Is Nobody Big Battling Anymore?

[Arlequín]

... just reflecting what wargamers are actually playing and modelling.

Or at the very least what they are writing about and submitting as articles to the wargaming press. Mr Berry has said as much himself and I think he's right.

I actually also agree with much of what he says, not least that the 28mm Big Battles I see at shows look quite cramped and with no room for manoeuvre; plus 24 figures is never really going to give the impression of a battalion of 500 or so men. It is one of the reasons I abandoned 'grand manner' gaming a long time ago; at least my piddling skirmishes look exactly like what they are meant to represent and I don't have the terrain-scale paradox to worry about.

What I can't understand (apart from that some folk simply don't have the space or cash - fair enough) is why so many small scale gamers are playing 6mm like they would 28mm; i.e. the same 24-ish figures (or even fewer) and a flag, still represents a battalion (or even a brigade in some cases) and the same total number of figures grace the typical, but smaller, table. As for DBA with its "these four figures are 250 men" - don't even go there.

If it was me, I'd probably be using 28mm rules and filling up each 28mm-size base with several 6mm figures instead of one 28mm one. Imagine a Lion Rampant '12 figure' unit represented by 12 bases-worth of 6mm figures. Six figures to a base perhaps? More? That's a unit of 72-100 figures - just one unit of five or six. Is that 'big battle' enough?

6mm looks really impressive to me in quantity, but otherwise usually looks like a 3D board game with fancy counters, or like a 28mm game but smaller.

None of the above has anything to do with my slavish adoration of 28mm.    

[fred]

If it was me, I'd probably be using 28mm rules and filling up each 28mm-size base with several 6mm figures instead of one 28mm one. Imagine a Lion Rampant '12 figure' unit represented by 12 bases-worth of 6mm figures. Six figures to a base perhaps? More? That's a unit of 72-100 figures - just one unit of five or six. Is that 'big battle' enough?

We've done this.

We played lots of Kings of War with the 28mm unit footprints - but with loads of 10mm figures on a base.


So a cavalry regiment which would be 12 28mm figures is represented by approx 40 10mm figures, and an Infantry horde, I think about 40 28mm figures is represented by 6x7x4 figures which is about 170 infantry.

I did try a game of Dragon rampant using a single Warmaster base to represent 2 28mm figures, so about 4x the total figures involved.

Which worked fine, and looks like a small battle rather than a scrap behind the bike sheds, but DR wasn't a set of rules for me.

I have also seen people doing similar for Dux Bellorum and Saga, basing several 10mm figures on a single base - the same as used by a 28mm figure, then playing exactly as written. Looks good.

I've even used 10mm to play Chain of Command - with all distances as written - this really does give you the feel of the empty battlefield, as the number of troops to overall battlefield space is tiny.

Ultimately it is important to remember this

That a photo of a game, isn't a game.

I find that once I am playing a game, you rapidly become involved in the game and the simplest of terrain rapidly becomes a battlefield. But this doesn't mean that I am always wanting to improve the look of the game - and have upgraded my terrain mat recently, and want to remake bases for my terrain so they look better in photos. But these are quite low priority over painting troops!

[Arlequín]

Those and the top one especially, look like 'battles', which is the strength of smaller scales to me.

Certainly the point about CoC played at near true scale (and perhaps Bolt Action in 6mm) should be taken on board too; I could throw a pistol and hit someone over the length of a real Sherman tank, but I risk being out of shooting range at the same distance on table with 28mm figures.

As much as I love them, 28mm players have to make a lot of 'allowances' for their chosen figure size when it comes to playing with them.

 

[FramFramson]

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.

Considering the stuff 6milphil posts (which is great, and I'm surprised he hasn't weighed in on this thread yet), I think this is absolutely spot on.

[Jabba]

Does this qualify?

Waterloo, 28mm, Shako II

Lots more pics at

Waterloo 1pm-4pm
Waterloo 4pm-7pm
Waterloo 7pm-8.30pm

[lord marcus]

I play 6mm and 3mm but wouldn't bother posting on here to be honest about micro wargaming, there are other forums and groups that are based around these scales that I follow for news and eye candy.

Which forums do you reckon?

[jambo1]

Which forums do you reckon?

I am on three different ones on Facebook, that cover 6mm and 3mm, TMP has a board for Napoleonic 6mm plus you do see other 6mm stuff posted on there also. Facebook is not everyones cup of tea but the amount of wargaming stuff on there is amazing.

[thenamelessdead]

These days I would avoid playing big games in 28mm. Perhaps a small 40k game at most. Even my current dungeon project is 15mm for the sheer cheapness, ease and without significant loss of character.

