A question of scale for buildings on the wargames table

[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

[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.

[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/

[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.

[Sandinista]

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.