A question of scale for buildings on the wargames table

[Aart Brouwer]

Mollinary,

you are absolutely right about the necessity for compromise. And I understand why your scale choices enabled you to lay that superb table for Gravelotte St Privat. If one of these days I put two pingpong tables side by side for an 8mm (Adler) scenario with several build-up areas and a lot of 'space' in between, I will certainly emulate your style and give priority to the bird's eye view. For smaller set-ups with close battles in towns, however, I think I will still prefer the lay-out I mentioned with slightly oversized houses. Anyway it's given me a lot of food for thought, thank you very much.

I think your Gravelotte table makes it clear that love of scenery is not merely an exercise in visual nit-picking or hyper-aesthetics. It reflects one's love of detail, of nature, of colour, human habitation, the patina of history that gathers on a landscape - in short: love of life. I have no doubt that you will agree, and some hope that even He would agree if He ever visited this humble forum.

Cheers,
Aart

[Leon]

...if He ever visited this humble forum...

He would be very welcome!

[Steve J]

I made some desert buildings a couple of years ago to scale for use with 15mm figures. Although they were completely accurate scale wise (I am a professional modelmaker by trade) they simply looked too big on the table.

Having seen some of the Timecast buildings that we used for the SCW game at Colours up close and personal, they were definately smaller than 10mm when figures were placed next to them. But more importantly, they looked right on the table, which to my mind is the most important thing.

So ultimately, I think it is important to go with something you feel happy with on the table. Hope this helps.

Steve J.

[Aart Brouwer]

Mollinary,

we're probably going to lose some readers who do not consider our subject as vibrant and exciting as we do, but so be it. 

I have joined the yahoo 1870 group and read some of the good stuff, including Weigle's file on building construction. He states that His building scale varies from 1/350 to 1/450. The 1/350 ones would be the same scale as the H&R figures he uses! Remember that these are not really 6 mil but actually 5 mil. Only the 1/450 houses would be distinctly smaller. But then Weigle adds some lines on his 'mass effect':

[...] all the detail that you include assumes an exaggerated importance because your viewers aren't expecting to find much detail at all. [...] Remember that your viewer isn't primarily looking at the buildings... They just have to look sufficiently realistic to not be embarrassing.

Weigle calling his cityscapes 'not embarrassing' would be the understatement of the year in wargameland. 

I think I have just found the sort of compromise that might suit me: some buildings of the 'proper' scale, some slightly smaller buildings, the whole group massed and laid-out in a tight and somewhat skewered formation along a twisting road or two.

My planned 14 houses might just do the trick, or I may have to add 4 or 5 slightly smaller ones. I have the feeling I'll be coming back to this subject..

Cheers,
Aart

[fred.]

Good discussion.

I think the whole relationship between models of buildings, real towns and ground scale is both interesting and complex.

One of the biggest compromises is do you want streets that can fit based figures on? This then leads to hugely wide roads, and the ability to see straight through a "town".

I have been slowly putting together an Arnhem bridge board, and went with 1/300 ground scale. I've used  a variety of commercial houses, but for some I have scratch built I went for mixing the ground scale of 1/300 with a vertical scale of of 1/150.



More photos at http://www.kerynne.com/games/ArnhemBridge.html

There is enough space for manoeuvre here - but there is still be problem of where to put stands representing troops in buildings - the floating on the roof looks rubbish - but is easy.

Then there is the opposite problem on most game boards of trying to represent a village or two separated by a couple of kms of ground. The photos you have provided give a good look of a village - but I'm not clear how the figures fit into the village?

[mollinary]

Hi Fred,

    Not sure who your question is directed at, Aart or me?

Regards

Mollinary

[fred.]

Possibly both?

It was a sort of muse /combination of question...

[Aart Brouwer]

Fantastic project, Fred! That Arnhem scene looks very ambitious and I admire your meticulous approach with the contemporary aerial photography and all. Remember I'm a denizen of this country and I know the area quite well. Your stuff looks quite convincing even in its preparatory stage.

So you've applied another form of visual distortion by making house with heights and bases of different scales? The human eye is our fondest witness, yet it betrays us all the time! 

