One of the things that is often confusing to both the casual onlooker and the newcomer to the hobby is how we use scale in areas of wargaming. When you start to think about it, we really do play havoc with the way most people ere accustomed to seeing events. Some of the areas I am referring to are figure scale, (such as 5mm, 15mm, etc.: ground scale (.such as 1-10 yards, etc.). time scales (1 turn = 10 minutes) and figure ratios (such as 1 figure = 30 men). We take the handling of most of these items in stride when re regarding rules and playing times. For many, they are not cut end dried, however. I would like to offer a closer look at some of these things and show how confusing they can be. I will make no guarantees that anyone will be any less confused when I am finished. Just remember-- everything is relative. Figure Scale Figures advertised by various companies as being the same scale are different sizes. For example, 25mm figures range from 20mm to 30mm. This used to be a popular topic at conventions--and the manufacturers gave different answers...including: "You mean, someone else makes figures like these?" Or, "Just throw all those others away--these are the standard, now." Or, They measure them from the top of the head to the bottom of the boot heels while we measure ours from the eyebrows to the third set of laces on the shoes."" Or, "All people aren't the same size." (This usually from a company that makes 783 figures all the same size!) The real answer lies hidden beneath all of these phony pat answers. First of all, of course we all know that all people are not the same height. But these become minor variations when you start shrinking people down to 25mm scale. When you compare some sets of figures from different companies its like having a whole army of Doug Fluties vs. a whole army of Fridges (Walter Perry for those who don't fallow football at all). A small variation in size would be one thing, but even the barbarian Germans weren't big enough to swallow a Roman soldier whole. This is the kind of distortion we are looking at here. In real life the average height of soldiers in the same army might only differ by about 3 or 4 inches. This should only be reflected by a difference of 1mm in a 25mm figure. After a while about the only thing that you can do is to start imagining that all of the figures from all of the different manufacturers are really the same size after all. (This may be a little more difficult now that there is a war on drugs though). If you want to take an aesthetic approach to the problem you could always make sure that the larger 25mm'' figures are in the foreground of your battlefields and the smaller '25mm' figures are in the background so that the proper perspective is maintained. Then there is the practical approach of mounting the different sized figures on different sized bases so that they all level out at about 30mm high from bottom to trop. This way they will look: even when you scan across the tops of the ranks. (Although some figures may be on bases of 10mm high!). The logical way to convince yourself that they are all really the same height would go something like this: If historically soldiers were all roughly the same height in the same army (i.e.- not 2 feet taller or shorter than one another on the average), And these miniatures are historically accurate figures of real soldiers, Then (Q.E.D.) these figures are all the same height! Simple isn't it. But perhaps I am making too much of it all. Most wargamers end up surviving with the problem after all and there doesn't really seem to be much we can do about it. It is all relative I guess. But what about the other scales we use in wargaming? I'm referring to ground scale in rules and on the table. Now there's another good one for confusion. Let's see, we have 25mm figures (that's roughly 1"=66" or so. There is also disagreement here too but lets use 1/66 for now.) The ground scale may be 1"==10 yards or actually 1/360 scale, the scenery and buildings are usually the scale of the figures while the figures which represent anywhere from 10 to 50 men) are mounted on bases to reflect the ground scale. What we have are the makings of some very confusing situations. Take an example of a building of, say, 3" m 5 measurements. That's roughly 16.5' .. 2..5 or about the same as a good size one-car garage. If we have figures mounted on 1"x2" Stands with 4 to a stand then we can get 7 stands of figures or 28 men into our garage. But wait, that's really more like 700 men in the garage! And the garage is really more like 90' „ 150' which is the size of a mansion! Or are we supposed to assume that there are actually 25 garages (assuming a figure scale of 1e'25) holding our 700 men. And when 2 figures fire out the two windows we are really talking about 50 men firing out 2 windows, or 2 figures firing out 50 windows or what are we really talking about A quick search of the rulebooks finds one of three things. 1) The authors forgot to explain it, or they think we already know about this kind of stuff, or 1) they didn't think it was important enough to worry about. What is actually happening here is that the ground scales are confusing the issue because they differ from the figures. When we try to visualize accurately what is going on we really shouldn't be 1ooking at the figures themselves but only the space on the board that the stands and bases of the terrain take up. (this will riot be well received by the figure or terrain makers). Problems can arise when we try to 'see' the figures as a part of the battle in the scale it is really happening in (1/360) because they simply don't fit. As for me, I'll stick: to skirmish games where the figure and ground cu ales are both 1:1. Again, everything is relative. And -just when you thought you might start to understand a little o+ what's going on here we come to the worst scale of all: the time scale. You might think: that this wouldn't he so bad since time seems to be a +-+.i.rly steady and dependable thing. You know, "Time marches on" and "lime doesn't stand still" and "rime is money", But don't be so sure. First of all we usually know how long a turn is in our game's. A turn may be 20 minutes. However, in 20 minute our 1:25 scale figures can march 6" (180'), which should take real troops 2 minutes. Include firing and reloading (5 minutes). If a typical game of 12 turns is 4 hours at 20 minutes a turn, but at 5 minutes, that's one hour--a short battle. But given the casualty rates, we probably killed more men in one hour that would have died in 3 days. In the meantime, we took 5 hours to play those 12 turns! Rules authors tell us that much of the time is from troops getting orders and hurry up and waiting. Our time is now abstracted and behaves like a war movie--everything but the battle scenes are abstracted. It's all relative. I doubt I cleared up much confusion, but it helps to talk about them. If we strive for greater realism in a wargame, we have a long way to go. The above problems are only part of it. Hopefully, rules authors will continue to come up with innovation to clarify what exactly is happening on the tabletop that mimics battles. Back to MWAN # 25 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1986 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com