"Your 1st Scale?" Topic

Airfix sets were my first armies.

What he said.

My first sets were 30mm nominal flats (in metal and casein) but it would really be better to say Not to Scale.

x42

I started with 1:1200 naval miniatures, so I had a clearcut response to pick.

The situation is murkier if I consider my second scale. When our local group transitioned to Napoleonics we used OO/HO Airfix and 25mm Scrubys. They were perfectly compatible with each other, and we regarded them as the same scale in those days. Then 25mm became 1:64 (S gauge, think early Minifigs). A few years later it was supersized as 28MM – 1:56 to some, and 1:48 to others – as the industry followed Hinchcliffe's lead and measured ground to eye, rather than ground to top of the head. Now, of course, we have 28mm and "heroic 28mm", many of which are bigger than the old 30mm figures. I have all these figures still represented in my Napoleonic armies. No one complains when the older Scruby guard troops show up as reinforcements to the Perrys on the game table, though.

It is ironic that OO/HO is categorized as 20mm now.

Rick

Marx toy soldiers followed by Airfix sets and Rocco tanks.

Jim

My first toy soldiers were the Fort Apache and Castle play sets, with the plastic soldiers. And then the army men in different colors, green for Americans, grey for Germans and so on. What scale were they?

Real wargames with proper rules? HO/OO plastics.

My very first miniatures wargame was played with 25mm Prince August figures, using homebrewed rules, but we quickly switched to Warhammer using the official 28mm figures.

Started 1953 in Southern Bavaria. German highly detailed paper mache @ 1/35 scale American Indians and Cowboys dad picked up at the PX.

I will go with the first miniatures I both painted AND gamed with— which were 10mm, so not on the list.

If you're going with first ever painted, that would be 25mm Grenadier fantasy.

If you're going with first ever "played" with (without rules), that would be some plastic toy soldiers based on the guards at Buckingham Palace which my sister brought back from a trip to England when she was 11 and I was 9.

If you're going with first ever played with using actual, written miniatures rules (at least of a sort), but not painted, that would probably be my BattleMasters game, or Space Hulk 2e… so "heroic" 28mm I suppose.

Proper wargaming – true 25mm (Minifigs), very quickly supplemented by 20mm since I had all the Airfix figures and vehicles for WWII games.

And 1/300th, because I liked the look of them.

First and still use them, 1:72 OO/HO. Plastic Soldier Review is therefore one of my favorite sites. (after TMP of course)

Nice catch!

I hate to think what I'd owe PSR if they charged by the hour for viewing!

Like Zulupaul – Airfix; had the Marx Fort Apache set as well

Whatever scale Airfix minis are/were.

Airfix 1/72 for about 6-years, then moved onto 25mm in my teens, nowadays 28mm+.

Didn't everybody start with Airfix ? If they were old enough, anyway …

So I'd have to mash 1/72, 1/76, 1/87 and 20mm OO/HO together since my first models were a mishmash of Airfix, Roco Minitanks and Hasegawa (which I pinched from my brother)

Airfix 1/72

My dad showed me how to paint with 54mm AWI, and I was playing games with 54mm WW2 Americans and Germans before that, and the latter with rules my brothers and I made up as well.