"6mm Ancients?" Topic

This is sort of just a post getting some reassurance. I'm looking to play whatever ancients game (looks like either DBM or A or both) in 6mm for the following reasons: I don't have the cash for larger, they seem to look fun enough to me, and I'm a terrible painter so this would minimalize painting for me (gimme a break, I'm just a beginner) Any thoughts on this? How it looks, what are good manufacturers (I've heard many good things about Baccus) etc.?
--battlehappy--

Hi,

Just got into this scale for the first time myself. I've sent away for some Baccus and I await delivery with baited breath. As to how it looks, try a Yahoo search on "6mm wargaming". You should find a load of sites, picures aplenty and several figure reviews/rule amendments. You should also visit the Baccus site and check out his links. I've spoken and emailed Peter and he is a real nice guy...very helpful.

Baccus makes some pretty good looking figures. I like 10mm better for two reasons.

They are easier to paint than 6's. The 6's are just too small sometimes. I have done romans and celts and the 10mm figs are easier to see but don't take much longer, plus they are bigger figures so, I think, they look better on the table.

Stability. The 6's that I have dealt with have been very fragile. Not all of the figures are, the romans were pretty stable but the celtic slingers and other skirmiser types broke off at the legs almost as soon as you looked at them. I had a difficult time painting them much less gaming with them without breaking them. 10mm figs seem a lot less breakable. I have done 10mm celts in the past from AIM and they seem very sturdy, not 15mm fig sturdy but a LOT more sturdy than the 6mm ones. Come to think of it they are a lot sturdier than some of the 15mm figs from Xyston as the shields almost always fall off with the slightest mistreatment.

So as far as your question goes I would go with AIM 10mm figs. And as far as rules go I would go with the ancients rules for warmaster. It is a fun, quick and easy to learn system. I don't like some of the rules (pike for instance) but overall it is a very good system.

Just my thoughts.

I have some Baccus 6mm ECW figures and love them. If his ancients are near as good they would look very well on the table top.

6mm are fast and easy to paint (really they are, just prime dark and dry brush on the colours), some what cheaper than larger scale (although if you base 6mm to 25mm ground scale that advantage goes away fast), and best of all they really make a game look like a massed battle, check out Pete's photos on the Baccus web site for examples.

There are several active groups for 6mm on Yahoo, most seem more involved with Moderns, but Ancients or even gasp Fantasy are welcome too. 6mm isn't for everyone but it can be fun.

In fair disclosure I also have some 10mm Warmaster figs and theay are quite nice, ans I have heard that some nutters even do 2mm!

DBA is not bad set of rules, if you decide to pursue it the DBA yahoo group and the www.fanaticus.org website are almost essentials for learning how decipher the language of Phil Barker. Friendly folks despite what the Warhammer folks say about 'em.

I suppose you could even do WAB in 6mm, although figuring out a basing convention that kept the costs down could take a bit. Multiple strips on a standard 20mm square base would look great, but Ithink the cost would come close to 25mm.

Depends how good a painter you are. Although 6mm are quickest and Baccus are good figures, I find them frustratingly small, and prefer 10mm. As for rules, if you base for DBA/M, you can also play Armati, which is , in my opinion, a much better starter set.

John

6mm is waaay cool!

only problem: you wont find any other players. but if you are willing to do all the armies (which i happily do all the time): great thing!

i really love 6mm!

felix

I am shifting all my miniatures to 6 mm from 25 mm.

Gracias,
Glenn

Just a quick note - if you decide to look at 10mm, Pendraken also has an excellent ancients and middle ages range, and is slowly adding to it.

Christopher

I am also a recent 6mm fan - but Pictors point about stability is true. Baccus usually comes out best for that as they are cast on sturdy bases but Adlers and H&R do get broken from time to time.

Here's your reassurance - 6mm ancients are fantastic, for a lot of reasons. :-)

An army of 6mm minis based en masse on 15mm or 25mm size bases actually looks like an army instead of a skirmish line. Put two of them on the table and it looks like a battle instead of a minor riot. Once you get the knack of it (which I am still working on), they really do paint up more quickly and easily than larger scale figures. The better figures have enough detail sculpted in to make painting to a good standard relatively easy.

