Is Nobody Big Battling Anymore?

[Captain Blood]

"6mm wargames figure manufacturer in diatribe concerning how few people are buying 6mm wargames figures shock!"  

When I started wargaming, oooh, 40 years or so ago (I was a very young child, obviously), back in the days when Airfix figures were the gateway drug to our addictive hobby, and there was no such thing as Games Workshop; wargamers mostly played 20mm WW2, 1/300 (6mm - then called 5mm, so scale creep even there... ) WW2 and 'modern' (that's NATO vs Warsaw Pact), and 25mm Napoleonics and Ancients. A few dangerous mavericks played ECW, ACW, and Colonial - also in 25mm. That was about it in the 1970's and 1980's.

In those days I used to play at school, I used to go to wargames clubs, I used to go to conventions (Northern and Southern Militaire - that was it!)
1/300 or 6mm was always a minority interest compared to 20mm / 25mm.
Heroics and Ros was the ONLY provider in that scale. I still have some.
Then along came 15mm, which attracted quite a following, but never really dented the pre-eminence of 20mm/25mm.

So I don't think it's anything new.

Like I always bang on about, miniatures wargaming is a 3D visual hobby - otherwise we'd all play boardgames with chits and maps.
Perhaps it's just that figures that are round about one inch high provide, and have always provided, the ideal compromise between visual appeal and playability. Big enough to appreciate the aesthetic value of the models; small enough to field a large number of figures in a game.
In short (haha!) the inch high figure has held sway in the world of wargaming for as long as I can remember, and probably always will.

Additionally, I suspect that as a lot of wargamers of my generation get older (even older!), the appetite for 6mm will continue to diminish. If only because as old eyes fail, teeny tiny figures become ever less attractive as a painting prospect...

My guess? The bottom is gradually dropping out of the 6mm market - as I say, always something of a niche interest anyway - and the chap that owns Baccus is simply raging at the dying of the light...
I guess I'd feel the same if it was my business. But it may just be down to demographics...

[Kommando_J]

Personally...I wont weep if the tiny scales do die out, this will sound offensive but...I think once you get below a certain scale 'miniatures' end to look like wee lumps.

I love 28mm but I have nothing against 20 or 15mm...my gripe these days is the scale creep with 32mm

I like reading about big battles but I don't have he time nor the money to collect a full Napoleonic force...not to mention all my peers that do like the hobby do skirmish anyway...

[nic-e]

Yes, it's dedicated to the destruction of 6mm historical wargames.  

Ave XXVIII fratrem meum   

[joroas]

Take a look at Yankeepedlar's site. http://talesfromghq.blogspot.co.uk/

[stone-cold-lead]

My guess? The bottom is gradually dropping out of the 6mm market - as I say, always something of a niche interest anyway - and the chap that owns Baccus is simply raging at the dying of the light...
I guess I'd feel the same if it was my business. But it may just be down to demographics...

I don't know if 6mm is dying out or not but I'm sure a modern, vibrant company with the right marketing strategy and good quality models could make something of it.

Regarding demographics, the impression I get is that big historical battles on vast tables are something that an older generation of gamers are more likely to be into. That in itself could put off new and younger players especially if there's any sense of elitism or an unwillingness to engage. To be honest some of the photo's of big battle tables from cons do appear to be played (if they are even) by some rather grumpy looking old men who barely seem interested in the table or one another. It reminds me of those model railway exhibitions that my grandad would drag me around when I was a kid. Perhaps 6mm big battles just need a bit of a face lift?

[nic-e]

Like I always bang on about, miniatures wargaming is a 3D visual hobby -

I think it's worth picking up on this point.

Whilst I don't wish to diminish the skills of anyone that plays 6mm, I believe you have to be a very good modeller to make 6mm miniatures and scenery "Mesh" - By that i mean, look like a cohesive and some what realistic scene when on placed together.
I'm not saying there aren't amazing 6mm modellers out there, There obviously are! but they aren't as easy to come by as 28mm ones and are much harder to photograph!

Bases and the borders of terrain will always get in the way , But with 28 and 15mm you have a big enough figure to negate some of this and counter the part of your brain that says "I am looking at a figure on a base on a mat "

Whilst 6mm battles may look amazing from a distance, They suffer on close examination. A 6mm base of figures on a table that isn't expressly modelled in very find scale will always look like it's carrying around a very sturdy dias to stand on, and the many brush marks or patches of highlight will stand out above the sculpted detail they're sitting on.
Big swooping shots of battles are fun but make for terrible magazine content, because you end up not really being able to see anything expect some blocks on a board.
It's a shame, But magazines need nice pictures because most of us buy the magazine to look at first and read second, And tiny scales very often don't hold up to that level of scrutiny.


http://lordashramshouseofwar.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/10mm?updated-max=2014-02-15T09:00:00-08:00&max-results=20&start=6&by-date=false
Lord Ashrams house of war has some amazing 10mm images , you can see that an insane amount of effort has gone into making them look as good as possible.

