What 'looks right' when representing a village/town in 28mm big battles?

[AKULA]

Work continues apace on my horse & musket era project, but i'm undecided what to do about representing settlements on the tabletop.

Given the ground scale of most rule sets for 28mm, most settlements would be at best a couple of houses... i've toyed with the idea of having a ground base, and then having smaller scale buildings (eg 15mm), to give a more pleasing on the eye image of a settlement, but then what happens when you stick 28mm roads, or worse...fences/trees etc on the same table ... or would you have 15mm fences next to your 28mm figures... the idea of small buildings seems like it could work, but 15mm fences.... and maybe even trees seems odd... can't explain why?

What compromises have you made in your table layouts for mass battles?

Has anyone gone the whole hog and used a table of 15mm buildings, roads, and trees with "giant" 28mm battalions looming over them... if so, any photos?

Currently my default is probably still 28mm terrain for 28mm armies, but i'm intrigued by the possibilities of smaller scale terrain... Please note for 28mm "mass skirmish" games i'd use 28mm terrain without question, as one building represents one building... it's the amount of space that everything takes up in a full blown battle with multiple brigades on each side that i'm thinking about.

Any thoughts appreciated...and photos of eye candy are always welcome as well 

[has.been]

I am with you on the mass skirmish, one building (28mm) represents one building.
When it comes to 'Armies' I would place the village/town on the edge of the table.
That way I can convince myself that most of the buildings are just off table.
This does fit in with a lot of battles where armies rested one (or both) flanks on a village/town.
Any enemy who circumvent the urban area can always arrive behind their enemy's rear.

[Mikai]

What you could do is build some kind of 2D-paper work at the edge of the playing field to give the illusion of a bigger town or whatever being behind. While thinking about your question I recalled last years Partizan show with the Battle of the Five Armies setup at which they used the mountain art work of Tolkiens book to make up some diorama background at the battlefield.

The bats at the image are obviously painted on but the rest is the terrain:


Here one of the blogs about it:
https://mogsymakes.net/2024/10/05/the-other-partizan-2024-preview-tolkiens-battle-of-five-armies/

[AKULA]

Both very good solutions, but lets be honest, both trying to avoid the dilemma of placing it on the tabletop 

Its certainly one way i could get around the problem, but what if i want a small settlement (small in 28mm terms)....lets say 30cm across...smack bang in the middle of the battlefield?

With the footprint of a lot of 28mm models i may only be able to fit one decent size building on the base, but maybe a small hamlet in 15mm. The problem i'm trying to get my head around is that while to the eye the 15mm hamlet might 'make sense' to the eye...even with a 28mm battalion marching into it... i think there would be an 'optical clash' outside of the 15mm hamlet itself.

Imagine 28mm snake fencing next to a 15mm building... or 15mm snake fencing a foot away from the hamlet on the tabletop, but next to a unit of 28mm cavalry - this is what i'm trying to get my head around

[Mikai]

Might depend on if you want to place it in the middle of the battlefield or at some corner. The edge solution does not hinder you to place a first or second row of buildings with the 2D-work giving the illusion of there being more. For placing it into the middle I have no real idea except for scaling it down which might look odd. Perhaps some kind of step scaling down, like at the first contact it's something like 25 mm scale then 20mm then 15 mm or smaller in the center? Not sure though if your miniatures are supposed to interact with the town.

[v_lazy_dragon]

I mean, there's a whole scale between 28mm and 15mm... Would 20mm give a better footprint but less of a visual disruption?
Or make some specifically 'distorted' buildings- small footprint, 28mm scale heights- to fill in the centre of a cluster of regular 28mm buildings?

[Dice Roller]

This has all the hallmarks of one of those questions where, in your heart of hearts, you know what you want to do but are just trying to talk yourself out of it.
You should always go with your heart in these things. It's a bummer when your heart tells you to take the awkward option.

Me? I'm not going with that 15mm with 28mm creates perspective and suits ground space. I play with 3D models and not counters for a reason. 15mm terrain with 28mm figures just looks  crap. To me.
What I would do is put down a piece of felt that defines the limits of the town and put 28mm buildings on it and shift them around as needed. I'd steer myself toward smaller 28mm buildings so I could get three or four on it, rather than massive townhouse.
Anyway, that's how I feel with it.

[Mammoth miniatures]

I'd wager "right" also depends on the period and table size. A dark age/medieval village could be proxied by a few small hovels and a retaining wall and take up very little space, where a late 19th century village would really cover most of a 6x4 board at any realistic ground scale. 

I think a sort of german expressionist tall and thin village could look cool as hell but probably not what you're after if visual realism is a concern. You could perhaps have a small area with two small-ish buildings, or a walled off farmhouse, representing a village, and then when troops enter into that area they are moved to a separate board/removed from the table for the duration of their stay within the village, with any actions taken in the village being resolved on paper.

[gweirda]

Apologies in advance for the overly-analytical post - I express my incompetence with florid blather.


