Overall look

[Mike]

On another topic I was asking why ancients, as it is something that has never really appealed to me.
One of the common replies was the pretty factor.

But then here is my problem with that.
Individual models in say 15mm or 28mm can indeed be very pretty.
More so than say 6mm or 2mm.
But those smaller ‘scales’ will create an overall better looking army with potentially hundreds of figures as opposed to dozens.

So for you, what is the balance between a few figures representing hundreds and hundreds actually being hundreds, which is better to look at, the army that is 1:1 but less detail per figure, or the better detailed model but looks less like an army?

[Ruarigh]

I far and away prefer armies that look like armies. I am not a fan of the large 28mm games you see at shows where there is barely room to move. When we put on our Towton project, our aim was to give the impression of two large armies. I was happy with the outcome as seen in the photo below.

Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

https://roderickdale.co.uk/
https://emidsvikings.ac.uk/

[Mike]

Also, what matters more to you, the game or the look?

[A man without minis]

Definitely the game. I’m lousy at painting so I go with quickie jobs on small figures (primarily 2mm or 3mm nowadays). Terrain is very basic and meant to be representational rather than realistic.

For example –

http://warwellwg.blogspot.com/2017/04/battle-of-harumba-hill.html

Certainly no treat for the eye but I find the games very stimulating

[Victoria Dickson]

The game matters more than the look, if you have to compromise one of them to make the other work the look loses out every time for me.  But I try to make both as good as I can.

Is your original question about choice of figure scale or number of figures in a unit?  Because you can do small unit sizes in small scales, consider the bases we get shown by Abwehrschlacht for Blucher in 6mm.  The number of figures per battalion is in line with what people might do in larger scales and I think they look brilliant regardless of the number of figures and figure size.

 

I tend to go for units with 12 or less figures for practical reasons of space, time and money.   I work on the basis of what’s the minimum that will still look ok to me, and 2 ranks of 6 men with a flag in the middle doesn’t offend my taste.  If I was doing it in 6mm I might increase it to 24 figures but I would never consider anything close to the 600 figures I’d need for a 1:1 representation.  I admire anyone who can, but it’s not for me.

http://crazywargames.blogspot.co.uk/

[Rod Robertson]

Mike:

I thought the whole point of miniature wargaming was the ‘look’. Otherwise, just cut out coloured counters which represent the forces and play on the cheap. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, the look is the game and the game is the minis. Thus armies with large numbers of reasonably well painted minis are like crack-cocaine to me. The Cecil B. Demille games excite me. I am drawn to them and have nearly paupered myself on occasion in their pursuit! So bigger is better in most mini games, skirmishes excepted.

My hierarchy for a good game would be:
Good people at the table.
Lots of attractive minis.
Lavish terrain which doesn’t hinder the game.
An interesting scenario.
Good rules and perhaps a good referee.
Cheers and good gaming, big gaming!
Rod Robertson.

 

[Grimheart]

Well I definately prefer more figures per unit/base these days.

Back when I started my 6mm WW2 collection many years ago I went for 1 base = 1 platoon (so roughly 1 figure = 10 real people) .

However at that level the many compromises in unit TOE’s for the period didnt sit well and also that i struggled to accept that 10-12 model tanks/infantry bases really acted like the units in the battles I was reading about.

The clincher was when I laid out and compared a number of tank and mechanised battalions next to each other. I had one set out at 1:1, one at 1:2 and one at 1:4. For the battles i wanted to play, battalion sized combined arms, the 1:1 was unfeasible with too many units to move for the size of table I had. The 1:4 just didnt look like remotely like its real life units. So 1:2 was for me the best compromise.

Since then all my projects have pretty much been 1:1 or close (6mm scifi, 30mm old west, etc)

Its all personally and even period subjective of course and if I ever get the time to start some Napoleonic or Ancients armies (toyed with the ideas for years!) I would use 10mm figures at a ratio of 1:10 – those 95th Rifles or Roman Legions have got to have enough figures to LOOK like they mean business imo!

 

Interest include 6mm WW2, 6mm SciFi, 30mm Old West, DropFleet, Warlords Exterminate and others!

[Rod Robertson]

Daft programme! I loathe computers.

Rabid Rod Robertson

[Ivan Sorensen]

65%game 35% look?

