Scale for SG

15 posts ยท Feb 18 2003 to Feb 19 2003

From: Thomas Barclay <Thomas.Barclay@s...>

Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 19:12:32 -0500

Subject: Scale for SG

Okay, Laserlight, close your ears. I'm about to utter a Heresy in the Scalist
Wars and I don't want to see you jigging in the streets.

25mm:

Pros - Easier to paint. Can buy individual
figures. More pose selection by a long piece. Can sort of work with some 28mm
stuff.

Cons - Expensive relative to smaller scales. Not
so good with standard SG groundscale (which really is 6mm!). Hard to find (in
general, not counting GZG) a lot of good terrain, buildings,
etc. in the right scale - most are off by a bit too
large (28-30mm stuff) or too small (1/72nd
scale or 20mm).

15mm:

Pros: Can still put a good paint job on them (I was convinced after we bought
several thousand 15mm medeivals and dark ages guys and I saw what could be
done). Can paint them fast! Good levels of detail in modern castings.
Cheaper - you can often field a 15mm squad
for the cost of 2-4 25mm guys. And vehicles
cost about a third. Selection of vehicles is good (Brigade has some lovely
15mm vehicles, as do other makers) and there are some 15mm figures made by
other manufacturers (current and prior, such as Martian Metals 15mm Traveller
stuff). Figures work better using standard SG gaming scale or you can even
compress scale to give you a bigger area of battle. And did I mention cheaper
and faster to table? And scratchbuilds based off existing
Rocco vehicles or other 1/72 kits look more in-
scale. You can also use 1/72nd scale buildings
(from model makers) and smaller (shorter and hence far cheaper) trees from the
scenery guys.

Cons - A little harder to get "single character"
type detail (as opposed to "soldier" type - the
kind that looks good at a distance) on a figure
this big. Still too big for figure/ground scale to
match. Can't buy "per figure" and have fewer poses available in canonical
forces (from GZG). This may change as 15mm grows in popularity.

6mm

Pros: Figure to ground scale correct. Fast to paint. Poses almost don't matter
as figures are so small. Cheap to buy, relative to larger scales. Terrain
plentiful from various manufacturers like
Brigade and GZG and others (incl Geo-Hex).
Let's you use far smaller trees/buildings etc.
thus again reducing cost. Cons: Pretty darn small. Hard to do casualties to
infantry mounted in "clusters" on a penny or equivalent base. Not quite as
visual (IMHO).

I'm thoroughly married to 25mm, but then I
had about 400+ plus 30+ vehicles then (now
probably double that at least). I've bought 15mm for new friends (key
manufacturers are GZG, Brigade and DLD who all make some excellent 15mm stuff)
and have been impressed
by detail and quality levels. And by costs - you
can field a force for 1/3rd the price, not
inconsiderable if you plan to build big armies or buy lots of different
forces. Selection is somewhat more limited in canonical forces, but I expect
this to change as time goes by and
there are a lot of non-canon manufacturers
(Peter Pig, etc IIRC?). 6mm, though in scale, is just not quite visual enough
for me for SG and it is what I play DS in (rather than 2mm or something).

So in summary, despite my own firm adherence to 25mm, I'd advise anyone new to
the game to delve into 15mm for cost and
availability/cost of models for scratchbuilds and
buildings/terrain and trees etc. reasons. It also
paints faster and looks good with less painting effort.

That's my 0.02, and lord knows I've probably bought a couple of hundred 15mm
guys and about a dozen or more vehicles in addition to the 25mm stuff.

Tomb.

From: KH.Ranitzsch@t... (K.H.Ranitzsch)

Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 06:38:12 +0100

Subject: Re: Scale for SG

[quoted original message omitted]

From: Christopher K Smith <smithck@m...>

Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 08:22:06 -0600

Subject: Re: Scale for SG

> 6mm

This goes along with the SJGames Ogre miniatures discussion as well. I can't
find a picture on the SJGames website, but I seem to remember the Deluxe Orge
package having infantry bases that allowed placing two or three infantry
figures on it, and then removing them. Is this correct? If so has anyone used
them in SG, or would this work? I would like to get into SG but I don't have
the space, money, or painting skills to go 25mm. This may be odd, but I've
always preferred a nice hexmap to actual miniature terrain. I'm thinking some
of my Battletech maps and some 6mm figures would make a decent play area, and
not take so much room (efficiency appartments are kind of small don't cha
know).

From: TMP Editor <webmaster@t...>

Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 09:57:21 -0500

Subject: Re: Scale for SG

> I seem to remember the

No infantry in my Deluxe Ogre set. (Just checked it.)

From: Bradley, Jason (US - Minneapolis) <jabradley@d...>

Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 07:01:35 -0800

Subject: RE: Scale for SG

Actually, a friend and I at one time used GW epic minis to build and play 40K
battles! The table for playing on is like 1'x1' roughly and the terrain was
easy to make!

