I first saw 5mm/6mm figures at Cold Wars in 1997. Cool! But I already had a pile of 25mm and 15mm lead lying around, and didn't want to add a new scale to the unpainted (not to mention unwashed) masses.

After spending many hours at the Con watching the games in progress and marveling at the workmanship that went into the painting and other preparation for the many table top battles, I realized that I hadn't the time or patience for 25mm. I certainly didn't have the room for it, at least not for anything bigger than De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA). So, the Internet proved its usefulness as I moved my 25mm figures to people who wanted them more than I did, and moved some of their cash my way.

"Just looking-really!"

Now I still wasn't seriously considering 6mm figures, but you know how that goes. I ended up ordering "just a few" with some other items and painted them up. Hey, it takes a lot less time to paint a DBA army in 6mm! Big surprise, right? What can I say? When you've lived in the woods as long as I have, it takes the electrons longer to move from one synapse to another. So, I had an Etruscan army and an early Roman army all painted and ready to go.

Now what? Guess I'd better mount them, I figured, as playing with individual 6mm soldiers didn't seem like a bright idea. But which way to go? DBA suggests mounting them in doubled numbers on 15mm stands. Yeah, that would look pretty nice; 30-50 figures doesn't really look like a lot, even on a 2 foot square board. On the other hand, from my perspective, the real advantage of 6mm is that it is small and doesn't take up as much space. So why not take advantage of that?

I ended up scaling the base sizes down to approximately one quarter that of 25mm. Despite the actual sizes of the bases, I play as if they are equivalent to 15mm, so all the movement capabilities are the same. (You do have to make a choice here, as 15mm and 25mm play are slightly different). I use 15mm wide bases, with depths as follows:

15mm for Elephants, Chariots, Artillery and War Wagons
11 mm for Knights, Cavalry, and Lt. Horse
9mm for Auxilia and some Blades, Bows, Warbands and Psiloi
7mm for Spears, Pikes, and some Blades, Bows and Warbands

See the DBA Basing suggestions for descriptions of when various base depths are used and how many figures should be mounted on each.

Use the 25/15mm numbers for figures. I don't worry about exact base depths, especially since I've been using full sized tin snips to cut them. What is half a millimeter between friends? However, I use precut 15mm deep by 40mm wide bases for the stock. So the widths, which are the critical factor, are constant. I assume that the depths are going to give results similar to 15mm figures. These are tiny elements and we are playing with them for fun. If we have a "serious" purpose in mind, we can use the bigger elements.

"Altoids Anyone?"

My first thought was to store them in Campaign Packs. Probably because I had a box that was just the right size, I began aiming at a collection that would have been a Punic War set. Obviously it included Romans and Carthaginians, but also Syracuse, another Sicilian army, Spanish, Gauls and, maybe, Pyrrhus. I made up some one foot square boards (folding, of course, that space thing again) and some 6mm-sized terrain pieces. All the i armies, terrain, dice and ruler fit into the box. The board didn't, but a rubber band held it all together nicely. The box was about 5 inches by 11 inches, so it met my criteria for space nicely.

Naturally, that didn't satisfy me.

Somewhere along the line, an Altoids mint box, complete with mints, came into the house. Nice little metal box (3 3/4" x 2 2/8" x 7/8" outside dimensions.) Hey! I wonder if I could fit 6mm elements in there? Not a bad fit. How many can I get inside? Wow, I can fit two whole DBA armies in there! Well, maybe not with all the options, but two DBA armies in a box that I'll fit in my shirt pocket! Talk about space friendly!

Well, that was it. Now, I had to figure out how to not only get the armies into that box, but also everything else you'd need to play a game of DBA-- terrain, cheat sheet, dice, ruler, board, and camps.

Let's start with the armies. I use metal stock for the bases, so strip magnets on the bottom of the box serve nicely to hold them in place. Even though 6mm figures paint up relatively quickly, one still doesn't want them banging around and getting battered. There are a few (very few actually) figures that won't fit in the boxes since they're too tall. For those I'll mount the magnet on the side of the box and the element will hang there, sarissas nicely and safely pointing horizontally.

"Shrinking the Accessories"

I bought the smallest dice I could find, and a couple of them fit neatly among the elements. The ruler does also. It can be painted on a popsicle stick and cut to size (3", 1/2" equals 100 paces), or made up on the computer and then pasted on the stick. The cheat sheet I use can easily be scaled down on the computer and printed out, cut to size and glued on the inside cover of the box. It needs a couple of folds, but that works out to our advantage. The terrain and camps are just drawn or painted on paper and cutout. It fits neatly in the fold of the cheat sheet. Larger terrain pieces are made in sections small enough to fit in the box.

That just leaves the board. I had a prettyfull box by this time, and that Carthaginian Elephant wasn't looking too happy stuck there in the corner, so I was beginning to doubt that I could manage a board in the box. I thought about attaching something to the outside, but that would add to the size and wasn't in the spirit of the thing. Even a paper board wouldn't fold up small enough, and would be unusable when unfolded anyway. What to do?

Finally, (remember those slow moving electrons?) I realized that I didn't need a "board" 12 inches square, I needed a space 12 inches square. I didn't need something that would cover that area, just something that would outline the area. Now we're almost there! I found some old string, which had served as kite string and as baseline for building a shed, thus proving its utility. Measured a foot, tied a knot, measured another foot, tied another knot, and a third foot, a third knot. Then I measured the last foot and cut and tied the two ends together. It you pull the four knots apart, you've got a parallelogram -- a square if your eye is good. In any case, you've got a space good enough to use for a playful game of DBA. And, yes, it will fit in the box!