What I like about your approach is that it 'dwarfs' the soldiers. Somehow soldiers always look lost in cities, they belong in the open field and appear out of their depth in a townscape. When playing with 10mm models this effect can be obtained by judicious use of some 15mm buildings. However, I have found that if you play with 8mm Adlers you can't really put them amid 10mm buildings. I don't know why, it probably has to do with the thickness of the basing in relation to the height of the models.

The pictures I posted are of towns that permit only a careful movement of troop bases, probably too fiddly for some. But then Bruce Weigle's tables aren't usually bigger than a pingpong table and players can easily lean over them and reach 'into' a town with their fingers to move their troop bases.

Cheers,
Aart

[fred.]

Cheers Aart!

I think your point about the buildings dwarfing figures is important for city battles - several of the photos of Arnhem around the bridge really indicate how tall the buildings where and how small the troops looked. I also wanted to capture the sheer size of the bridge ramp and the fly-over to the bridge proper. The bridge it's self is actually quite short. But to give another indication of the strange size of "scale models" the bridge is actually a HO/OO model railway scale bridge, which I think is only just wide enough and long enough for this project.

Aart, as a local perhaps you can help me with the colours of buildings around Arnhem bridge (though I understand that few original ones survived the war). Photos indicate pale walls and dark roofs. Is this white painted walls with grey slate roofs, or some other combination? Some photos also seem to show pale stone façades to buildings? Houses further out loo like they are mainly red brick with slate roofs, but this style looks less common with the taller buildings around the bridge.

[Meic]

Hi,

Apologies for coming back late to this been a tad distracted this week.
So many options, not sure the way to go yet. I'll certainly have a look at 1870 group and Bruce Wiegles buildings.

Aart, I have a small confession, I happen to know Will, and should have thought of asking him, especially as the last time I spoke to him he mentioned he was making some buildings and bridges.  But in my defence I've not seen the town layouts before... I shall be picking his brains soon though.

Hi Fred, love the look of the Arnhem board, would love to see updates as this progresses.

Anyone going to Fiasco, there's a chance I might make it?

Cheers

Meic

[fred.]

Hi Fred, love the look of the Arnhem board, would love to see updates as this progresses.

I too would quite look some updates too! I see its been over a year since I did anything towards it. In my defence I have moved house twice in that period! But I don't intend moving again for a long time, so hopefully I will be able to get the Arnhem board setup again, and move it towards completion.

[mollinary]

Seeing all these wonderful townscapes had prompted me to return!  I don't really go in for full blown towns, largely because the battles I am currently fighting (FPW) took place in village territory. Indeed, in doing Sedan last year we created three boards to the West East and South of the city in order to avoid having to model Sedan itself!  

However, we did do a representation of the straggling village of Bazeilles, which is a major feature of the battle.  The photo shows how it looked:
 

This covers two 10" x 10" terrain pieces, and was made following a trip to Bazeilles to get an idea of the basic building types, and a close look at the street map from contemporary maps of the battle together with today's 1:25000 maps. I then drew a scale outline of the village, with the main streets conforming to my standard 30mm wide road pattern, and the church, village square, and Maison de la Derniere Cartouche which played such a part in the battle.  Buildings were all Timecast 6mm, specially chosen by me, and located on the map I produceed.  

I then passed the whole lot to Keith Warren of Realistic Modelling who did the donkey work (artistic creation would be a better description)of producing the final model.  I think it shows the compromises I make - I believe it loooks like a real village  (it has about 11 buildings) but it also has roads and spaces (gardens, often neglected by wargamers) in order to allow troops to deploy effectively.  

It was the centre piece for much of the game, and changed hands numerous times between the French marines and the Bavarians.  The more observant among you will note that the south end of the village containing the church did sterling service as Gravelotte in this year's megagame.


Mollinary

[Aart Brouwer]

Interesting scenery, Mollinary! Thanks for putting in your two cents - or a couple of quid, to say the least, given the care and thought that went into your Bazeilles model.

