Meassuring in inches or cm for different miniature size?

[Thomaston]

I’ve been reading several rules lately, and most of them suggests using ‘inches’ for 25mm/28mm and ‘cm’ for 15mm. Does anyone else think this is unnecessary?

TLDR:

Using ‘inches’ to measure 28mm games translate to move/run pace of walk/jog.

Using ‘inches’ to measure 15mm games translate to move/run pace of jog/sprint.

 

The way I see it using 15mm with ‘inches’ makes range look more realistic. Unless it’s absolutely important to play on an area relative to the miniatures I see no reason rules should suggest a change in measuring unit.

Kind of ranty and I’ve been thinking way too much into this, but most games have humans moving at 6″ or 6x the height of the miniatures. Assuming average human height of 1.8m, its a distance of roughly 11m. Lets say the average human adult walks at 1.3m/s that means a game turn is around 8.5s. For games that allow the models to run at twice the speed of normal move, 12″, that’s moving roughly 22m in 8.5s or a 10min-mile pace. Not that fast of a run.

Because most rules allows 6″ movement followed by shooting its reasonable the time span is longer than 8.5s, the actual running pace is even slower.

Deciding to use 15mm, most rules suggests using cm for measurements maintaining the span of time a turn is assumed to take place in. But what if I use inches with 15mm as well? 1″ is about 1.7x 15mm so… in a turn a 15mm dude would move a little under 20m or run a little over 35m. Keeping with the same 8.5s turn, that translate to roughly an 11min-mile, still a jog for standard movement, but its bellievable to still shoot something at the end of a short jog. The running pace turns out to be around 6min-mile and looks a lot more realistic if you can’t shoot after the sprint. Using ‘inches’ with 15mm miniature looks a lot more reasonable.

So… I don’t get why even change from measuring in inches to cm if 15mm miniatures are used. Why does this matter? No idea, like I said I’ve been thinking too much about this.

[Not Connard Sage]

I was an engineer, I use millimetres for everything 🙂

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Thomaston]

Yeah, weird that. Wargames is the only time I even use inche. Now you got me thinking about millimeters.

[John D Salt]

It makes my flesh creep to hear people talking about moves and ranges in inches, centimetres or millimetres. I always use the relevant real-life unit, so metres, yards, paces, cables, nautical miles or whatever is appropriate to the scale of the game being played.

Of course there are some wargames rules that do not have a defined ground scale. I do not play with those rules.

All the best,

John.

[Andrew Beasley]

Playing mainly fantasy games (or really abstract games) I’ve often used rules designed for 28mm+ figures and done the classic ‘change cm for inch’ modification.

For me this works well as ranges, board size and time (in turns) to cross the board fits well with the space I have.

As I do not need to represent a real battle in ground scale, time or number of troops I’m happy over this 🙂

When I did use historical figures I was always baffled by the figure scale being different to the vertical scale being different to the ground scale and difference in real time vs historic time. It was made worse by the IGOUGO structure of most rules that throws out time and I found the whole structure distracting from the game TBH – it seemed a total fudge that a tank could move 6 inches in a turn but only had a range of 18 inches and the turn was 1 minute in ‘real time’ style of restrictions.

For me this level of accuracy is not needed in my games but others enjoy it so if it adds to their fun I’ll live with it 🙂 (but not on my table).

[Mike Headden]

I convert measurements quoted in inches to mm for my own games. Since I only rarely play with others these days it means movement in my games are largely either in mm or hexes (which I also measure in mm).

I have no idea why anyone is still using Imperial measurements, tbh.

My kids have no concept of what a distance in feet and inches represents. No wonder the hobby is greying 😀

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[MartinR]

Like John, I prefer to play to an actual ground scale. The figures are almost always vastly bigger than the ground scale, so the units of measurement are irrelevant. These days most of my units of measurement are hexes or squares though.

When using rulers I prefer inches as they are less fiddly than mm.

The only actual 1:1 scale games I’ve played are 6mm with a 1/300th ground scale. Which means one foot equals 100 yards, ideal for company level infantry actions in WW2. But I usually use 15mm for that stuff now, as me eyesight isn’t good enough any more.