My thinking is based on the idea that the individual pieces-parts (figures and terrain) model the things, while using them on a tabletop in a game models the action.  There are few ahead of me in the line to crouch down to look closely at a gorgeous model…but…gaming has a different focus/goal, and I tend to lean into that when I’m putting something on the tabletop.

The relationship between the size of the models (figures and terrain) and the distances measured during play (for movement and ranges) should ‘look right’, i.e.: Make visual sense to the player(s).  Personal aesthetics aside, the purpose of the miniatures is to provide players with information on the units and their place in the battlefield, e.g.: “That guy/group/thing is a whatsit, and it’s around that far from the thingamajig.” 

There is often emphasis on the 'whatsit' facet of the miniatures in how well they communicate to the player(s) what they represent - on a scale from completely abstract (as with a token or marker) to exacting reproduction (showing every eyelash and rivet).  Their other function (the 'where' facet) is often overlooked/diminished, though it is as (if not more?) important in assessing how well the miniatures contribute to the play of the game.

How far away is that hill?  How big is that copse?  How wide is that stream?  The greater the difference between miniature and ground scales, the more 'wrong' the tabletop picture presented is, and the amount of translation required of players increases to the point where "You may as well just use tokens" becomes a valid response.  The less mental/mathematical gymnastics players are forced to do in order to translate what they see on the tabletop into meaningful gaming data that can aid/influence the decisions they have to make, the better.

Specifically to the OP on towns: Choosing building models to match the (what I assume to be?) over-large figures to create a more pleasing vignette could be weighed against the effect it has on the overall tabletop picture of the battlefield.  or not...

[AKULA]

This has all the hallmarks of one of those questions where, in your heart of hearts, you know what you want to do but are just trying to talk yourself out of it.
You should always go with your heart in these things. It's a bummer when your heart tells you to take the awkward option.

True in part, but i'm also trying to see if someone else has come up with a better way than what i have in mind before i spend some cash on it 

[Captain Blood]

Matt, sounds like you just need a bigger table

[carlos marighela]

I don't do big battles these days but when I did the rules systems I used mostly designated built up areas, so effectively a single building represented a block thereof. Makes sense, when a stand of figures might represent anything from 50 to 200 men.  So a 28mm building might be four or five or more actual buildings. It's the nature of the area that's important not the individual structure.

Adding to others' comments. 20mm or 1/72 buildings can work quite well with 28mm while delivering a smallre footprint. The only real 'tell' is door height. You can either ignore that or easly adjust it. More buildings for the same sized bit of real estate. I've even got repurposed, modified 20mm buldings for my skirmish set up.

Next down the list is 1/87 or HO scale buildings. Some of these work quite well with larger scales, again it's mostly the doors that give the clue to it being as smaller scale. The great advantage to 1/87 is the sheer variety and availability of structures and the Dapol line while not super realistic/detailed are a cheap option.

As for backgrounds and the illusion of off table depth take a good look at the Peco railway backdrops.
As an example:

https://peco-uk.com/products/large-town-backscene?_pos=5&_sid=8738faf3e&_ss=r&variant=7435687755810

[Silent Invader]

I managed to squeeze a hamlet into a pretty tight space, which I was pleased with (though I'm now building something bigger, just because  )

[Cat]

I've long done a hybrid route of what I call 'gaming scale' for buildings for 15mm towns, made much easier these days by 3D printing.
 
Last century, I scratchbuilt Napoleonic buildings with ~10mm size footprint and ~15mm size height.  This way the troops don't loom over the rooftops, and a number of buildings give a nice impression of a town.
 
3D printing makes this much easier as you can scale each axis independently to scrunch the X & Y for a smaller footprint than the Z for height. 

I don't have my own printer, but I've downloaded the free Cura program so I can open up STL files to adjust scaling percentages and see what the resulting dimensions will be.  Then I send the files to a friend with a printer and instructions on what scaling to use.
 
Here's one of my old analog models:

[Pattus Magnus]

I have been thinking about this topic a bit over the past couple years since a pal got me into 10mm Seven Years War gaming. The issue isn’t quite so drastic with 10mm figures, but the figure and terrain scale is still way out of whack with ground scale when you’re representing a whole small battle on the table (which is what we’re doing).

We pondered using buildings that are “one scale down” - 6mm. In the end, we went with using 10mm models, although they’re under-sized compared to the footprint of most real buildings. I’m lucky too, that my friend has a 3D printer and can tweak the size on the buildings. The trees we’re using are also a lot closer to 6mm than proper scale. So, a handful of houses and trees represent urban areas and woods. It’s a trade-off but I like the visual effect.

Honestly, I think the issue is still there even with 6mm gaming. I went that direction for my Napoleonic wars project. It sort of looks old like the figure scale and ground scale are closer, but when I stopped to think about it, they’re still a large multiple out…

The answer I landed on is like what an earlier response said, go with what your heart tells you. For battle level games the scales will be way out no matter what, so go with the visual style that you enjoy!