Something like that 🙂

I like skirmish gaming because you can get everything 1 to 1 and avoid all kinds of silliness, but I’ll play any scale.

[Silent Invader]

Rod Robertson wrote:

My hierarchy for a good game would be:
Good people at the table.
Lots of attractive minis.
Lavish terrain which doesn’t hinder the game.
An interesting scenario.
Good rules and perhaps a good referee.

I am in absolute agreement

[PatG]

The game. I will play with chits with out complaint but miniatures are nicer to play with. Painting  figures and making terrain are a nice adds on to the hobby that board games don’t provide.

[Deuce]

I find I have to retrain my eye between scales a bit. After painting a few 6mm units, 28mm units and battles seem hilariously small until I’ve got used to them again. However, having grown up with 28mm figures it’s something I didn’t really consider or notice until spending some time around smaller scales.

On the other hand, 28mm figures can be beautiful in a way which 6mm and 2mms can’t. It is amazing how much detail some manufacturers manage to get onto a 6mm figure, but they will never be able to compare on an individual level. This is both a blessing and a curse for 28mm figures, though, as while it’s possible to turn them into miniature works of art, a badly painted figure can stand out, and it takes ages to paint them to a reasonable standard. Huge 28mm battles are very difficult to pull off away from conventions: the space and time required makes it a non-starter for many people.

I agree that look is important, otherwise we might as well be using tokens or unpainted figures.

That’s one of the reasons I have to admit I don’t really get on with 15mm, as they seem to be a compromise between 6mm and 28mm with the worst of both worlds. The DBA style of basing with a handful of small figures per base just doesn’t appeal to me visually at all, which is one of the reasons I haven’t gone down that route.

There has to be a compromise between look and game somewhere but, especially given how rarely my troops hit the table, I prefer to compromise on look as little as possible. That’s another reason I have been enjoying 6mm; it’s much easier to get a unit looking good even though my painting is nothing special.

Then again in my experience the biggest killer for aesthetics is not the models themselves but the terrain and other battlefield accessories.

[Norm S]

If we are only talking about ancients, then I think one of the important benefits of a larger figure is that all players can visually understand what the unit is and what it is armed with, because there are quite a few variables. Once we are into gunpowder, that reliance on weapon identification reduces, In my most recent ACW game, everything had a rifled musket.

I come from a boardgaming background, so since figures and doing terrain are more work, for me, they have to be doing something quite different than a boargame does and this generally comes down to visuals and the tactile nature of the game.

I do quite a bit of hex / figure gaming, but it is difficult to make a hexed table look as nice as an open table …. though not all open tables are nice to look at, but are quite functional at getting the job done, so I suppose it is the balance between function, aesthetic, storage space, gaming space and cost that decides on what we do and each of us sit in different places on that sphere of influence.

I am presently exploring 28’s on a smaller table and reminded of my teenage years when Airfix etc 1/7 2 was happily played on the family dining table and in those unsophisticated years, there was less to worry about, everything didn’t have to be perfect and new and perhaps we have lost some of that useful naïve attitude to gaming.

 

[Don Glewwe]

Mike wrote:

Also, what matters more to you, the game or the look?

The look (specifically, the figure scale used) can impact the game to some extent, imo, by how much of a burden it places on players when translating what is seen on the tabletop to what it represents (ie: figure scale:ground scale).  This is, I’m guessing, a far greater potential problem in games where the figure ratio is 1:1, but there could still be an impact allowing for the visual conflict of having a unit of 100-foot tall grenadiers striding across the battlefield?

I look at it from the POV of ‘What is it that you are trying to model – the individual units, or the battle?’  Where along the spectrum of responses to that question a person’s answer lies matches, to a certain degree, the personal preference regarding the ‘look v game’ issue.

 

or not.

[Chris Pringle]

I play big battles and I do like the mass effect that you get with 6mm.

The aesthetic is important and I have spent plenty of money on terrain and painted armies to improve the look of my table.

BUT:

Given the choice between a good scenario played with bits of hastily cut out cardboard, versus a lame game with gorgeous figures, give me the cardboard every time.

