20mm and 28mm terrain, is there a huge difference?

[sunspear]

I am thinking about buying some downloads from paper terrain, I can save a little cashola if I go with 20mm over the 28mm, is there a huge difference in scale? I am just getting into WW2 gaming and I don't have a lot of experience with terrain.
Thanks for any advise! 

[Westfalia Chris]

I'd say that for "natural" terrain pieces, such as fields, trees, bushes, hedges etc., it is much less of a problem than for man-made structures. The actual scales correlated to figure sizes are hotly debated, but if we take the present-day pairings of 1/56 for 28mm and 1/76 for 20mm, a building in 1/76 would be 3/4 the size of the 1/56 variant for every dimension, and would only take up 4/10 of the larger's volume.

So, basically, while it could work for mass-battle games, where the building footprint is more relevant than its size next to the figures, for skirmish gaming, you'll risk a rather jarring effect. As said, trees, hills, hedges and stuff should be alright, maybe also roads (to depict a smaller road, with sufficient width for a single vehicle only), but for houses etc., I'd opt for houses in 1/60 or 1/56.

Or go into 20mm. I wouldn't do 28mm WW2 again, and am actually considering selling my stuff since it looks so strange as soon as a single vehicle is involved.

That said, if you have access to a proper photocopy machine or a large-format printer, you could scale up a printout to 1/56. I usually did the reverse (i.e. designed my paper buildings for larger printing formats and scaled them down for 1/72), but it could work, albeit at slightly poorer quality.

[Too Bo Coo]

To make it simple, the difference is 1/3.   You have 30mm v 20mm, so the 30mm is 50% bigger than the 20%.  In other words, it's quite noticeable unless you do 'epic' sized buildings whose size mitigates the scale difference.

[Too Bo Coo]

True scale terrain and buildings can occupy an awful lot of board space. It has long been common practice to use 'undersize' buildings so that they do not dominate the available area. Some gamers like this but others don't.

There can be a noticeable difference in things like door heights and window openings between 20 and 28mm but if the end 'effect'  using the smaller scale looks okay to you go for it. It is always a compromise between personal taste and maximising the space/money you have available.

Great point.  Even for my 20mm games, I tend towards 1/76 scale buildings to get just a bit more open space on the table...

[Arrigo]

Sunspear:

As chris said, if natural terrain is not such a problem (trees around my house seems from a lot of different scale   ), building do indeed present huge differences. Considering you are posting in the WW2 section I assume you will do WW2... and that you will play at realitvely low level, my experience is going for 28mm. I have paperterrain 28mm hamlet and while not fast to build, it is really really nice. The Hamlet set satisfied my 28mm NWE building needs at once.

Chris,

why you say 28mm look strange if even a single vehicle is involved? IMHO this is more a problem of rules than scale. I have games with vehicles in 28mm without any problem... on the other hand if you want to do tank duel in 28mm... well I will comment on that shortly on my blog so I can add libels toward certain designers... ahahaha...

Arrigo

[Arrigo]

True scale terrain and buildings can occupy an awful lot of board space. It has long been common practice to use 'undersize' buildings so that they do not dominate the available area. Some gamers like this but others don't.

There can be a noticeable difference in things like door heights and window openings between 20 and 28mm but if the end 'effect'  using the smaller scale looks okay to you go for it. It is always a compromise between personal taste and maximising the space/money you have available.

Well, if you do small level actions it has never been a common practice to use undersize buildings. On the other hands for large scale battles. Often you want one or two building to dominate the table if you play in 1 to 1 representation.

Anyway I have seen very few battalion or even company level 28mm games for world war two so I think in WW2 setting the difference is

[Westfalia Chris]

Sunspear:

As chris said, if natural terrain is not such a problem (trees around my house seems from a lot of different scale   ), building do indeed present huge differences. Considering you are posting in the WW2 section I assume you will do WW2... and that you will play at realitvely low level, my experience is going for 28mm. I have paperterrain 28mm hamlet and while not fast to build, it is really really nice. The Hamlet set satisfied my 28mm NWE building needs at once.

Chris,

why you say 28mm look strange if even a single vehicle is involved? IMHO this is more a problem of rules than scale. I have games with vehicles in 28mm without any problem... on the other hand if you want to do tank duel in 28mm... well I will comment on that shortly on my blog so I can add libels toward certain designers... ahahaha...

Arrigo

You do have a point, of course. In my case, it was prompted by building an FOW late war German army. We used a "standard size" 6x4ft table with terrain we already had and purpose-built houses, roads and the like, and the overall impression was much more realistic than with 28mm when we used to play WPB. Possibly a personal thing, and strangely enough, I don't have the same issues with SciFi gaming in 28mm, and my 28mm SCW collection isn't a problem either - but I am quite happy that I did my ImagiNations project in 20mm because there is less discrepance of ground scale, while the toys do look a bit nicer than 15mm ones.