And yes, they are less expensive (even when used en masee, although less so), but that's just a side benefit to the tremendous visual appeal they offer. When I ran the numbers on my Seleucids and Romans, I found that the armies cost about 25-30% less than comparable Essex 15mm minis, and that's with 48 phalangites (or 36 legionaries or 20+ Cavalry or ~20 skirmishers etc.) on a 25mm sized stand.

As to manufacturers, I've messed around with H&R, Irregular, and Baccus figs, and I prefer Baccus hands down. some people swear by the H&R minis, but they weren't for me. Irregular has a huge range, and their infantry and scenics can be nice, but I don't care for their cavalry. Baccus figures are by far the most detailed, but his range is not yet as large as the other manufacturers. Fortunately, most Baccus figs seem to look alright with most Irregulars (if not on the same base), so you can fill in the gaps with those until new Baccus figs become available.

Now - if I can only get done moving house so I can get back to the important things in life ... painting those 600 phalangites! :-)

Doug

Oh - almost forgot the subject of rules ... DBA seems to me to be a fun _game_ but not much of a _wargame_. It just feels too abstract and random to me. DBM is a bit better, but (in my opinion) suffers from having the same basic mechanisms as DBA, and from a pervasive tournament gamer mentality. Armati is not bad at all, and a new edition is supposed to be out soon (maybe even now?), and I would recommend it over DBx any day. However, my personal preference for ancients massed combat is Might of Arms by Bob Bryant - a great balance of playability and realism, with elegant game mechanics, in a game that produces believable results. what more could you want? Oh yes - it's also inexpensive. :-) Give it a whirl ... almost all of the people who do never look back.

Doug

I just ordered two armies in 25mm basing for DBA from Peter at Baccus. The total came to $70 USD US ( 44 pounds ) . It became instantly obvious that the price savings is gone if you go for this options ( 25mm basing ) but it looks really cool from the pics.
I think from here on out I'm going to base in 15mm scale, but do what Arnstein Orten suggests and build quadruple the bases ( so you can play DBA or DBM. ) His site, which really influenced me to go 6mm is: folk.uio.no/arnsteio/6mm/.
Peter ( Baccus ) is really great, and unless you're an utter boor ( which I doubt ) you'll find him wonderful to deal with.
( Side note to Dave: LMAO….you Ancients guys…..I dunno…LOL. As an aside I have WAB, and am very conversant with the Warhammer way of doing things ( obviously ) . I think I'll take up your challenge and figure a way to base WAB in 6mm….( and keep costs down.( grin ) ) Well then, TTFN! )

Chuck

On the basing regime for 6mm - As I understand things, the current "way of basing" is 15mm equivalent i.e. you take the DBA/M figure numbers, multiply them by four and stick that number on a standard DBA/M 15mm base making it a
6mm @ 8-16 per element army. OTOH I know from speaking to Peter at Baccus that some of you lottery millionaires are now basing eight times the 15mm figure numbers on a 25mm base or 6mm @ 16-32 per element.

I worked this out for a DBM hoplite army of 100 Sp(S/O/I)and I figure that 3200 6mm hoplites may look great but isn't the price a bit heavy - both for the wallet and the eyesight?

Does anyone have any comments or thoughts on the way this is likely to go - I'm kind of alarmed that 6mm @ 16 per element could be another Betamax and I want to make sure my basing matches that of the most common standard.

Most people I know of who play DBA in 6 mm use the same base sizes as 15 mm figures, with 4 times as many 6 mm figures on. This is a good way to do things - as well as being the way DBA version 2 recommends. (It is also the way I started ancients.) I do not think that this is will be the "Betamax" of 6 mm DBA basing conventions.

I find 6 mm about the easiest and quickest scale to paint. This is because you don't put too much detail on. Remember to explore the Baccus 6 mm site for Pete Berry's excellent painting guides. I don't think he does an ancient one, but the Napoleonic and Marlburian ones give a good description of the techniques.

At the moment one of my painting projects is a DBA army using 6 mm figures on bases for 25 mm figures. Descriptions of the number of figures etc for the different types of elements are on the Baccus 6 mm website. So far I have done 3 elements. The worked out cheaper than using nearly all 25 mm figures would be and they took less time to paint than 3 elements of 25 mm figures. This option looks very good in my opinion, but is unlikely to be the main one used for 6 mm.

