I found G.F.Hutton's letter in the current issue raised a number of points that had occurred to me. There was a good opportunity seven or eight years ago to standardise in two wargames scales - 30mm and '00.' In recent years 15, 10 and 5mm could have been added. Alberken, Hinton Hunt, Airfix could all be intermixed and were in perfect scale with model railway scenery. And yet the opportunity to learn from model railway experience, with their EM, 00 and HO scales all in fact being variations on a theme, was thrown away. Like Mr. Hutton, I think that misguided marketing beliefs (competition CAN be healthy) and the pursuit of higher profits (can't blame the makers for that, I know) resulted in a great deal of harm being caused to the wargaming world that has now led to a too great fragmentation within the same basic interest. The makers who started producing larger figures a few years ago were, I feel, motivated partly by the desire to make their products incompatible with Airfix. Why sell just one regiment of Zouaves a side when you can trap the gamer into purchasing the whole army from you? I also believe that Minifigs "S" range was introduced because they lacked the designers with the skill to produce the smaller size figure. I grant that now their vast range is superb; the new E.C.W. cavalry are perhaps the best I have seen - but you compare an early Minifig with a Hinton Hunt or even an AIRFIX of the same vintage and it makes me wonder that they sold any. One's scale preference depends a great deal on what one starts with, 30mm in your case, Don, 00 in mine. It is like the feeling one develops for the first record one buys of a symphony -- if its good, no other performance, however similar in quality, ever sounds quite 'right' -- fascinatingly different, perhaps or a superior variation, but something 'different' nevertheless. I too am surprised that more makers do not find it worthwhile to produce original '00' size. There are a few bits of excellent equipment by Hinchliffe but nothing like their 5mm to one foot range. (Incidentally 00 is 4mm to one foot, which makes a 6 foot man 24mm precisely, role of foot to top of head). I use Hinton Hunt exclusively, and find them very satisfactory, with convincing anatomy and very, very accurate detail. (most makers are content with a standard musket and a point on the end; look at Hinton Hunt's casual zouave - he carries a tiny zouave pattern Remington with the correct sword bayonet!). His cavalry let him down badly, especially placed alongside those wonderful new Minifig horses, and there are other disadvantages that do not need elaboration here. I have about 3,000 on my shelves and I do feel the need for a much larger selection as my converting is absorbing too much wargames time. The Minifigs catalogue in 00 scale lands on my desk in successive dreams! 00 does have advantages. Hinchliffe figures look to me too large for wargames, however excellent the figures themselves -- for all equipment, and buildings, etc., are 25% larger than 00. True 20mm (Scruby) I think are too small to paint accurately in large numbers, and you need more figures to each unit in order to make it appear at all imposing. 15mm seem not too different in size from what we have already -- units again need more figures for the same visual effect of mass; consequently, ground scale starts to climb up to 25mm proportions, and your gain in space disappears; going down to 10 or 5mm seems much more sensible, and additionally a useful alternative collection to run alongside the 00 for altered perspectives and game techniques, especially the latter. 1/300th will be the standard scale of the future I am sure and our 25mm figures will appear as impractical to the next generation of wargamers as H.G.Wells' 54mm seem to us. Plus va change! But I do hope that we will see more makers running small lines of UNUSUAL 00 figures in their no doubt predominantly 25mm catalogues; Hinchliffe should be encouraged to produce 20mm versions of their A.C.W. equipment range -- how many Airfix collections would receive a new issue of real Napoleons and Ordnance rifles? A good many I should think; what about a line of Danish Napoleonic troops, Minifigs, including cavalry on scaled-down versions of those superb new horses? Is a 'market leader' the correct term for an experiment like this? I would think it worth a try. A line of unusual Colonial figures would be a good seller I am sure -- how many schoolboys can afford masses of Airfix Arabs and would invest in small collections of Foreign Legion, including mule detachments, etc., to fight against them? There must be a huge untapped market here; anyone game for a 00 revival society? Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 152 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1974 by Donald Featherstone. 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