[Inkpaduta]

For me, I have turned to skirmish style games because of cost and the time it took me to
paint two armies the play with. Got to the point that I would get excited about an era, buy the
figures and then would have to paint for over a year before I got a chance to play the era.

[joroas]

Only a year?

[FramFramson]

I have always gravitated to skirmish because I have always preferred a small number of models with the highest quality of paintjob (and sculpting) that can be mustered). 28-32mm is my bag because as I like to say "That's the smallest scale where you can see the whites of their eyes."

As for 6mm or smaller scales, well it will always be less popular, but I don't know if it'll ever die out. Especially if new blood gets breathed into it - for instance what if GW got back into Epic?

[Norm]

I don't particularly like hearing anybody say what scale should be played or whether figures must be painted or any of the other self serving laws that we see from time to time ...... But Pete Berry does have a point (though does not do himself any favours by expressing them - apparently!).

I go to quite a few UK wargame shows and I buy all three UK wargame magazines and subscribe to one of them - and I get the sense that both magazines and shows have lost a balance of scale diversity.

The effect is that if you are into small scales, why would you buy a mag or go to a show when the internet represents your interests better (hence Pete Berry gets 8 new customers per week as stated over on his forum thread), the result of that becomes a reduced interest in mags / shows and that drives itself to even lower representation in mags / shows of the smaller scale and so it goes on.

The strange thing is that the small scales are hugely popular and as gamers are often playing at home on kitchen tables and living in small homes in which the scale / storage thing is a big deal, involvement with the little men can mean the difference between doing and not doing your hobby.

However, there are some facts of life. The larger scales do photograph better. Small scales can look nice on the board and the terrain, such as buildings etc can give great effect of whole villages without dominating the table, but the little chaps are somewhat camera shy. Older eyes simply find the larger scale a better prospect to paint. Not enough smaller scale gamers are submitting articles to magazines and the capability of the amateur photographer (well wargamer with a phone camera)to produce the kind of photographs that the editors need is not there and not helped by the nature of their subject.

I know my own small figures can look great during play, but that aspect does not particularly transfer well to photographs (as my blog with attest :-) )

I think the solutions most likely to change things rest with small scale gamers - we need to be putting on games at shows in increasing numbers to show off what the scale can do and we need to be thinking about submitting articles that play to the strengths of the scale, rather than trying to compete with what 28mm does.

LAF does have a bias towards the larger scale, the significant number of excellent painters and modellers here no doubt plays its part - the spin off from that is that the smaller scale gamers can feel a bit less welcome here than should be the case and some of the posts in this thread give at least a hint of that.

So small scalers ... fight your corner, we are probably mostly all lucky that we can buy whatever we want in the scale of our choice. But then I have 12mm on my gaming table now, 28mm on some painting sticks and 15mm models cut off the sprue ready to put together and stuff is over spilling off the shelves onto the floor because I am running out of space :-)
 

[nic-e]

Especially if new blood gets breathed into it - for instance what if GW got back into Epic?

You mean when GW get back into epic....
it'll be 8mm tho, just to annoy mr berry.

[The Gray Ghost]

I admire people who game the smaller scales as you can game big battles like I did years ago. But I'm not into smaller then 28mm skirmish gaming anymore because painting them is half the fun for me and with my eyesight I can't do anything under 20mm.

[Mosstrooper]

Some reasons for the modern trends in gaming ?
An ageing generation of gamers - 6mm are just to small to see (I have moved onto painting 28mm and 40mm figures )
A lot of gamers play  regularly at  clubs , games have to be set up , played and put away in 2-3 hours (?) , skirmish games are ideal for this
How many younger gamers have room for a dedicated wargaming room (modern houses are small) and again skirmish games are ideal for this .
Modern skirmish games are very accessible , paint up 12-24 figures and game , easier than several hundred figures .
The cost of 'Big Battles' 28mm are expensive on masse .
Personally I'm not keen on 6mm - I prefer bigger 'Toy Soldiers' - the figures the thing for me , although I can see the advantages in cost for 6mm

[Dags]

The Captain's memories and early experiences very much echo mine.... We're probably 'of an age', although I would add going along to the Model Engineering Exhibition as a nipper as well as the Militaires.