Thanks everyone for responding! 6mm sounds like my kind of thing, and I am totally looking forward to buying and painting my army now. And as for you, richtschuetze, I think I might do the same thing, I always like having LOTS o' minis about :)
--battlehappy--

Great series of posts.

As this thread seems to be about to drop off the front page and enter the TMP 'Twilight Zone', I thought I's just add a bit about my take on basing.

Wargamers tend to do what they are told. Sorry, but it's true. When I started doing the Ancients ranges, DBA said 6mm were based on their own convention of effectively half the width of a 15mm elment and one rank deep. And that is just how people used them. I spent hours telling people how cool they would look if they doubled numbers and based on 15mmGS, but I was facing an uphill strugge.

Now DBA 2.0 says use the 15mm standard and by golly, that is what people do!

I've always been a bit of a rebel, so I'm not scared to think laterally - who else but a fool or a visionary (or a visionary fool) would start a 6mm company? So now that people are happy with 15mmGS I have suggested the next logical step, the 25mmGS armies.

In terms of popularity, 15mmGS is still the most popular, but 25mmGS armies are growing strongly and they now account for 20% of all sales and that trend is moving upwards.

The great thing about this scale is that there are no set rules or ideas. We can make our own. Your deciding factor my be time, money, appearance or practicality. It should not be what is stated 'in the rules', as 99% of rules tack 6mm on as an aferthought so the writers have little experience to go on.

And finally, it's been wonderful to have such a long and positive thread without some moron pushing in and having a laugh about how difficult it is to paint eyeballs on 6mm figures...

Cheers

Peter Berry

Baccus 6mm

www.baccus6mm.com

Mr. Berry, can you divulge your plans for basing in your forthcoming rulesets, or are they still covered by the Official Secrets Act?

Speaking personally I would really like to see a dedicated 6mm set of rules with 20mm square basing for everything and allowing a 3'x2' table as an optimum size. This would allow us "pushed for space" gamers to play something other than DBA for a change and square elements are both easy to store and convenient to use.

Since this mornings news tells us that the average UK home size has shrunk by 30% in the last 80 years I can see a big future in small scale wargaming...

No secret...well, not much of one anyway.

The 'standard' size we are working to is a 60mm x 30mm base. The clever bit is that there is no fixed basing scheme provided both sides are based the sameway.

All measurements will be done in 'Base Widths' and 'Base Depths'. No fixed cm or inch measurements, just what suits you and your style of basing.

One person is using 80mm wide elements and is talking of 120mm wide...

Does that help

Cheers

Peter

Bob,

In real terms, except in the lawyers' rules like DBx, it doesn't really matter what base depths you use. It is therefore perfectly reasonable to take some of the looser sets (Shako, F&F and derivations, even PoW) and do everything on 20mm square bases and then reduce all move/fire/command distances proportionately so that you can fit on a small table. So, you might have to paint and base both armies, but if you are looking for `minigames' rather than the massed effect and use 6mm, then that is not going to hurt either the pocket or the painting time much - and it might be catching. Some years ago, I watched a group doing just this with `In the Grand Manner' (designed for 28mm?) and it worked just fine. I now wish that I had done this years ago with my ACW for F&F - had I done so, I might have fought Gettysburg more than once.

John

milesissimi, I'm glad my humble line of questioning has given you joy, it's been my pleasure being enlightened by such well-spoken and educated individuals. As for painting eyes on the 6mm.. it's really easy.. just train your small pets (i.e. mice, lizards, etc.) to do the work for you. It's not that small to them! HAHAH
err.. right
Good show fellows, I appreciate all the advice!
--battlehappy--

I think that if you are going to play DBM, base on the 15mm convention. If you are a DBA player (and people often seem to be one or the other), I would definitely go 25mm basing--you only have 12 elements, so you might as well make them count.

I am beginning to investigate 6mm ancients, this video provided a view of my current basing systems;
youtu.be/_R35tM-35IQ
This is my 3rd attempt and i feel i may have hit a sweet spot. I also picked up some nice 1:1000 roman building from Brigade Models which i am painting up now, which look rather nice.
link
I feel that 6mm ancients does provide a unique experience and is well worth investigating. Rules is an issue however.

I have developed sets of rules specifically for 6mm ancients – Legio VI. They are available as free downloads from my website at legio-wargames.com Simon

I love 6mm and think they look great in mass but I hating painting them. That pretty much ends if for me.