Jason

[quoted original message omitted]

From: Doug Evans <devans@n...>

Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 09:28:00 -0600

Subject: RE: Scale for SG

> Actually, a friend and I at one time used GW epic minis to build and

Again, somewhere lost in the annals of archives, I once mentioned the idea
of taking Epic figs, hole-punching adhesive plastic magnetic material,
sticking the dots on the bottom of marine and 'stealer figs, painting
corridors on a sheet of metal (square, flat cookie tins seemed ideal), and
make Space Hulk, the travelling edition! I think somebody tried it...

I've some Pop-a-matic dice to make the set complete.

The_Beast

From: Germ <germ@g...>

Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 15:39:21 -0000

Subject: Re: Scale for SG

I had this conversation recently with someone. They made a travel scrabble
style board with magnetic pieces for space hulk.

Hmmm my mind is now going into overdrive on the idea of a pocket wargame:) Oh
no something else to add to my list of projects!

Jeremey germ@germy.co.uk www.germy.co.uk

[quoted original message omitted]

From: Bradley, Jason (US - Minneapolis) <jabradley@d...>

Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 07:43:28 -0800

Subject: RE: Scale for SG

LOL! I may have to try that!

Jason

[quoted original message omitted]

From: John Crimmins <johncrim@v...>

Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 11:16:35 -0500 (EST)

Subject: Re: Scale for SG

On Tue, 18 Feb 2003 08:22:06 -0600, "Christopher K Smith"
<cksmith@olemiss.edu> wrote:

> > 6mm
I
> can't find a picture on the SJGames website, but I seem to remember

The figures won't "stick" unless you glue them in. You could use
Fun-Tac, or (even
better) U-Knead-It to hold them in, but the point of contact is so small
that the hold wouldn't be strong at all.

One of my unfinished projects (out of several hundred such projects) is a set
of infantry to accompany an SJG "Ogrethulhu" miniature.

I'm using old Epic-scale plastic GW Chaos Marines for this, and what I
did was glue a small washer to the base of each one. I've got a lot of old
refigerator magnets somewhere about, so I'm going to be cutting those up to
create a base that an entire squad can stick to.

A similar trick would work fine for SGII, although I would recommend painting
the bases in
bright colors -- both to make them stand out on the tabletop, and to
make it clear which particular unit a figure belongs to.

From: Laserlight <laserlight@q...>

Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 12:35:11 -0500

Subject: RE: Scale for SG

> Again, somewhere lost in the annals of archives, I once mentioned the

Magic claims to have had a game of something, presumably SG, with 2mm figs on
an index card while he was flying. I don't think we ever cleared up whether he
meant "flying as a passenger" or "piloting the helicopter"....

From: Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@t...>

Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 22:48:56 +0100

Subject: Re: Scale for SG

> John Crimmins wrote:

> One of my unfinished projects (out of several hundred such projects) is

While they're nice too, I like SJG's "Spawn of Ogrethulu" better :-/ I
have
both types :-)

Later,

From: CS Renegade <njg@c...>

Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 00:37:01 -0000

Subject: RE: Scale for SG

> From: ~ On Behalf Of devans@nebraska.edu

> .. I once mentioned the idea of taking Epic figs, hole-punching

> I've some Pop-a-matic dice to make the set complete.

That's a bit sophisticated for your average GW customer, isn't it? They'll
spend all their time trying to work out how to get the dice out so they can
roll them.

I'm sure there's more cheap humour to be had concerning Pop-a-matic
dice, the typical age of a GW denizen and the number of dice throws
required by WH-pick-your-genre ruleset.

It's wildly irrelevant, but to throw a spanner in the scale question I've done
Aliens with TTG "Starbeasts" (circa 25mm) and Platoon20 conversions. Are there
any other weird scales out there?

From: Doug Evans <devans@n...>

Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 19:33:40 -0600

Subject: RE: Scale for SG

> It's wildly irrelevant, but to throw a spanner in the scale question

Well, someone on the list once mentioned playing with 3 1/2 inch GI
Joe's outdoors, and there's the group that does Aliens with 12 inch Joe's
outfitted as colonial marines with scale Hasbro Aliens I've seen at GenCon.

I suppose we could include paintball and that whole 'MILES' thing...

The_Beast

From: John Crimmins <johncrim@v...>

Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 20:34:49 -0500

Subject: Re: Scale for SG

> At 10:48 PM 2/18/03 +0100, you wrote:
is a
> set of infantry

The GW guys won out because I've got a few sprues of them and didn't have
plans for the little...fellows. Waste not, want not.

Actually, I use GW plastics for al of my Ogre infantry. PE are Space
Marines, Combine are Eldar -- I like the scale better, and I have
BUNCHES of them.

From: Tim Bancroft <tim@d...>

Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 14:01:00 -0000

Subject: RE: Scale for SG

"CS Renegade" <njg@csrenegade.demon.co.uk>::snip::
> It's wildly irrelevant, but to throw a spanner in the scale question

There are some 10mm figs for Martians, some S-Trooper (film) lookalikes,

bugs, martian tripods, alien-like creatures, Aliens-marine like troopers

and a few vehicles at 10mm scale by Pendraken, url apparently
http://www.pendraken.co.uk/.