Regarding the article To the Tenth Power (Counsels of War October/November 1971), I had heard somewhere that one can do anything with figures. This article certainly illustrates that point. I had somehow always thought of a figure representing X number of men standing in line with a certain frontage which is used to figure scale. The idea that the figure represented a number of men standing on each other's shoulders is certainly novel to me. Maintaining a true vertical scale instead of a true horizontal scale on the wargames table will cause a certain problem, or two. For example, a ridge that is supposed to represent a series of contour rising to a height of 200 feet will have to be built up on the wargames table to a height of 100 mm. To use very many hills on the table will certainly require a lot of materials from which to build them. Such hills will be very hard to climb (especially if the men persist in standing upon each others shoulders to the height of ten men.) Also, Mr. Scott is certainly fortunate that the figures he is using are 30mm and that he chose to have one figure represent ten men. If he had chosen to have the men stand on each others shoulders to a height of twenty (instead of ten) he would have found himself with 1 foot equal to 41mm and 3 inches would equal 100 yards. The ramifications upon the frontages necessary to accommodate these height calculations. If the figures have a base even as small as 71mm, this means that the ten men that Mr. Scott has the figure representing will occupy a frontage of only one actual foot. Even if the figures are on a base that is as wide as 2mm, the figure's actual frontage would still only be some four feet. Those soldiers certainly MUST be standing on each others shoulders! Using Mr. Scott's proposed scale and figuring that the ten men have come down off each other's shoulders and are in a double line formation, and that the five-man front is crowded together so that it only takes up a frontage of ten actual feet, one would still need a stand that is 5mm wide to represent these ten men, on the table. Such a stand is very close in size to the ones that I use (and is in fairly common use). However, most wargamers I know use this stand size to represent a company or squadron numbering over 100. Mr. Scott's article has opened my eyes, however. I am sure that everyone knows that an army travels on its stomach. Now I happen to have a figure that is holding a biscuit in his hand. If the man represents 20 men in the chow line, then the biscuit must represent the length of 20 biscuits laid end-to-end. I am sure that by measuring the biscuit and then dividing by twenty, I shall arrive at the basis for a perfect scale to wargame by! The only thing that worries me is that I am not sure whether the men were issued one biscuit at chow or whether they were issued two, in which case, my scale will have to be cut in half. I guess the only answer is more research. While I agree that Wargamer's Newsletter is not necessarily the best name for your magazine, I for one would hate to see you change the name. It has been identified with one of the best publications in the wargames field for so many years that it seems a real shame to have it disappear. I think that everyone knows what the name WARGAMER'S NEWSLETTER stands for well enough that further description is not really necessary. Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 119 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1971 by Donald Featherstone. 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