mention whole tank (or infantry) formations in my new Desert War armies on 3" x 1.5" bases.

If you don't care for smaller scales, fine. But I have only normal vision. If you really can't tell the smaller scales from counters, you need to log off and have someone drive you to an optometrist.

The second I switched to 6mm for scaled gaming, I never looked back. They just looked BIGGER than 28's or even 15mm.
Much more figure count per base footprint. For me-a more
gratifying experience.

Still, 2mm, however pleasing, means a return to counters.
Nothing wrong with counters in my book.

I'm with Thosmoss and Disco Joe. Also, my games are mostly in future settings with long weapon ranges and small forces.

I have enjoyed GDW's Striker and GZG's Dirtside with 1:300-ish scale miniatures and company-level actions, but I prefer to work with larger and easier to see miniatures now.

While I agree with the above post, the smaller miniatures
used for skirmish games may be a yawn, the big battalions
should be chubbier than the bases usual components. Individuals should be portrayed as such. If it is
a battalion of 600-800+ it is more aesthetic if it could
be a drummer, flag and an officer with 6 dudes with muskets.

This is simply preference as they are all guided by a
rule system that doesn't care how many underpainted dopes
are on a stand. I always grade Oberlindes as having a
grade A+ opinion! I'm sure we are both missing Ian Banks.

Not mentioned in Napoleon of the West's linked article are Van Dyck (IMHO, THE best sculpted 10's "I" have ever seen). closely followed by Editions Brokaw. GHQ are excellent for detail and proportions but too fragile for most wargamers; Bill Marino's 3 lines of 10mm (hope they get picked up by someone), Magister Militrum. Armies in Miniature (AIM- slowly coming back and with new 1/144th WWII vehicles in the pipeline) just to name a few more. Even Warlord with their "Epic Scale" (which is somewhere between 12 and 15mm -13mm they claim) has been offering smaller scale figures. There are more that we might have missed but surely, with all these manufacturers listed in this thread, 10mm/12mm/1-144th scale continues to gain in popularity. A far cry from when Minifigs and GFI introduced N Scale WWII, Vietnam and Moderns to the US and UK markets starting in 1998!

I have painted Irregular 2mm figure blocks with readily distinguishable units and troop types. Naked Gauls that could easily be told apart from the Romans. With individual shields, weapons, etc.

I once did an Epic 40K Space Marine company with full detailing, shoulder unit and rank badges included. Orks with eye and teeth.

I am a dedicated 15mm gamer. For me it is a good scale for the skirmish and small unit battles I most enjoy playing. Plus it is a good scale to model terrain in.

When I want to paint a showstopper figure I reach for 40mm or 54mm! If I'm going to go big, I may as well go big. I can base 40mm in almost the same footprint as 28mm, so why not use them?

We started out at 1/72 but as has been said, if you want a modern battlefield to look credible you can't have a big groundscale. We used 1 =10m. we tried 1/2" to 10m but it made visulisation too hard, the roads became 60m wide so became rediculous.

We then did go down to 1/300 and 1/144. We not being modellers, painting was never a reason to have or have not a model scale.

Our conclusions was 1/300 scale was unacceptable from a practical point of view. We commit Wargames attrocities, we turn weapons to face there targets like the real thing, I know a hidious pervertion. 1/300 tanks with a bit of irritation could be used but for an armoured car it was beyond our tolerance and hence it was deemed unacceptable.
As we were looking to fight more open terrain with longer combat ranges suited to a more balance combied arms action than at 1/72 we addopted a ground scale of 1mm represents 1m. The spacing is a bit tight compared to the 1/72 ground to model scale. However generally at smaller scales we are not fighting in Bocaerge country so its acceptable.

1/144 does have its problems, it's a bit small if you are "skirmishing" in a village, particularly as we have arelatively close spacing of buildings compered to many wargamers, so as to have to have fields of fire more representative of a European village. This does make even 1/144 a bit fiddley but the worst was if you accidentally moved a building it could massively change fields of fire which can seriously spoil a game even when we are being fair. Fortunatelt we found we could fix this issue by basing the houses on village bases (typically 10 to 15 buildings) so relative movement was not possible. Accidentaly moving a village 2mm we have not found a problem. Because of our based vilages we can remove and replace houses if moving the figures is too is to time consuming so again eliminating some issues with smaller scales.

Another issue to consider at smaller cale is terrain if you want it credible. At 1/72 groundscale you don't normally get that many hedges. Foe a swho we did a battle in a village enext to an airfield and that need ed 90ft+ of hedge but that was an outlier though relaistic. At smaller scales after the enclosues act there ends up a LOT of field boundaries many of which are tactically significant. You will need far more trees and hedges as smaller groundscales and despite them being smaller the space they take up does not dimminish.

For infantry we have a quick reference for our real scale 1/144 figures, we change base shape to save having to peer at the figures if they are 4 ft away.

Basing could be an issue at smaller scale. I see 6mm models on 3mm thick bases and to be honest it for me looks so bad I would not do it, but again its a practicality vs astetics issue, We NEVER base vehicle for the sma reason.

