"Is 54mm a viable scale for Sci-Fi skirmish games." Topic

This question has been bugging me for ages as I've always fancied having a go at sculpting and releasing some 54mm scale figures.
I know there has been Inquisitor over the last few years but what else is out there?
Is there a huge demand out there waiting to be satisfied?
What do you guys (and gals) think?

Cheers – Simon from Pig Iron

I liked Inquisitor.

I thought that the figures were really neat and the idea was good. Some of the things about the rules I wasn't fond of, like the weapon range chart, but overall I thought it was pretty good.

Having said that I don't really play it that much anymore and we eventually, for terrain reasons, switched over to playing it in 28mm.

Other than Inquisiotr, I think that the only things available in that scale would be 54mm plastic astronauts, and a few sets of rather hokey (but fun looking, for all that) aliens.

You could probably play a few games where the astronauts found the moon to be inhabited, but that's about it.

Tough choice, all my terrain is for 28mm and 15mm now, except for my ~54mm plastic scuba divers. I don't think I'd buy 54mm figures because I'd have to come up with all the terrain as well. And the size — It'd take a lot of space for a game. I'd have to pass on this.

If you have the space and sufficent scenery (skirmish gaming is very "scenic heavy") you can game in any scale.

But GW tried it and even with their resources and fan base could not pull it off as a viable business range. Inquisitor was agreat game to play, but like most people we bought a couple of the figures for display and went straight on to game it with converted 40K figures and scenry.

Erm, GW failed to make Inquisitor a game with a stable support and fanbase, but aren't most of their non-core games pretty much one-trick-ponies? (no GW rant whatsoever, just an observation. Phew)

A "one trick pony" is something that can only accomplish a single thing. In a rodeo, you'd have a pony that can do a trick. Because it never does anything new, the lack of substance involved in it's training/presentation, etc., becomes apparent. Most of GW's non-core games are actually in-depth and substantial. Especially when compared to WFB & 40k.

I'd say a lot of GW's non-core games were marketted as a sinlge release. They tried to get as many sales as possible as quickly as possible and then relegated it to a part of the company that requires less resources. In some ways, this has been incredibly successful. Bloodbowl, for example, currently has more players than any other time since it's release almost 20 years ago. Mordheim currently has 61 PDF files for free download as support for the game.

I don't think they are "one trick ponies" or unsupported. I am generally not a GW fan, but I must admit that their Specialist Games range has always done a superb job.

As for the actual topic — 54mm is become more and more popular. People are also getting into 40mm stuff. Skirmish with a handful of figures per side is what would work. Weapon ranges become a non-issue (at 1/35 scale, rifles should have no range limits and pistols should be fairly high). I think most skirmish rules would transfer to 54mm fairly well.

Note, however, that I'm not interested in starting that scale. i finally got back into 28mm and like to stick to 6mm and 1/72 plastics. There's really no garauntee making 54mm sci-fi miniatures would be profitable. What do they say about the gaming industry? It's a great way to turn a large pile of money into a smaller pile of money.

It's taken me since the release of the inquisitor rules (5 years?) to make my own figures, either Preiser 1/32nd scale figures, Gw Inquisitor (very fragile), airfix multipose etc. They are more Near future, Travelleresque than power armoured monstrosities. Terrain is hard to come by. In short one has to be very creative with what little is out there. I'm looking for a company to revolutionize things, but I don't think it is viable. Although there is a community out there!

Well there are people that fight regular historical battles with 54mm figures. Terrain is the biggest problem, and with a skirmish game the terrain has to be more true to scale than otherwise.

My group has been playing Inquisitor in 54mm off and on since it first came out and we are currently wrapping up our first full-blown Inquisitor campaign, which has run for about 6 months now.

One of the most common comments we hear is that it's hard to find terrain for 54mm when playing Inquisitor. However, we've been pleased to find that a very large percentage of our exiting 28mm terrain works just fine for 54mm. Hills, trees, roads, craters, oil drum stacks, etc work just fine. Most of our other buildings and industrial terrain also translates quite well to 54mm. Sometimes you have to be a little creative about how to stage the scenery, but it's less problematic than most people might think.

We play Inquisitor off ans on for years.
I am going to do a Inquisitor style game with The Fantasy Trip.
I will be using 54mm fantasy minis by Bronze age.
Not shure if I want to hex base the minis or stay with round.

link

Here are some additional 54mm Sci-Fi figures:

link

I've heard that there will some additional figures released shortly.

I like 54mm alot – but not for gaming – I think it tends to be too large. Gladiators in 54mm work neat because you don't need a ton of space for the arena floor – but as far as sci-fi skirmish games, I much prefer 28mm personally. Lots of terrain options here – other set of fill-in minis so it gives a better chance for expansion from the gamers point of view.

I really loved the Inquisitor scale models, however – they were a blast to paint – but playing inquisitor in 28mm seemed to be more fun.