I suspect it might be linked to the size of the tank models. A 1/56 T-26 (for my SCW Republicans) just is far less imposing than a 1/48th StuIG33b (for my Mid-War Germans), and because it is less bulky, it fits in more smoothly.

Also, I strongly advise against libelling game designers. Simply not worth it, IMHO.  

[Too Bo Coo]

I do have a 10mm Chain of Command set and the distances in CM on a 60x60 table look great. 

[Arrigo]

I do have a 10mm Chain of Command set and the distances in CM on a 60x60 table look great. 

mhmm... Big Rich advises that on a 6x4 ft 15mm will be more or less perfect for CoC... 10 mm is just one third smaller... but you have a table more than half smaller... distances sounds not right sorry. It is like playing Bolt Action in 28mm... cramped. But everyone is entitled to different tastes in distances...  even if they are bad tastes! 

Chris,

what is WPB? Never heard of.

About 15mm vs 20mm... well I like 15mm more... but I reckon that for post 1945 20mm has more choices. Also there are bummers in 15mm, 28mm, and 20mm...

said that a StuIG33b is not the vehicles you would use in a normal 28mm table except if you are in an urban setting... but after yests of gaming I have coming ot the conclusion that the scenario dictate the scale (and having never been grabbed by the whole point based things and min max thing I never had the need to create army lists... what I saw in my brief debauchery in DBM competitions was sufficient).

Arrigo

[Too Bo Coo]

mhmm... Big Rich advises that on a 6x4 ft 15mm will be more or less perfect for CoC... 10 mm is just one third smaller... but you have a table more than half smaller... distances sounds not right sorry. It is like playing Bolt Action in 28mm... cramped. But everyone is entitled to different tastes in distances...  even if they are bad tastes! 

Chris,

what is WPB? Never heard of.

About 15mm vs 20mm... well I like 15mm more... but I reckon that for post 1945 20mm has more choices. Also there are bummers in 15mm, 28mm, and 20mm...

said that a StuIG33b is not the vehicles you would use in a normal 28mm table except if you are in an urban setting... but after yests of gaming I have coming ot the conclusion that the scenario dictate the scale (and having never been grabbed by the whole point based things and min max thing I never had the need to create army lists... what I saw in my brief debauchery in DBM competitions was sufficient).

Arrigo

They dont have to sound right to you, it's not your game You're free to make whatever game best suits you.  I have to make choices based upon my space allowances and so sometimes all I have is 60 x 60 space.  As far 'taste' goes, 'bad taste' is purely subjective, but maybe it means something different in Italian, I couldnt tell you.

[Phil Robinson]

Don't know how relevant it is to the paper terrain but here is a 20mm Hovels ruin with a 28mm figure i took for a fellow on the Guild forum

[Too Bo Coo]

Don't know how relevant it is to the paper terrain but here is a 20mm Hovels ruin with a 28mm figure i took for a fellow on the Guild forum

That really doesnt look half bad at all!  I think with ruins, the scale may be more forgiving?

[Phil Robinson]

That really doesnt look half bad at all!  I think with ruins, the scale may be more forgiving?

Dave and myself have used Hovels 20mm ruins for our 28mm Great War games with no issues in fact no one has bought it up after posting action reports and pics.

[Arrigo]

That really doesnt look half bad at all!  I think with ruins, the scale may be more forgiving?

The houses are ok, the chap is too tall! By the way the taste thing was supposed ot be tongue in cheek. Of course tastes are subjective. Otherwise why people would drink Americano coffee? A thing that has only the colour in common with coffee? 

 It did not work, apologies. It was supposed  is like when you have a thread advertising some 15mm or 28mm miniatures and someone pop up complaining they are not in 20mm... or that he does not game in that scale (ok the latter is more common on PMT). Or worse when he 20mm fanatics starts to say their own scale has no rival... well I really found it pointless...

anyway being serious again, I understand your space constraints but I would think if you use a 60x60 cm square probably CoC is better in 6mm if you use tanks (ok depends which tanks you use, the 10mm have even more variance than 15mm). but sincerely I will not play in such a game in 10mm because it does not feel right to me. It appears to defeat the very purpose of CoC, namely having a somewhat realistic relationship between figure scale and distance. Yet if you have constraints I appreciate and understand the fact, but please appreciate and understand the fact that we can publically disagree. Next time I will disagree I will not attempt any form of bad jokes.

[Golgotha]

If my math is correct about 8mm  sorry could not resist. But on a serious not it does not generally seem to work that well and depends largely on the terrain - even 15mm and 20mm don't cross over well and that is a 5mm difference. Used to get away with more with the old true 25mm stuff so also min dependent...