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Made in us
Member of the Ethereal Council






So me and my friend where talking about the scale of the same, then I realizes that I really dont know when someone says "It is a 30MM game"
I know what MM are, but not what it means in context.
It 30MM the size of a human fiqure?

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Made in au
Norn Queen






IIRC, it's the average height to the eye level of a model. It gets iffy when you start throwing 'exaggerated' or 'heroic' into it. GW still like to claim that their games are 28mm, but 'exaggerated' or 'herioc', which makes up for them mostly not being 28mm to eye level.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/18 04:40:41


 
   
Made in ca
Posts with Authority




I'm from the future. The future of space

The mm is generally the size of the miniatures, usually to the eyes because hats and helmets can hide the top of the head.

As for "heroic" and whatnot, that's definitely an issue. I have some 54mm historicals and their hands are the same size as GW imperial guard hands. I now prefer realistic proportions and it was a real strange experience to be reminded of an old cadian painting commission when I was painting some 54mm toy soldiers. GW's proportions are *that* cartoony.

Balance in pick up games? Two people, each with their own goals for the game, design half a board game on their own without knowing the layout of the board and hope it all works out. Good luck with that. The faster you can find like minded individuals who want the same things from the game as you, the better. 
   
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 -Loki- wrote:
IIRC, it's the average height to the eye level of a model.

That varies a little. Some companies measure to the eye, some to the top of the head. And as a lot of them just take it for granted that the way they are doing it is the 'right' way, they rarely bother to mention which method they use.

An industry standard would be nice.


GW still like to claim that their games are 28mm, ..

I haven't seen GW specify the size of their miniatures since the '90s.

 
   
Made in us
Brigadier General






Chicago

As folks have said, the traditional method is to measure from the sole of the foot to the eyeline, because as others have said, various forms of headgear can vary the height of a miniature quite a bit.

As insaniak points out many companies paste a label on the size of their figures without really taking proper measurements, and some simply don't tell you at all.

Add to the mix the varying degrees to which a miniature is "heroic", a term which refers to enlarged and exaggerated proportions, such as that seen in GW minis. Though nearly all 28mm figures are "heroic" (they have to be or all the wrists would break and the gun barrels would be snap off) minis that are closer to actual proportions are referred to as "true scale" while those that are exaggerated are called "Heroic". However, some companies use the term "heroic" to justify why their minis are considerably larger than the number stated on the package.

Confused yet?

That's where the internet comes into play. Often times a photo or report from another game is the only way of finding out if a given set of minis will be comparable with another set.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/19 00:24:12


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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_wargaming#Scale

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 Ghaz wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_wargaming#Scale


Bare in mind that that is very roughly and based off from measurements to the top of the head versus to the eyes. 1/72 would be roughly a 6 foot tall person at 25mm to the top of the head. 1/72 also roughly (very roughly) translates to modern 20mm figures (which tend to be taller than 20mm to the eyes...which goes to scale creep).




Automatically Appended Next Post:
 insaniak wrote:
 -Loki- wrote:
IIRC, it's the average height to the eye level of a model.

That varies a little. Some companies measure to the eye, some to the top of the head. And as a lot of them just take it for granted that the way they are doing it is the 'right' way, they rarely bother to mention which method they use.

An industry standard would be nice.


Abandoning the dumb sizes entirely and going to proper scales would be nice. No questions, no issues - just simple math. 1/55 or whatever scale you want - just pick a scale and use it.

The size issue becomes problematic with odd lines too. For example, there is a line of 28mm gnomes. They are not 28mm in relative relationship to 28mm humans - they are gnomes that are 28mm to the eye (which based on many fantasy settings' backgrounds would end up being something like 1/35 scale). It is an accurate representation of the size of the figures - but confusing if you are thinking that 28mm has anything to do with anything that is scale based.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Eilif wrote:
Though nearly all 28mm figures are "heroic" (they have to be or all the wrists would break and the gun barrels would be snap off) minis that are closer to actual proportions are referred to as "true scale" while those that are exaggerated are called "Heroic". However, some companies use the term "heroic" to justify why their minis are considerably larger than the number stated on the package.


Used to think that...