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!

https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BBB_wargames/info

http://bloodybigbattles.blogspot.co.uk

[Steve Johnson]

The game for me. I no longer have the time, space or energy to make big units for a game. So I’m quite happy to play Dux Bellorum with one base equalling a unit, rather than say 2-4 bases per unit. It does not look as good, but it works for me, which ultimately is what counts.

[Guy Farrish]

Got to be the ‘game’ in war’gaming’ for me.

I like nice figures but I’ve played great games with cardboard bases with no figures but if I’m standing around a table with beautiful figures and no game that’s a waste of good drinking time.

The game’s the thing. Otherwise it’s military figure collecting, which is fine, but a different hobby.

[McKinstry]

I’m all about the look. My 6mm heavy infantry have 36 figures per base and my heavy cavalry 18.

Anything less than 750+ figures per side is a skirmish and I’m not big on skirmish gaming outside of Old West and lately SAGA.

The tree of Life is self pruning.

[MartinR]

In the main, I am of the “less is more” school when it comes to figures. I don’t want to paint thousands of them just to put a game on, and I’ll happily use bits of cardboard, blocks of wood or even bits of Lego instead.

So, if I’m not going to have thousands of figures in an Army, then they’d better look half decent. My Ancients stuff is all 20mm, but generally a couple of hundred figures for each main army, rather than DBAs couple of dozen.

The closest to 1:1 are my 2mm horse and musket/pike send shot Armies, where the figures are indeed counted in tens of thousands, but I did those mainly for ease of storage and
because I couldn’t bear the pain of painting what passed for “uniforms” in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

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

[Alexander Wasberg]

While I love pretty minis as much as the next man, I think that a good game trumphs pretty models almost all of the time.

I don’t really have the time or inclination for CMON-level paintjobs (even if such a thing is possible in 6mm) or the space to play big robot games in 28mm for that matter.

http://lasersandbroadswords.blogspot.com My project blog

[irishserb]

At this point, pretty much all of the miniatures games that I play are done at 1 to 1.  Scale is a function of battle and table size.  Given my approach and methodology to miniatures gaming, I guess the size of figures used in a proportional representation makes no different to me.  I will appreciate the art of  the presentation regardless of the ratio.

 

[Not Connard Sage]

Always the game.

Some of the best games I ever had were with a few school mates, Airfix tanks and figures with Featherstone rules on a table mostly devoid of features. It’s like first love, better things come along, but you never forget that unique moment when you’re actually doing it. And, on reflection, it’s pretty rubbish, but at the time it was fantastic.

I think I may be labouring a metaphor here

 

🙂

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

[Mike]

That is 6mm as seen at JOS.

[Norm S]

Massed small scale can still take a LOT of time to paint. I’m not that convinced that there is a significant saving of time when compared to painting much fewer 28mm, when painted to tabletop standard (if of course base footprint is being preserved).

[Cerdic]

Good post from Deuce! The ‘look’ is important or we would all be boardgaming. Obviously, the balance varies according to personal taste though!

I use 6mm for massed battles and 28mm for skirmishes. I love loads of figures and I love the detail of 28s. So for me this is the best compromise.

For those intrigued by Ruarigh’s pretty picture (the game, that is, not him!), have a Google of ‘the Rather Large Towton Project’. Many thousands of well painted 6mm figures in a refight of the Battle of Towton during the Wars Of The Roses. It went round several shows a few years ago and was a real sight to behold!

http://28mmreview.blogspot.co.uk

[OldNick]

For me it is the people around me playing first. Good friends who get along and play for fun.  I like the look of 25mm’s battalions.  It’s the kid in me with a fascination with toy soldiers.  The battalions need to look like battalions.  I usually do 24 to 30 figures.  But since I have limited space, a small enough army that does not overcome the table.  So most of my armies are based around 10 to  12 Infantry battalions with a few cavalry and a couple guns.  Looks nice, has a old school toy soldier game feel and is doable.

[Ruarigh]

Mike wrote:

That is 6mm as seen at JOS.

Yup, Mike’s right. It’s 6mm. We had around 18000 figures on the table. The blog for those that don’t feel like Googling is here: http://towton-2011.blogspot.co.uk/

It was great fun to put on, but I think I’m going to stick to smaller battles in future!

Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

https://roderickdale.co.uk/
https://emidsvikings.ac.uk/

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