I've been doing some reading on a short autumn holiday. One of the books I brought was Peter Hofschröer's Wellington's Smallest Victory (Faber & faber, 2004) about the tribulations of Lieutenant William Siborne who in the 1820's was give the task of producing a scale model of the battle of Waterloo. Hofschröer, whom some of you may know from various Osprey titles, is an acclaimed and award-winning military historian and a specialist in the Napoleonic era. His 1815 - The Waterloo Campaign is probably his best known book on the subject. Wellington alll but destroyed Siborne because the latter uncovered some unpleasant facts about Wellington, such as his mindless dithering on the first day of battle (he left Brussels a day late, never delivering the promised support to the Prussians at Ligny) and his deliberate distortion of the all-important Prussian contribution to the Waterloo outcome in his Waterloo Dispatch.

Writing on the subject of the actual mode, Hofschröer gives the following information about the scales used by Siborne:

As Siborne had some experience of the construction of relief maps - he was, after all, a published authority on the subject - he knew what problems he would have to face when planning the model. The first decisions he had to make regarded the questions of size and scale and what proportion to take for the necessary differences between the horizontal and vertical scales. To explain, in topographical modelling, if the same scale is used both horizontally and vertically, things will appear out of proportion. This is because of the great disparity between the view obtained when crossing terrain and that presented by a model of it. When crossing terrain, the eye is only five or six feet above the ground and it sees all objects in profile, or nearly so, and consequently in their greatest apparent magnitude. However, when viewing a model, the perspective is as if the eye is several miles above the ground, as if floating in a balloon. IN choosing the size of the vertical scale for a model, both the horizontal scale and the character of the terrain had to be taken into account to give a realistic impression to the viewer.
Siborne's earlier work on the subject had shown that horizontal scales of six inches or more to a mile were best suited to produce the effect desired. One third had to be added to the horizontal scale if the terrain were mountainous, one half if hilly and two thirds if composed of of gentle undulations. If the horizontal scale were less than six inches to a mile, these additions for the vertical scale would be increased in proportion.
Siborne chose a horizontal scale of nine feet, or 108 inches, to the mile, roughly1:600, which was a much larger scale than he had used for his previous work. His vertical scale was roughly 1:180, this combination of scales giving a good feel for the terrain. Siborne must have undertaken considerable experimentation to establish this.
Each figure displayed on the Large Model represented two actual soldiers. These figures were disproportionately large when compared to the terrain features, but the units occupy the correct area on the model. This too was a compromise between accurate realism and aesthetics. The final result was 'the most perfect model'. It looked right and conveyed a most realistic impression of the battle.
pp74-76

Members will be not at all surprised to learn that our illustrious predecessor used God's own military model scale of 1:180, which coincides perfectly with 10mm...

In any case the above provides more corroboration to the view that terrain should be of a smaller scale than the soldiers. As is indeed shown in this picture of the Large Model, wherein the soldiers are distinctly larger in scale than the peasant hut in the upper left quadrant.



Nonetheless I find it hard to reconcile this insight with my own impression that soldiers should look slightly dwarfed by buildings and such. Anyway, some more food for thought, I reckoned.

Cheers,
Aart

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

I'll argue for the reverse - think there are some photos of the Geytsburgh 6mm game by Baccus - using Irregular 2mm Buildings, and I've seen the same with 10mm WWII. It looks good.

IanS

[Gandalf]

For me it's a question of balancing visiual effect against ground scale and trrop representations.
One of my compadres uses 10mm figures for true ground scale of 5mm:1m or 1:2000, one man is one figure and a building represents its actual footprint.  Comparing that to BKC where a stand of infantry can represent a squad, platoon or company and the ground scale varies accordingly, one building represents a built up area of streets, houses, gardens etc.
In addition to Timecast's very nice but expensive resin buildings, there are a few pdfs available which can be printed using different scaling to produce a desired effect before having to resort to scratch building    

http://www.instantdurable.com/ACCUEIL/accueil_franglais_menu.htm (free download)
http://www.paperterrain.com/ (free download)
http://www.toshachminiatures.com/ (free download)

I prefer to go with what looks right and is visually pleasing rather than getting too hung up on the accuracy