 

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[Not Connard Sage]

John D Salt wrote:

It makes my flesh creep to hear people talking about moves and ranges in inches, centimetres or millimetres. I always use the relevant real-life unit, so metres, yards, paces, cables, nautical miles or whatever is appropriate to the scale of the game being played. Of course there are some wargames rules that do not have a defined ground scale. I do not play with those rules. All the best, John.

The problem with wargaming is, it’s all a fudge. If you get one aspect of time/space/motion ‘accurate’ something else flies out of the window.

Like all gamers of a certain age, I used to obsess about it too. Until the turn of the century, when I had a Damascene moment, and realised…it didn’t matter.

Happiness reigned 🙂

 

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Roger Calderbank]

Thomaston, i see that you considered measurements in terms of how far an individual could walk/jog/sprint. That suggests the rules you are looking at are for small-scale skirmishes. I wonder if the rule writers assumed that most people would play them with 28mm figures, and only those with limited space would consider 15mm. As Andrew notes, for many of us table size will be a major factor in determining the unit of measurement, probably a more significant one than figure size.

I mostly play ‘big battle’ games, and by far the majority of the ones I play either use grids/area movement, or measure in ‘basewidths’. Such games readily scale to the size of figures and the space available. For games using basewidths, I have appropriate measurement sticks, and don’t translate the measurements back into inches/mm/angstroms/parsecs. If I use rules using inches or cm, they become just another ‘measurement unit’. If I need to, I can adjust the measurement to whatever suits me.

I can see the appeal of accurate measurements, but I am not troubled by the fudge involved in grid/basewidth measurement. It would certainly complicate my games to measure in paces, and have different measurement sticks for different armies because they used a different pace length.

RogerC

[Tony Hughes]

Much prefer proper ground scale units and often have scale rules marked at appropriate distances to make play quicker & easier. Doesn’t really bother me that much using ‘table’ units but it does seem daft to say things like “you are 2 inches out of range” or “cavalry can only move 12 inches”, sort of ruins the effect !!

Even though I’m 70+ all my education from secondary on was metric here in the UK but coming from a family mostly in the building trade I got used to using both systems (anyone remember the ‘metric’ foot for sizing timber ?) side by side.

 

[Patrice]

I don’t think that a relation between human height and figures movement is important at all. What’s needed is a relation between movement and shooting ranges (because you need to know the number of times you can shoot at an approaching foe).

For large battles with big units where one figure represents 20 or perhaps 40 soldiers etc. the movement and shooting ranges also need to be in relation with the length of a cohort or battalion on the ground. For 1:1 skirmish as I like it, the size of a gaming table is always smaller than the real world 🙂 so for better immersion in the action I’m fine with all ranges (movement and shooting) strongly reduced, I think it’s more realistic that the enemy is still out of shooting range when you first see them at the other end of the table. Then, cm or inches? You can use what’s the more practical to play with the ruleset you’ve choosen.

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[Thomaston]

@Andrew Beasley @Patrice

I tried so hard not to mention weapon range. So many games uses 6″ move, 24″ standard weapon range…

 

@Not Connard Sage

I agree, embrace the fudge.

I have my own issue with actual ground scale and using ‘meters’. I can’t imagine a unit of infantry or vehicle always being able to move at a specific speed every time through each type of terrain. Friction, command and control and all that made me move away from using any measurements at all. I like Crossfire’s solution or a few other games where I simply nominate a terrain feature and do a check to see if they made it there without interruption. I don’t care if my miniature troops get there by crawling, walking or running, I only need to know if they got shot along the way.

 

@Roger Calderbank

Yep, the rules were all skirmish rules. I get the table size argument, but most of these rules gave the table size for 28mm but not a recommended size for 15mm, only offering change in measuring unit. Its weird to me with 15mm being over half the size of 28mm but ‘cm’ is recommended for it skewing the ground scale from 28mm even more. It could have been something as simple half all measurements which would give a closer approximatoin of the reduced size but no ‘cm’ was recommended. Maybe its for ease of maths, no need to half the numbers? But like I saw in the original post keeping all measurment units the same seems more representative.

I was going to mention ASOBH measuring sticks, but wanted to keep it short.

