A question of scale for buildings on the wargames table

Started by Meic, 07 September 2010, 11:04:58 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Last Hussar

I find the biggest problem with buildings is they are the place where vertical and ground scales meet.  Take BP.  I reckon a ground scale of 1 inch = 10yds/meters is about right (I know 10m is closer to 11 yds, but wargamingly* they are effective interchangable).

Even if you use 10mm figs at the BP inch scale, the house foot print is out of scale with the height by masses.  A house 20 feet wide is 609 cm. Divide by 180 to get to N scale is 3.4 cm wide.  At ground scale 3.4cm is 40 feet (1in to 10yds is after all 1:360). However that is 140 figures a unit (I get 6 figs on a 2mm square base).  Now as much as Dave and Leon would love us to be buying 2000 figure armies (and that is just the infantry for 15 bns) two of the reasons people go 10mm is 1) Cheaper - same number of figures at 10% of the price, and 2) space saving - I do BP at cm measure units, not inches.  This makes the ground scale 1cm - 10m 1:1000 - or a 11 to 2 ratio difference - that house is in excess of 30m (100 feet-ish) wide!  Hougoumont will dominate the landscape even more that it did.  If you take it down to 6mm/1:300 the trrops can fire over the roof!
*Yes I've invented a new word.
I have neither the time or the crayons to explain why you are wrong.

GNU PTerry

cameronian

Actually the reason I went into 10mm was scale; the possibly of fielding big armies for big engagements without the necessity of hiring the local squash court!
The further away you move from a figure ratio of 1:1 the more 'unrealistic' the housing becomes; simply put, if your figure scale is 1:70 and your ground scale is 1cm:25m, then the local village church, either in 10mm or 6mm will have a footprint the size of a Cathedral, same goes for houses, cottages etc etc. obviously there has to be be a compromise. My compromise entailed getting Steve at the Baggage Train to make me some houses, cottages and churches; these I mounted on 3mm MDF; the overall effect isn't nearly as naff as you might imagine, also it allows you to build a small town from 20 or 30 buildings rather than from 2 or 3. Have a look here and see what you think. Like I said, it really only works if you are going for SIZE (whether or not size matters, is, I have found, an entirely personal thing! Make up your own mind)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55665103@N03/
Don't buy your daughters a pony, buy them heroin instead, its cheaper and ultimately less addictive.

Sandinista

I prefer my buildings to be in scale with the figures, I suppose it all depends on what you want to represent on the table. I'm more into it the visual aspect, I'm playing a game with (hopefully) pretty figures so I want pretty buildings too.

Pruneau

Some excellent points, for both cases.  I also tend to go for buildings that are more or less in scale with the miniatures as far as doors and windows go, but my buildings will be small.  And just yesterday, when trying to come up with a way to add gardens to my houses, I realised that if the garden is in scale with the house, it becomes the size of a tennis field for the troops.  The stuff is still on my worktable, question is still open.  If I make the garden small, it looks funny.  If I make it big, it takes an infantry squad a full turn to walk across.
Boardgames: MMP ACW, ASL ᴥ BKC & SSOM - WW2 (In development) ᴥ Flying Lead - Sci-Fi: Shocktroops, Pulp, Spugs ᴥ WH - Greenskins, Dwarfs

http://hiording.blogspot.com - http://runequestfun.blogspot.com - http://secondsquadonme.blogspot.com

ʎɐqə ɯoɹɟ pɹɐoqʎəʞ ɐ ʎnq ı əɯıʇ ʇsɐl əɥʇ sı sıɥʇ

Sandinista

Quote from: Pruneau on 24 November 2010, 08:30:55 PM
Some excellent points, for both cases.  I also tend to go for buildings that are more or less in scale with the miniatures as far as doors and windows go, but my buildings will be small.  And just yesterday, when trying to come up with a way to add gardens to my houses, I realised that if the garden is in scale with the house, it becomes the size of a tennis field for the troops.  The stuff is still on my worktable, question is still open.  If I make the garden small, it looks funny.  If I make it big, it takes an infantry squad a full turn to walk across.

But then it could represent a whole series of gardens/houses just as figures represent a whole series of troops.

Pruneau

Yes, it could, depending on the scale of your game.  With WW2 miniatures, I have this thing that I'll represent every single vehicle with one model, and I cannot see a unit (with say 3 models) to represent more than a fireteam (half a squad, 4 to 8 soldiers).  Therefore, I need open houses where units can move into, and my 5' by 5' table represents only 750 m along the side (1cm=5m).  So for me a house represents just that.  I feel that if you'd play say company per unit scale, 6 mm houses would do the job perfectly, since they are only representations of a village, and not so much a series of houses.

One might wonder (if one were actually reading this) why I always use so many brackets, but that's just the way my mind works, it seems.  Lots of random subroutines.
Boardgames: MMP ACW, ASL ᴥ BKC & SSOM - WW2 (In development) ᴥ Flying Lead - Sci-Fi: Shocktroops, Pulp, Spugs ᴥ WH - Greenskins, Dwarfs

http://hiording.blogspot.com - http://runequestfun.blogspot.com - http://secondsquadonme.blogspot.com

ʎɐqə ɯoɹɟ pɹɐoqʎəʞ ɐ ʎnq ı əɯıʇ ʇsɐl əɥʇ sı sıɥʇ