Then I cast up a bunch of 1/72 figures. The weapons were slightly heroic - but would be accurately scaled (roughly) for 28mm. Nothing broke off. I have come to equate heroic with lazy instead. They can be lazy with proportions, lazy with details and lazy with standards. That isn't to say an oversized sword or BFG doesn't get a pass by the rule of cool - but oversized simply to call it heroic does not.

If you were to scale it up - most heroic figures would be portly fat men with clown shoes, baseball mitts on their hands and wearing a Burger King mask...nothing heroic about them.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/08/19 01:36:24


 
   
Made in jp
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Somewhere in south-central England.

If you compare GW figures with accurate 1/35th scale figures you see the heads and hands are the same size, the torsos, arms and legs are the same thickness, but shorter, though the arms are less short than the legs, giving a little bit of a gorilla impression. Overall the GW model looks more like a "Super Deformed" version of a real person.

1/35th is nominally 54mm scale. GW is nominally 28mm.

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Kilkrazy wrote:If you compare GW figures with accurate 1/35th scale figures you see the heads and hands are the same size, the torsos, arms and legs are the same thickness, but shorter, though the arms are less short than the legs, giving a little bit of a gorilla impression. Overall the GW model looks more like a "Super Deformed" version of a real person.

1/35th is nominally 54mm scale. GW is nominally 28mm.


"Super Deformed" is a great way to describe them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_deformed


"I can be space marines?"

One thing that should be clear now though is that there's no real consistency when it comes to mm sizes. For example, most people would say that 1/32 is 54mm rather than 1/35, but 1/32 figures can easily be 60mm tall. And the thickness of the details and the proportions can often do more to give an impression of size than actual height or volume. For example, Armies in Plastic and Accurate both make 1/32 figures and Tamiya makes some 1/35 and you'd probably think the Accurate ones and the Tamiya ones are the same size and the AiP ones are bigger. Until you put the Accurate and AIP next to one another and realized they are actually the same height, but the Accurate ones are far more realistic in their scaling while the AIP are definitely classic toy soldier in their styling.

Historical gamers have had to deal with this issue for a long while. Are the Roman legionaires from company X okay alongside the ones from company Y and so on.

End result: Case by case basis.

Balance in pick up games? Two people, each with their own goals for the game, design half a board game on their own without knowing the layout of the board and hope it all works out. Good luck with that. The faster you can find like minded individuals who want the same things from the game as you, the better. 
   
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 Ghaz wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_wargaming#Scale


That chart is totally off. The top-of-head measurements have been abandoned by almost all modern models. These days you only see top-of-head measurements on very small scales (10mm or less)or on companies selling plastic 1/72 scale minis, many of whom for some reason insist on putting 25mm on the package instead of the 20mm label that most wargamers would recognize them as.

TMP has a much better chart here:
http://theminiaturespage.com/ref/scales.html

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Trustworthy Shas'vre






And then PP comes along with their '30mm heroic scale' miniatures where models have hands twice the size of their legs.


(I mean, I love the model for its heroicness, but the scale is a little off )


The simple answer is that in general, a '30mm scale' game means that the average male human miniature should measure about 30mm to the eyes, but this is NOT a hard rule. As other people said, it gets distorted with the 'heroic' scales popular in most games, and harder to describe with non-human models.

Modelling scales like 1/48 or 1/72 give an exact scale of how much the unit is scaled down: A 1 inch tall model represents a 72 inch tall person.
   
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A lot of people get on PP for their "scale issues" - but...

For all we know that is a properly scaled figure. Never seen one in real life...so I can't say. Bit like when they bring comic books to live action for movies - they have to use CG to make the Hulk or the big behemoth mutants for Resident Evil.

They do have some issues - but that in particular is not one of them to my eye.
   
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Full disclosure time: Seeing as I am a troll, (I have a very big laptop) I can safely say I look almost exactly like that, My teeth and tusks are a little cleaner and I am not wearing armour but that model is a fair representation of a troll

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Really, it's best to consider scale height and proportion two different things.

Any model that is 28mm to the eye or is accurately comparatively sized to a 28mm to-the-eye average man, can be called 28mm.