On topic, sort of, smaller scales make sense for some gaming; armour battles especially.

I've painted a fair bit of 15mm over the years but don't particularly enjoyed it.

The main reason, however, for not doing  big battles in smaller scales is the thought of the sheer boredom of painting 100s of identical tiny figures exactly the same way. Maybe that comes from enjoying the painting more than the gaming....

[Connectamabob]

I think it's worth picking up on this point.

Whilst I don't wish to diminish the skills of anyone that plays 6mm, I believe you have to be a very good modeller to make 6mm miniatures and scenery "Mesh" - By that i mean, look like a cohesive and some what realistic scene when on placed together.
I'm not saying there aren't amazing 6mm modellers out there, There obviously are! but they aren't as easy to come by as 28mm ones and are much harder to photograph!

Bases and the borders of terrain will always get in the way , But with 28 and 15mm you have a big enough figure to negate some of this and counter the part of your brain that says "I am looking at a figure on a base on a mat "

Whilst 6mm battles may look amazing from a distance, They suffer on close examination. A 6mm base of figures on a table that isn't expressly modelled in very find scale will always look like it's carrying around a very sturdy dias to stand on, and the many brush marks or patches of highlight will stand out above the sculpted detail they're sitting on.
Big swooping shots of battles are fun but make for terrible magazine content, because you end up not really being able to see anything expect some blocks on a board.
It's a shame, But magazines need nice pictures because most of us buy the magazine to look at first and read second, And tiny scales very often don't hold up to that level of scrutiny.


http://lordashramshouseofwar.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/10mm?updated-max=2014-02-15T09:00:00-08:00&max-results=20&start=6&by-date=false
Lord Ashrams house of war has some amazing 10mm images , you can see that an insane amount of effort has gone into making them look as good as possible.

I think I'd go even further, and say that in 6mm the visual strengths completely flip from the figures to the terrain.

Take this with a grain of salt, as I have no personal experience with 6mm, but it seems to me that 6mm completely inverts the terrain vs minis trade-off dynamic of 28mm, and IMO maybe some of the alleged problems of 6mm may stem from a failure to recognize and/or embrace that.

In 28mm, the figures can be very satisfyingly detailed and characterful, but terrain and vehicles are forced to be "foreshortened" in scale due to practical space limits. Even with the forshortening, terrain has to be big in a way that for many people forces detail to be sparse and simplified in order to be time/money efficient. This results in buildings and the like which often do not match the visual weight, density, and verisimilitude of the minis.

In 6mm, the opposite is true: figures are so small that they cannot be easily detailed, realistically proportioned, or individual, but the terrain can easily be decompressed into realistic proportions and sprawl, at a size that allows for detail of the same density of that of the figures to look much more "real" than on the figures, AND to be simpler to execute for a given scale detail than in 28mm.

So my instinct would be that when getting into 6mm gaming, the "visual appeal" focus should be on the terrain rather than the figures. Imagine, say, the city of Mordheim realized in 28mm (or 35, as the case may be), vs 6mm. In 28, you'd be dealing with a handful of individual compressed-scale buildings on a printed or textured mat. But in 6mm, you could do an entire district of the city in true scale, working in modules of blocks rather than buildings. You could easily play games on museum-style replicas of cities or landscapes.

The intent would not be to be cheaper than 28mm, rather you'd take the time and money and ambition you'd spend on the figures in 28mm, and in 6mm spend it on the terrain instead. Likewise, when you showcase 6mm stuff to hype the scale, you'd focus on impressively rendered settings before impressively rendered figures.

This is just the way it seems to me, and maybe I'm weird, but when I see pics like the one Fred posted on the first page, I feel like people are completely barking up the wrong tree by executing and deploying terrain pieces in 6mm the same way they do in 28mm. The philosophy of it feels backward to me, like they're inadvertently getting the worst of both worlds. 28mm knows it's visual strengths and plays to them, while 6mm is handicapping itself trying to play to 28mm's strengths instead of its own.

I feel like as long as 6mm is thought of as being defined by the figures the way larger scales are, it'll always be at a disadvantage in terms of visual appeal. 6mm's native strength is the terrain.

This is all about the aesthetic angle, of course. It's tempting at first thought to believe it's natural to focus on the figures since "it's the figures that really matter, the terrain is an extra", but this is actually false when you think it through. Gameplay-wise it makes absolutely no difference which you focus on aesthetically, since either or both can be reduced to cardboard cutout markers without effecting the pure game.