6mm, 15mm, bigger?

[supervike]

15mm gaming seems to have caught on big time in the past year or so.  There is a bunch of quality products, and I was even flirting with the idea of getting a few.

Then, I saw mention of 6mm...now that has got me wondering.

15mm gaming doesn't seem too far removed from my 'normal' preferred size of roughly 28mm.  But, when you go further down to 6mm, well that seems like a whole new ballgame.  What I'd really like to see is some sort of gaming campaign where I can 'skirmish' with my 28 mm, then 'zoom out' to a full fledged battalion sized battle.

I noticed Antenociti has mentioned 6mm with their GOT range, and Urban Mammoth has just announced they are working on some too.

I consider myself more of a hobbyist than a gamer, so building a few (gameable) blocks of a futuristic city sounds appealling.

What do you feel are the advantages/disadvantages of each 15mm or 6mm? (or is there a different size all together?)

And can you suggest some manufacturers of each?

What experience/suggestions

[Wolfslord]

Hi,

for me the big difference is, that 15mm makes a lot of fun to paint. 6mm is no fun to paint I think. I started 15mm Scifi instead of 28mm, because:

- the prices are a delight in comparision to a lot of 28mm miniatures

- the quality AND detail of 15mm is in cases as good as that of 28mm

- terrain is easier to produce and store, also a smaller board still can be a huge battlefield for 15mm forces

- tanks, mechas etc. are beautiful and reasonably priced in 15mm, e.g. you get 5-10 resin tanks for one GW tank. I even use some Revell Star Wars ships for 5-15 Euro, that are big enough to be small or big fighters

6mm visually is quite impressive, but as I said: I don't like to point it and I don't need so many figures on the table.

28mm is just not my thing at the moment. I don't really get anything from 28mm that I don't get from 15mm.

Maybe it's just the large amount of money I wasted for a project (that 10 players enthusiasticly agredd on and dropped before painting one miniature in contrast to others that had their army ready).

UPDATE:

Best Manufacturers in my opinion:

Rebel Minis
Khurasan Miniatures
Critical Mass

Shops:

15mm.co.uk

Blogs:

http://www.miniaturereview.com/
http://tinysolitarysoldiers.blogspot.com/

[Schrodingers_Cat]

I can only echo the above sentiments. I've really enjoyed using 15mm with the experience I've had so far.

Ground Zero Games also has a lot of lovely 15mm miniatures.

[Conquistador]

I might be tempted to 15 mm except all my terrain is 6 mm or 25 mm.

But than I keep experimenting with 6 mm skirmish...

Gracias,

Glenn

[Wolfslord]

Oh what a great fauxpaux to forget GZG. They have close to anything in their range  Beautiful quality too. They also have some nice civilian transports, that bring a little bit more realism and objects for a skirmish game.

[dijit]

Personally I wasn't a fan of 15mm when I took up FoW. I found 15mm, to be to small to paint well and too big to paint to a standard where it just doesn't matter. Prices and storage, etc are very tempting, but the painting puts me off, plus I'd have to build a whole new load of terrain, and I just don't think I could be bothered. My advice is to stick with what you've got, and what your gaming buddies have, that way you'll be able to use any new purchases with your old, and won't be starting again from scratch; otherwise it'll just be wasted.
Duncan

[Spong]

I know I'm being awkward here but I personally like 10mm - partly for the reasons stated by dijit about tradeoff in painting standard. You also get a good deal of the benefits of 6mm miniatures: price-to-quanitity ratio, easier terrain, impressive looking armies and so on.

One of the main interests for me is as you've described having a kind of 'zoom-in and zoom-out' on battle scale between the smaller miniatures and regular 28mm, but I've yet to come across any rulesets which implement this kind of thing. I think homebrew is the way forward on that front.

For 10mm stuff you can look at: Eureka, Copplestone, Irregular, Pendraken and Kallistra, amongst others.

[Tomsche]

I must say I`m rather fond of the smaller scales (especcially 6 and 10mm) for Historical gaming, as painting up monotone uniforms in the hundreds on a larger scale tends to dampen my enthousiasm in projects.

For scifi gaming, so far the only thing I managed to get painted with a level of success in completing is 6mm Seeds of War, for 15mm I bought a heap of Critical Mass Khanates, but after trying one it has been dumped on the `prolly to sell of someday` pile.  Guess it has to do a little in that the army size of a 15mm vs a 28mm in that sort of games usually stays about the same, and then I tend to lean to the bigger models pure for the visuality effect on my glasscabinet shelves

[Tomsche]

For 10mm stuff you can look at: Eureka, Copplestone, Irregular, Pendraken and Kallistra, amongst others.

Magister Militum also has a nice and huge range of mostly historicals, might be suitable in scifigames for primitive tribes etc on backwater planets

[Lovejoy]

I'm a big fan of 6mm. 15mm stuff never seems different enough from 28mm; a big dropship, or a tank company in 15mm is still hard to find space for. But in 6mm it's not a problem.
And I know 15mm detail has improved dramatically recently, but I think 6mm can look good too - pic below of some 6mm figs I'm sculpting for a customer at the moment...
Obviously shown larger than actual size!



cheers,
Michael Lovejoy

[Wolfslord]

I'm a big fan of 6mm. 15mm stuff never seems different enough from 28mm; a big dropship, or a tank company in 15mm is still hard to find space for. But in 6mm it's not a problem.

FOW has many tank or mechanised company players. 15mm tanks are even cheaper than FOW tanks, so why not ? Rulewise this shouldn't be a problem.

Have you seen Khurasan's tribal class drop ship ? I think that ones huge enough I will use a Star Trek Maqui fighter, that is 34cm long and still fits on a normal table.

[supervike]

I'm a big fan of 6mm. 15mm stuff never seems different enough from 28mm; a big dropship, or a tank company in 15mm is still hard to find space for. But in 6mm it's not a problem.
And I know 15mm detail has improved dramatically recently, but I think 6mm can look good too - pic below of some 6mm figs I'm sculpting for a customer at the moment...
Obviously shown larger than actual size!

Whoa! Those are fantastic!  The more I'm checking it out the more I like it. 

Would those be cast at any point?

[Backyardpatrol]

Lovejoy those are Awesome!!!