Proportion is a matter of taste and artistic choice. Thus, you have True scale, heroic, very heroic and everything in between. Further, you have models where the entire model is thickened evenly, and models where certain parts of the model are more enlarged than others

Say what you will about PP models, but they are neither the originator or the most extreme example of models that are exaggerated and possibly out-of-propotion.

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Correct scale and proportion naturally applies to human figures and real life machinery not to fantastic items.

You can do a troll or giant in any scale and make it however large and distorted you like.

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 frozenwastes wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:If you compare GW figures with accurate 1/35th scale figures you see the heads and hands are the same size, the torsos, arms and legs are the same thickness, but shorter, though the arms are less short than the legs, giving a little bit of a gorilla impression. Overall the GW model looks more like a "Super Deformed" version of a real person.

1/35th is nominally 54mm scale. GW is nominally 28mm.


"Super Deformed" is a great way to describe them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_deformed



Well, 40k isn't exactly Super-deformed. That would make them more like The Super Dungron Explore figures, where stuff like hands and heads are massive even compared to the most severe example from GW. The heroicness of 40k miniatures range, mainly quite far proper true scale for quite close with the FW AM regiments.

Also, 1/35 doesn't match up to 54mm. 1/32 scale would be the proper equivalent to the true 54mm whilst 1/35 would most accurately convert to 50mm.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/21 15:34:34


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It just gets weird in general. For instance, 1/72 is considered 20mm but some of the figures are like 22m or 23.5mm in reality. I have no idea for 15mm (1/56?) but I imagine they'd have the same kind of issue, there's a discrepancy of a millimeter or three that varies.

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I think 15mm is 1/100 scale whilst 1/56 seems to be the same as 28mm true-scale.

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 sing your life wrote:
I think 15mm is 1/100 scale whilst 1/56 seems to be the same as 28mm true-scale.


I think you're right, no idea what I was thinking of above

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/21 16:22:57


- Wayne
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When Dealing with fractional scales to mm scales, having a bit of flexibility is usefull. remember that almost all miniatures are at least somewhat exagerated in proportions. A 28mm figure has to be at least a tiny bit heroic or things like writsts and gun barrels will be to weak to survive the rigors of the gaming table.

sing your life wrote:
Also, 1/35 doesn't match up to 54mm. 1/32 scale would be the proper equivalent to the true 54mm whilst 1/35 would most accurately convert to 50mm.

1/35 and 1/32 are fine matches for 54mm. They aren't perfect, but both will look fine alongside 54mm figures. 50mm is largely irrelevant since there are almost no 50mm wargaming models.

sing your life wrote:I think 15mm is 1/100 scale whilst 1/56 seems to be the same as 28mm true-scale.

15mm is technically 1/107 but 1\100 is considered by most to be perfectly compatible. 15mm soldiers are almost always quite a bit wider than a perfectly scaled figure, so that also makes them look good along side 1/100. Because of this, it's become common to seem 1/100 labels put on 15mm figures.

As for 28mm compatibility with 1/56 it entirely depends on what models you're using. Many of the newer crop of plastic 28mm models are very close to "true scale" and as such they will tend to look good next to 1/56 models. However many metal lines are fairly heroic and look out-of-place, especially when compared to the hatches on 1/56 armor. For this reason, some folks will go as far as to use 1/48 scaled vehicles. Though not as common in model shops as 1/35, 1/48 models far outnumber 1/56. A 1/48 scaled person is technically about 33mm, but is going to be about as wide as many 28mm metal figs. If the 28mm fig is on a base, that adds up to 3mm, and you end up with 28mm figures and 1/48 tanks that look quite good together on the tabletop.

Neither is a hard-and-fast rule, and many folks don't mind if the vehicles are slightly undersized (most terrain already is) compared to the figures. It's up to the user, but it helps to know the various ways things compare.

Laslty, adding to the confusion is that different companies may even have different interpretations of the size and proportions of various vehicles. Here's a 1/48 Tamiya and 1/56 Warlord games Sherman comparison. Notably different in girth, but not so much in height, and if not sitting next to each other, they'd probably even look fine on the same tableop.



Confused yet?

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
 Eilif wrote:
Though nearly all 28mm figures are "heroic" (they have to be or all the wrists would break and the gun barrels would be snap off) minis that are closer to actual proportions are referred to as "true scale" while those that are exaggerated are called "Heroic". However, some companies use the term "heroic" to justify why their minis are considerably larger than the number stated on the package.


