Why Oh Why....a tongue in check rant

[Frostie]

For decades I have collected and painted 15mm fantasy figures for mass battle, which has been a pretty lonely process.  NOW all over the wargaming social media I see an avalanche of 10mm 3D printed fantasy figures which I applaud by why oh why 10mm and not 15mm!

I love fantasy mass battle but please think of us long suffering 15mm players 

Check out some of my offerings

http://warrenswargamerantings.blogspot.com/search/label/15mm%20Fantasy

[Chief Lackey Rich]

I think you can credit GW's Warmaster and Kallistra's 10mm range for a lot of the popularity of that scale for fantasy.  Me, I'm with you - 15mm is a great scale for games like Armies of Arcana or Dragon Rampant, as well as playing Warhammer without selling your soul to GW.  Particularly fond of Splintered Light's range, eg:

https://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2019/12/2019-retrospective-gallery-day-1.html

[Hobgoblin]

Great blog!

I've dabbled in 15mm quite a bit, and ran a whole RPG campaign in which we used 15mm throughout. I've also painted up a couple of HotT armies in the scale, and various 15mm sci-fi things.

For fantasy, though, I've largely abandoned 15mm for 28mm on the one hand and 1/72 on the other. Why? Well, I found that one 15mm figure didn't take much less time than a rank-or-file 28mm equivalent, and that the fiddliness of multiple bases was actually greater with 15mm than with 28mm or 1/72.

Also, where 1/72 wins out is on consistency of scale. Yes, there are some variations, but you can mix and match 1/72 much more freely than with 15mm, where the size of humans and horses fluctuates widely. Some 15mm goblins and dwarves actually work better with 1/72 than with 15mm (unless you want your dwarves and goblins as tall or taller than men!).

I think 10mm enjoys the same advantage - at least to some extent and possibly because there are fewer manufacturers.

Anyway, your 15mm stuff looks brilliant!

[Sir Barnaby Hammond-Rye]

If they are 3D prints you might be able to upscale them a bit in the printer. I am getting nominally 32mm scaled figures printed @ 185% to make them fit with my large scale figures and it works fine.

[FramFramson]

Look up some of the work of our own Sangennaru (Jack). He's done quite a bit of 15mm fantasy terrain in the past and is a big fan of the scale, though he's doing mostly moderns at the moment.

[Robosmith]

If they are 3D prints you might be able to upscale them a bit in the printer. I am getting nominally 32mm scaled figures printed @ 185% to make them fit with my large scale figures and it works fine.

You can do this easily. Most 10mm models are over designed for their scale and shrunk down. A lot of them can scale up to 28mm as they're originally sculpted that size and shrunk for release.

[Davout]

3D printing has really helped the recent resurgence of 10mm fantasy.There are a number of designers turning out great 10mm sculpts through various crowd funding platforms and the drop in price of good resin printers has allowed more people jump into the scale.

It also helps that there was a ready made rule system available in Warmaster and a small but active community to build on.

As for me, I got into 10mm fantasy before it was cool. 

(Also me...putting the funds together to pick up a new 10mm Dark Elf army from Excellent Miniatures)

[Andym]

Thats the joy of 3d printing, its very easy to modify files and change sizes up or down to suit. I've been doing Battletech recently and managed to scale the usual 6mm stuff up 200% to give me my (roughly) 15mm scale. I kniw its not Fantasy, but same rules apply...