[lord marcus]

Whelp, I'll just have to Revitalize this forums 6mm fascination. To my elven legions!

[jambo1]

Whelp, I'll just have to Revitalize this forums 6mm fascination. To my elven legions!

Huzzah!!!

[A Lot of Gaul]

All of my wargames are'big battles' with around 150-250 18mm models per side. But IMHO the recent overall trend has definitely been toward skirmish gaming with 28mm figures, most likely for the economic and entry-point reasons given above. For some evidence, just view the "Post a picture of the last game you played!" thread in this forum.

[Hobgoblin]

Ultimately it is important to remember this

That a photo of a game, isn't a game.

I find that once I am playing a game, you rapidly become involved in the game and the simplest of terrain rapidly becomes a battlefield. But this doesn't mean that I am always wanting to improve the look of the game - and have upgraded my terrain mat recently, and want to remake bases for my terrain so they look better in photos. But these are quite low priority over painting troops!

I think this is a hugely important point. And it's why I think that games with a very abstract figure scale work just fine. I really like Hordes of the Things (I've never played any of the other DBx games - I gather that they're almost identical mechanically but somehow different spiritually). And it always feels like a 'big battle' to me, regardless of the fact that there might be just 20 to 30 figures on each side.

One thing I do struggle to understand is why 15mm, rather than 28mm, predominates in the DBx family. You only need 3' square for a 28mm game, so a dinner table does the job amply. And not only is the visual appeal of a 28mm HotT army greater, but the fiddliness is much reduced. That applies both to painting and playing - the latter particularly important in a game so measurement dependent.

[jambo1]

I agree with that, I would play DBA or HOTT but only in 28mm

[Connectamabob]

This thread has me wanting to try an experiment. I want to actually try flipping the figures/terrain dynamic like I mentioned before. I think it should be possible to play a game of Frostgrave in 6mm using the 28mm rules ( rescale the board, but keep the measurements for movement and such the same). On a pure gameplay level, it should work exactly the same, the only difference would be aesthetic.

On the aesthetic level, The visual weight would be inverted. Figures would be easy and cheap; I could even just use colored pins (on the theory that this would be the conceptual inverse of using a painted shoebox as a building). The terrain could be squares of pink foam with buildings made of clay or small carved blocks of foam. At that scale, the time it would take to build and paint a building would be similar to the time it would take to build and paint a figure. A single 2'x2' board would be all that's needed. This would take some time to build, but if one is essentially replacing the time one would spend on minis instead of adding to it, that could be a wash.

The gist of the experiment would be to test whether player immersion would naturally shift to key off the terrain instead of the minis, or if players would find it unimmersive no matter how well developed the terrain was if the figures were no longer the aesthetic focus.

My premise is that people are used to thinking of terrain as an afterthought to the minis, when in practical reality both are equally cosmetic. If I can make the 6mm terrain as visually immersive as 28mm minis (or more so), then immersion should work just as well even if the 6mm minis are only as immersive as "shoebox" 28mm terrain.

Main objection I foresee is that minis may represent characters as much as abstract units in the players' minds, and thus benefit from having more of a metaphorical "face". My proposed counterarguments are that A) places can be characters too, and B) most minis actually represent interchangeable rank and file "mooks", with only "heroes" (wizards, apprentices, and captains in Frostgrave's case) being characters.

I postulate that if the setting is deliberately approached as a character during design/construction, and if the character-ness of the hero minis can be offloaded to say, character sheet/card art, the game will be just as immersive in 6mm as in 28mm.

Additional Postulate: I think this will require a more specific approach to how terrain is designed and constructed. I suspect the level of perceived integration between terrain pieces and the board will have as large an impact if not larger than the level of detail present in the individual terrain pieces. In order to give the impression of place-as-character the board must be designed wholistically, or at least the method of modularity must be chosen so as to produce boards indistinguishable at a glance from wholistically designed boards. I will get more into detail on that if/when I start a thread for this experiment.

[Lowtardog]

Jesus wept, it`s bleeding toys if he has an issue or if indeed others have issues make your own magazines, create your own forums. It is a broad church . A magazine is a visual luxury, seeing tiny little metal men no matter how good will not have the same eye candy [pop that well painted 28mm would have. Someone earlier mentioned the terrain becomes the eye candy and I think it is right, how many demo games still see a flat cloth or table on 6mm games, the nature of creating the big battalions with 6mm lead to limitation owing to the base. There are the exceptions that prove the rule and quantity has a quality of its own however isn`t going to make me buy the figures.

I did have a 6mm WW2 panzer division, loved spearhead but could not face painting base after base of minis even though they ere Adler and quite detailed from memory. For me gets to the point where they may as well be counters, and board game or if anyone remembers armies made from Hair rollers

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