Used to think that...

Then I cast up a bunch of 1/72 figures. The weapons were slightly heroic - but would be accurately scaled (roughly) for 28mm. Nothing broke off. I have come to equate heroic with lazy instead. They can be lazy with proportions, lazy with details and lazy with standards. That isn't to say an oversized sword or BFG doesn't get a pass by the rule of cool - but oversized simply to call it heroic does not.

That's not a proper comparison at all. 20mm (1/72) miniatures with 28mm weapons is quite heroic. Further, the barrels won't be nearly as long as on 28mm so they will be much less likely to break, and joints on a 20mm figure are supporting alot less mass than on a 28mm figure. True-scale 28mm weapons are ridiculously thin and IMHO, not at all suitable for the tabletop.

GW proprortions are sometimes a bridge to far, but in general I really don't mind somewhat heroic proportions, even on historical minatures. As well as durability, it makes detail much easier to paint and to see on the tabletop. I'm not painting military dioramas that will be primarily viewed up close in a glass case, I'm painting wargaming figures that will be handled and most often seen from a few feet away.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2014/08/21 16:49:44


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 Eilif wrote:
 Sean_OBrien wrote:
 Eilif wrote:
Though nearly all 28mm figures are "heroic" (they have to be or all the wrists would break and the gun barrels would be snap off) minis that are closer to actual proportions are referred to as "true scale" while those that are exaggerated are called "Heroic". However, some companies use the term "heroic" to justify why their minis are considerably larger than the number stated on the package.


Used to think that...

Then I cast up a bunch of 1/72 figures. The weapons were slightly heroic - but would be accurately scaled (roughly) for 28mm. Nothing broke off. I have come to equate heroic with lazy instead. They can be lazy with proportions, lazy with details and lazy with standards. That isn't to say an oversized sword or BFG doesn't get a pass by the rule of cool - but oversized simply to call it heroic does not.

That's not a proper comparison at all. 20mm (1/72) miniatures with 28mm weapons is quite heroic. Further, the barrels won't be nearly as long as on 28mm so they will be much less likely to break, and joints on a 20mm figure are supporting alot less mass than on a 28mm figure. True-scale 28mm weapons are ridiculously thin and IMHO, not at all suitable for the tabletop.

GW proprortions are sometimes a bridge to far, but in general I really don't mind somewhat heroic proportions, even on historical minatures. As well as durability, it makes detail much easier to paint and to see on the tabletop. I'm not painting military dioramas that will be primarily viewed up close in a glass case, I'm painting wargaming figures that will be handled and most often seen from a few feet away.


Not 20mm - actual 1/72. They would be comparable to old school 25mm (back before the eye/head debate)...right around 23mm to the eye.

What made them slightly heroic was primarily the barrel dimensions (true scale at that size and you are dealing with hypodermic needle sizes). There are always limitations of the materials - but a bolter or lasgun from GW have little to do with the limitations of the materials...they are just crazy town.

All the stuff I have cast up since (somewhere north of 5,000 figures) have used properly scaled with some adjustments for materials (primarily in thicknesses). Get played with on a regular basis and very rarely do we have issues of parts breaking. Some exceptionally long and thin parts (sniper rifles for example) are case as the stock and the brake as two parts and then brass rod is used after casting to finish it.

If you look at 15mm or 20mm Napoleonics - you have long thin muskets with even longer and thinner bayonets...no problems with breaking while being gamed with either (somewhat heroic for their size). It isn't just me who has figured it out.
   
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I see what you're saying, but if you replace thin parts with brass, that's of course is going to be stronger. Not everyone wants to work with brass on every mini.

As for Naps in 15 or 20mm, you're almost always working with multibased figures that aren't being handled individually and aren't nearly as at-risk for breakage as a singly based 28mm fig with a spindly bayonet.

I do thing though that we agree about GW dimensions being ridiculous. I'm not advocating GW-like dimensions where every gun has a barrel as thick as a grenade launcher. However, I'm fine with chunky guns up to about what you see in Harlequin WW2 (now sold by BTD). There's no risk of any of those guns breaking off.

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