So in summary going smaller from a wargames point of view was a no brainer for us but to be fair painting was never an issue for us. There is a practical handelling limit about how small you can go but that will depend on how you play. It does mean in some cases a diffrent appoach to terrain if you use something close to moderen terrain.

In the end its worth a try, you may be pleasantly supprised.

You mileage may vary. Some caveats:

With the primary appeal being a greater number of figures per unit, savings in footprint easily end up in the rear view mirror — if one didn't right from the start assume putting them on a base size common for 15s — and savings in price per unit are at least less than one might naοvely expect.

In recognition of this, some makers of 10s and 6s cast figures in strips. That's the case with all the 3s I've seen, while 2s seem usually (if not indeed always) to come cast in blocks. Separating individual figures ranges from a significant bother to a huge headache, so the increments of strip or block frontage — typically at least twice as wide as a single file of 15s — tend to dictate basing of units. It's sort of like going to grosser "pixel" definition even though theoretical screen resolution is 2 to 5 times as great in each dimension.

Where they can be practically useful is at a low tactical level, achieving a sufficient ratio of frontage to depth to represent quarter-interval columns (if not to distinguish those from close columns). However, not only does that run contrary to the fashion for deploying figures in more than one rank, but some people find such small bases awkward to handle without tweezers.

Movement trays solve that for columns, but lines are still so shallow.
(Also, even the depth savings may be less than one expects, whether from the figures being chunkier in proportion or because cast-on bases are overly generous.)

It's true that less detail is visible from a couple of feet away even if one does paint it, but at the same time some people find it harder even to do a basic paint job on tiny models. Again, multiplying how many one must paint can offset savings per figure.

With some makes of 15s-18s, one can order the exact number of a particular type one wants (albeit probably not specific variations in a set of similar poses). Going smaller, the large batches being sold set a floor on how much you need to buy to get the proportion you want of command to center and flank companies, different kinds of cavalry, and so on. It's like getting the right amount of boxes of 1/72 scale plastics, with the least amount of waste, except those typically come in at a lower price both per box and per figure than do 10s in metal.

The 1/72 vary greatly in accuracy, sculpting, etc., but the good look so much better for being larger than 15s — yet still can fit on base sizes commonly stipulated for 15s. (Three on one inch, two foot files to model scale, calls for some cast-on base trimming and makes some traditional advancing poses more awkward, but a wider 3/8" or 1cm per figure is more usual for Napoleonics and earlier.)

Part of the appeal to me has been how often they are sculpted with more realistic, less exaggerated proportions (whereas many people have the opposite preference). That's still more par for the course with AB 18s, which come in at a much higher price.

Going cheap instead of beautiful — whatever one's personal criteria for the latter — tends I think to be a false economy. Will one even feel motivated to get the "settled for" masses off the waiting pile and on to being painted?

Of course, the impressiveness of the very greater multitude in a batch of smaller ones might be just what does it for you. Horses for courses, and the same collector may well end up on more than one course for the same historical subject.

My above comments are primarily from the perspective of pre-20th-century land battles, more especially the "horse and musket" period. Earlier forces, focused on shock rather than firepower, tend to deeper formations.

Ships being big, naval warfare very commonly calls for very small scales regardless of era (only going smaller still with turbines replacing sail).

The mechanized era, especially from WW2 onward, brings land vehicles to prominence. That's coupled with long shooting ranges and more dispersed infantry formations.

I'm not so bothered as many WW2 miniaturists seem to be by the difference between model and ground scales. I could happily keep playing on a modestly sized table with 1/72 — but for the financial price of models for a game calling for a lot of vehicles. Transporting the kit is also an issue, compounded by fragility of hard plastic models.

A trade off with sturdier metal ones, even going down to 1/100, is weight; but price looms larger to my mind (and remains so when looking at resin models).

1/144 appears presently more for enterprising hunters and collectors than for those of us whose priority is reliable one-stop shopping.

1/285 comes in at a low price — along with buildings and such in the scale, going smaller than which seems less needful than with bigger ones — with impressive selection. Fitting bigger engagements on a smaller table is for me frosting on the cake.

A drawback is that the infantry are harder to discern across the table (camouflaged uniforms hardly helping). It may be that I'll end up finding that enough of a detraction to go up to 1/100, so I shouldn't invest too much in the initial foray.

Tiny figures might also look too odd on thick bases, so with those I might go back to the thinner fashion that in old days prevailed even with big figures.

Turning attention back to Napoleonics, I can see how singly-cast 10s could be good for more units on the table with the old 1:50 to 1:60 battalions to which I sometimes return.

The flip side is that I'm not very interested in the first place in stretching that approach to a corps per side!

The same holds for turning to Old Glory strips for regiments at a 1:4000 ground scale, and on up to brigades or divisions for bigger battles. It seems that sticking with larger figures (from 1/108 to 1/72) doesn't become — for me — an issue until the formalism itself becomes the wrong tool for the job. Changing to a more appropriate system is what really gets things back in balance.

So — for me — it really comes down for this subject to a question of the look. The "bird's eye view" of tiny 2mm has one kind of appeal, the individual splendor of larger figures another kind.