[Mike]

Patrice wrote:

What’s needed is a relation between movement and shooting ranges (because you need to know the number of times you can shoot at an approaching foe).

This is important for me too.

[Don Glewwe]

My opinion (which -if past performance holds true to form- will end the conversation) is that the key facet of the issue is that the relationship between the figure size and the distances (both movement and weapon range) should ‘look right’, i.e.: Make visual sense to the player(s).  Numbers-wise, this means that figure and ground scale should be as close to the same as possible.

The reason = The purpose of the miniatures (both figures and their usually-matched-scale terrain) on the table* is to provide players with information on the units and their place in the battlefield by means of physical modeling/representation.  “That guy/group/thing is a whatsit, and it’s around that far from the thingamajig.”  The less mental/mathematical gymnastics players are forced to do in order to translate that information into meaningful gaming data that can aid/influence the decisions they have to make, the better.

While this applies most effectively to games where one figure = one unit, its value in large, block-formation games is just as great – having lots of 3 or 6mm figures to represent a unit of hundreds of men does a better job in communicating what it is than a stand with 4 or 6 28mm figures.

 

* related to the goal of modeling the action in a game – as a lifelong (and former professional) model builder there are few ahead of me in the line to crouch down to look closely at a gorgeous model…but…gaming has a different focus/goal, and I tend to lean into that when I’m building something for the tabletop.

[Mr. Average]

When rescaling for different table sizes it’s often convenient to do this, I think, but only when it’s a kind of “fudged” ground scale. Oddly, when scaling down a 6mm game for 3mm, I do the reverse and switch 5cm for 1”.

[Thomaston]

@Mr. Average

But that makes perfect sense.

[Paint it Pink]

Don Glewwe wrote:

My opinion (which -if past performance holds true to form- will end the conversation) is that the key facet of the issue is that the relationship between the figure size and the distances (both movement and weapon range) should ‘look right’, i.e.: Make visual sense to the player(s). Numbers-wise, this means that figure and ground scale should be as close to the same as possible.

I agree, mostly. I have caveats… It depends on what you want to achieve.

Practicality means that fudges will be taken, if only because if they’re done right (big if), then having a mismatch between the ground-scale and the figure size can often disappear.

For example, 1/300th vehicles using 1/1000th ground-scale will often go unnoticed. As will 15mm figures using 1/300th ground-scale; if one fudges building sizes, which is a given because there are few absolutely accurate buildings on the market (as an example even HO model railroad building are under-scale).

Life is all about compromises, and we all have different degrees of what an acceptable compromise looks like.

As for the inch versus cms thing, they’re just tools that provide useful shortcuts for play.

One is good, more is better
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[Ivan Sorensen]

In my experience, using 28/32mm ranges with 15mm figures looks and feels pretty good in skirmish games, so that is what I usually suggest.

For smaller scales than 15s, I used to include the suggestion of using cm instead, but these days I think I prefer to just halve them if you want them reduced. Honestly the main advantage is that you also get to shrink the table space and it can be kinda nice to sit down over a 2×2 foot table.

I will note if the main audience was not anglo’s, I would put all distances in centimetres to begin with, but that isnt financially viable.

[Not Connard Sage]

Ivan Sorensen wrote:

I will note if the main audience was not anglo’s, I would put all distances in centimetres to begin with, but that isnt financially viable.

 

Most ‘Anglos’ are perfectly OK with SI units.

It’s Americans that don’t do metric…9

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Mr. Average]

Contrary to popular belief, Americans are all taught and know the Metric system, we simply prefer US/Customary units for most uses because we find them easier to estimate with, and to divide into set units because of the interoperability of the numbers 12 and 16 in whole divisibles. Says the builder, who has to do this a lot. 😀

Regardless, I’ve seen some really handy rules that establish “units” and leave it to you to select it. Those tend to be effectively scaleless games though. Very interestingly, I have just seen that Litko in the USA makes scaled rulers in 1/2, 3/4, 1/3 inches, marked as whole units, so you can instantly scale up or down by a factor of 1.5, 2 and 3. Super neat and I’m thinking of picking them up for this very purpose!

[Ivan Sorensen]

Three quarter inches would be quite cool actually. Shrink the table space a little bit without getting too fiddly.

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