"Starting Over: Scale?" Topic

If you had to start a brand-new historical period today, which scale would you choose?

10 mm.

No change. Still 25/28mm.

25/28mm no matter the period

Would stick with 28mm for SYW

For WWII would switch from 6mm to 10mm

For ACW would switch from 15mm to 10mm

For Napoleonics wou;ld stick with 6mm

For Ancients/Medieval stick to 28mm

Probably 1/72.

It depends on the period and what size units. Modern (1918+) skirmish- 28mm or larger- even 1/35. Renaissance probably 15mm/18mm. As for the rest- probably which available figures caught my eye.

Mass battle 2mm or 6mm. Skirmish/RPG 28mm. But whoever is compelling me to start a new period has to show me the storage space first.

No change. I like 25/28mm.

25/28mm, all my buildings and terrain are in that scale.

1/72nd.

As others have stated; no change 25/28mm.

Horse and musket, either 3mm or 1/72

WWII, either 3mm (with each stand of multiple AFVs representing a company) or 15mm.

10mm

10mm

10-12mm if you"re talking multi-figure stands in a unit.
28+mm if individually mounted figures and less than 40 or so figures being controlled by one person.

Like Dal Gavan, it would depend on the period, rules, and scale of combat. By and large, I like my 25/28 mm figures but could see doing more 15 mm Napoleonics or ACW.

Grelber

I started answering this and it's more complicated than I have the energy for. Basically, I would like to have a single scale for each class of things, like ground troops would all be 25-28mm but spaceships would be of no particular class, as long as the longest was less than about 3 inches.

28mm. I'm getting older and I can see them better.

15mm for games that play battles.
I can afford the space and cost of such armies.

I don't play skirmish games but expect they would be better at 25 or 40mm. I don't have the space to store scenery for bigger figure sizes.

I live in a very ordinary ( I am not wealthy) house with no games room etc. folk poorer than me may often use smaller scales for that reason too.

martin

28mm if I ignore the fact that painting figs is becoming more challenging. They look so good!

Have never done 6mm or 10mm but if I ever got into Napoleonic period I would probably go this direction.

10mm for all battle games, supplemented by 28mm for skirmish. Would avoid the thousands and thousands of 15mm I instead collected.

Depends on the period but in recent years, my new projects have either been 6mm or 15mm. I've got rid of most of my old 20mm stuff.

If forced to pick just once scale for everything, 15mm.

Dal said it very well.
It really depends on the game and the rules. Massed army games would be at 15mm, and skirmish games would bias towards 25, 28, 32mm. For WW II and modern the size would get smaller the more current the game. To my eye I still really like the look of massed armies for Napoleonics, ACW, and earlier using 15mm figures

Don't do much skirmish and most recent projects have been 10mm but still have a 6mm project in the planning stages. Also continue to develop a long-term 15mm project and expanding a 2mm one from a while back.

Definitely nothing larger than 15mm. Don't have the room and much prefer the smaller scales.

Really depends on the intersection of game size, available figures, and the Muse.

Projects I've been working on just this month are 6mm, 15mm, 25mm, and 28mm. Some 20mm's might bubble back up anytime as well.

1/72 for most things. Maybe 10mm for a few others. Having printers means I can indulge my wishes too.

Thanks.

John

Most likely 15mm for battle, 28+mm for skirmish. Though 6mm is an option for the former, and I'm anyway assuming ground combat rather than naval or aerial.

It wasn't a full restart, but about 7-8 years ago I decided I had way too much space invested in armies I rarely used and I needed to trim down. A lot of my older projects in larger scales got traded away.

Going forward all new projects have to fit on a single tray which fits in a 4L RUB. Armies only get allocated an additional tray only once the current tray is full of entirely completed models and proves to be one I use on the regular.

This makes 15/18mm my default for most skirmish and battle games. Small enough for easy storage of even fairly large armies, allows compact play areas, and relatively quick assembly and painting. Big enough for a bit of detail and fine for things up to modern (and post-modern) periods with only a few vehicles per side.

6/8mm is only for mass battle rules featuring lots of vehicles, mostly moderns (and sci-fi), since the attraction of these genres is the AFVs and possibly even aircraft, stompy monsters and robots. Anything much larger than 6mm is too big to have lots of vehicles (or any aircraft at all) on the table and still look sensible. Anything smaller than 6mm and infantry becomes indistinguishable blobs and tanks lose most of their interesting details, at which point you might as well play with wooden blocks and save the hassle of painting.

28/32mm only if there's a rule set for very small skirmish games with a character focus (no more than 6-12 mostly unique figures for a whole team; Sword Weirdos, Broken Legions, Devilry Afoot, En Garde, etc). These games are the sort that take well to extensive converting and competitive level painting when I want to go all out and just a few figures is worth it, but 15mm and below is simply too small to support that. However, no more than would fit in roughly a quarter of a 4L RUB box, so absolutely max of around 2 dozen figures of this scale, and probably no more than about 10.

The only exceptions to these scale rules are gods and ships. I like playing mythohistorical games like Of Gods and Mortals, so having an appropriate god(ess) or three for historical periods is fun, and I am willing to do out-of-normal scale, such as 40, 54, or even 75mm figures for those. Ship games (including air and space ships) are sort of scale-less to begin with.

So doing a new force would start with which collection of rule sets I want to use. That'd decide whether I was likely to do primarily 15mm for all rules, or a primarily 6mm army with a smaller amount of 15mm for more skirmish-oriented games. After that maybe some 28/32mm only if there's a period-appropriate characterful warband level set of rules I really like.

If you had to start a brand-new historical period today, which scale would you choose?

It would depend a lot on the period and figure availability.

My most recent new project is TYW for which I used 10mm. It gives the massed look the period needs.

Three other periods I've been considering, Russo Japanese War, SCW and Maximillian in Mexico 10mm would be the choice. Any small skirmish type project 28mm would be the chosen option.

10mm because the figures are small and relatively cheap to buy en masse, but also because they are large enough to look like individual human beings for skirmish games, and for my old eyes to see them clearly – I can't do 6mm any more.

25mm, 28mm, 30mm, 15mm, 6mm, 1:144, 1:72, and 1:12.

Why change?

15mm. It seems a happy medium between "can't see detail" and "too much detail."

I keep choosing 15mm for new periods of land warfare, 1:200 for aerial warfare, and 1:2400/1:1200/1:600 for naval warfare, so I imagine I would do that again.

I do own a few other scales, but for specific projects using specific lines of miniatures I found irresistible, and only when I could find a way to avoid duplicate terrain sets. I have land gaming terrain in 1/300 and 15mm, and a single set of scale-agnostic naval shorelines with modular building sets in 1:2400, 1:1200, and 1:600 scale; if I can't make a new-to-me scale work with one of these, I'm not getting into it. Terrain takes up a lot of time and space.

- Ix

1/72 plastic figures. I love these plastic figures. So much variety, so affordable. Cheers!

still 15mm

I have a lot of projects. For the most part they are all in 28mm. Most of those are intended for something Daniel Merseyish, so semi skirmish. I'm actually considering a future massed battle project and when/if I do it I expect it will be in 15mm, which is a scale I abandoned a decade ago. Change is good.

Depends on the period but mostly 15mm.

I remember when I got started in this hobby, I said I would never do 25mm because of the expense and the gaming/storage space. Now I do three periods in 28mm and two in 15mm. Something went horribly wrong. I will definitely get out of one of the 28mm periods.

If I do get into a new period it would probably be 15mm ECW regimental.