For many years I've been a follower of "the true religion" of miniatures scale. For me that was 25mm figs. I, like some many other true believers, looked down on all other scales. "I want to run Colonial games like Hal Thinglum does! " I would say to myself. Or "I love those Age of Reason games put on by Todd Kershner. " Or "Steve Dakes Franco Prussian wargame is the best! " All great 25mm figure games. All confirmed my faith in the "true" scale. Now I'm not so certain... CHRIS PLUMBS THE DEPTHS OF FIGURE SCALES I've always liked 25mm figures but that hasn't stopped me from buying figures in many different scales. I blame Howard Whitehouse for introducing me to the 6mm scale (I now have a ton of these guys - and I never use them!). Roger Despell sold me a bunch of 10mm figures, which I do sometimes use (10mm goblins make great little green men in 15mm sci fi games). But I only got into 15mm figures accidentally, when I got some WWI British Lewis gunners. I painted them up in gray uniforms for a Star Ship Troopers game and then bought some WWII Germans to paint up in brown (to be their enemy.) Then some more to be a green uniformed force and finally some more British to be a black uniformed force (painted to that they can double for Viet Cong). Along the way I accidentally bought a 15mm DBA Early Libyan Army, and a force of Cavemen, but I never painted them. After all they are the "wrong" scale. THE TERRORS OF 25MM GAMING So, you ask, what lead Chris to opening up his mind to all his "accidental" purchases' Where they really accidents? Was he just fooling himself ? Was I secretly already questioning the wisdom of my prejudice? In 1995, I began running what I consider to be "good" miniatures events. By good I mean that the figures were nicely painted and more importantly, that the terrain was diorama-like. I took King Solomon's Mine to Nashcon. Great big honking mountains, 25mm Arabs and Brits, a couple of German machine guns. A good game. I know it was good because people complemented Howard Whitehouse on the terrain (they did not know that I had made it - in Howard's style.) So I took the game to GenCon and discovered the first flaw in the 25mm scale I needed an assistant to help me move the thing! My big convention of the year has been GenCon. Since taking an assistant every year was not financially doable, I began experimenting with ever more portable terrain systems. You see it is the terrain rather than the figures that make games bulky. Which forced me to see the truth. "Bigger figures require bigger terrain!" I've tried to salvage 25mm games while still remaining sane but it has meant using smaller (2'x2') terrain boards and fewer figures (an army consists of 20 to 40 figures). I ran a little game like this at the Seven Years War Association a few years ago (a small Spanish garrison besieged by Arabs - with a British and French relief column). It worked but was NOT a game like Hal, Todd and Steve ran. Still, the little games worked for my aesthetics. I made a small downtown Paris board and a North African city and have done small actions on them. The trouble has been getting players to play. People looking for a 25mm game look for big terrain tables. So I tried again. Last Winter I went over to Winter Wars on Friday night to run a big Colonial game. Using 2x2 boards (hills, river chunks, and a City) I Set up the French invasion of Algeria. I mean it was big! 6'x8' terrain table, hundreds of figures, civilians and even goats! But not a single player... Now this happens when you put on convention games. One can't take it personally. But it is not fun especially when the portage is difficult. It made me question what kind of game I wanted to run. This year I did two big 25mm games. I took a big game 1760's French landing in Morocco game to the Seven Years War Association and a big Sudan Game to Nashcon. Both were fun, but my mind was already opening up. At Winter War I purchased a boat load of 15mm Arab Conquest guys, at Nashcon I got Byzantine and Persian opponents and Middle Eastern civilians, sheep and mules. I have a game in mind... SMALLER SCALES - SMALLER TERRAIN This is actually not true. Surprisingly I've found that I can use all the terrain I made for 25mm game for 15mm games. Since I mount my figures on the same size bases regardless of scale (1 - 25mm fig, 2 - 15mm's) and use exactly the same rules, the game should be the same. Right? Wrong! The size of the miniature makes the game look completely different! Where a 25mm game looks like a skirmish (even when huge tables and tons of figures are used) 15mm games look like battles. Scale suggests size and scope of action. 15mm's suggest a larger scale of action. Potentially 6mm guys suggest an even larger field of play. It is all about how they look on the terrain. Terrain becomes more important the larger the scale of action. So smaller troops need better terrain than large troops. A 15MM COLONIAL GAME FOR THE LOCAL CLUB I ran a game for the Indiana University Conflict Simulations Club in December 2000, "The Sands of the Sahara." The players all played characters in a European Expedition from Libya to Lake Chad. It was very much like "Science vs Pluck" in this regard. The natives were essentially preprogrammed (Like Hal's Zulu's used to be). My idea was to do a campaign in a day. So the players would be encountering a number of situations (raids, market days, ambushes, and battle). Some of the situations would be battle but not all. I wanted to give the players reason to not shoot everything that moves! To do this game, I set the players up on a flat desert board, next to a city board. They started surrounded by Arab traders, camels, sheep, civilians and tribal warriors. After organizing their expedition they set up in march order on a single 2'x2' flat board. I would move hidden movement markers towards them from neighboring boards, added on as needed, to run an encounter. The action focused on how they dealt with a series of encounters. I did not want the game to get bogged down in a slow eventless march across the desert. I managed this by jumping from one encounter to the next. If twenty days passed between encounters, it didn't matter. They players were not bored and neither was I! Not all encounters were battle. First they encountered a crowd of Arab women heading for market. It was a good thing this wasn't battle since the women got within 6" of the column before being spotted! After a couple of day light encounters I switched to night. The players set up their camp and I moved hidden movement markers at them. They spotted the raiders and drove them off. As the game went on we did a couple of raid/skirmishes. When the players met their first real battle they were thoroughly familiar with the rules. The battle went just like a 25mm battle would go. Hordes of Arabs swarming the relatively small band of Europeans. I had 80 stands of Arabs vs. 12 stands of Colonials. Many bullets were fired. The Arabs wounded a few soldiers but lost massive amounts of men doing so! Then it was over and the players went back to small encounters. The 15mm figures gave the game the feel of battle. If I had used 25mm guys in the same numbers (12 figures for the expedition) it would have looked like a D+D game. I could have got the same effect if I used more 25mm guys and a lots bigger board but that would have been heavy to carry and focused us on a single action. Wargames always focus on single battles. 25mm troops are well suited for this. But 15mm troops offer the possibility of doing something more. But to do so one must let go of old ideas and try out something new. MOVING BEYOND MINIATURES I love toy soldiers and am never going to quit using them, but I do recognize their limits. If we argue about scale we are wrong. Unless one is doing a skirmish - toy soldiers are all way off scale. Sadly, cardboard counters or colored wire are closer to scale than our games. What miniatures do though is give a feel, an aesthetic, that colored wire can not match! 15mm troops suggest bigger scale actions. But why stop there? Why not use the aesthetic to campaign in a day? Games that reward the players who think like commanders rather than gamers. It can be done! What does it take? A few simple shifts in rules. 1. Battles need to be resolved quickly - 20 to 30 minutes. 2. Players need to face skirmish situations in between battles. 3. Players need to have a say in their supply and how quickly they use them. 4. Players need to face non-combat encounters to demonstrate that even in war there is still peace. 5. There is a lot more hidden movement and a lot less God's Eye view. I do it with a combination of role playing (ala Science vs Pluck and D+D) miniatures rules (trying always to give that 25mm feel of battle to 15mm quickie actions) and judiciously used Matrix Game arguments to handle the unexpected. All in all this game is very different from the single action - big 25mm toy soldier game I lusted after in the past. It is closer to a movie scrolling past you on the screen. I like it. Back to MWAN #111 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2001 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com