Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Most games we all play are 28-32mm and I'm sure why. I wonder if there was a game system that ran 54mm models that was a small scale skirmish game would people but into it? Assuming the rules were good and the models nice would you invest $20-$30 per model if you only needed to run 4-6 models for a game? Also do large resin models turn you off? People are worried of them breaking and being brittle. What do people thing?

Its a nice idea but then who has the terrain for a game of that scale. Its never going to be one with LOADS of models I would imagine (although I can imagine it and it looks awesome)

Large resin models that are being handled regularly does worry me. I am clumbsy all the time, would not last a minute with me around.

It could work fine its the terrain is see as the biggest issue though

The game is called Inquisitor - it's 54mm scale, you typically use 1-6 models and those models are already available for the rough price you just mentioned. Or is that what you were hinting at?

No i was hinting at making a new game that ran this size and at that price range. Inquistor doesn't have the support of GW this new game if ever made would have a lot of online support from the makers. But the only way to make them cost effective is to cast them in resin

There are games that play in this scale already.

Personally the only experience I have of it is Inquisitor. I got the rules (a bit meh) and quite a few of the figures. I quite like the figures and bought them primary for painting and converting.

I think what puts me off of this scale it was that the battlespace is always going to be quite limited. It lends itself to a more detailed battle but you are never going to be much out of pistol range. Making terrain would be a pain (and the storage!) or expensive if you bought it.

So err sorry not keen.

This is what i'm looking for. I want to know people's experiences and impression of the scale. The game I have in mind will be small and close ranged. The game will be set in city streets. I know this can be done at 28-32 but thought it would be a chance for 54. Pretty much a human would be the size of a light warjack in Warmachine.

Why? Resin isn't really cheaper than metal.

OTOH Resin isn't necessarily brittle, as FC proved pretty neatly.

GW doesn't support Inquisitor because the interest level doesn't justify it, but all the models and rules are still available so it isn't like they aren't supporting everything they've released. It's more of an RPG/PnP style game that is essentially the subgame of a niche. Fantasy Flight Games covers that side of things pretty well anyway.

If you aren't planning on a PnP style game then what are you thinking of?

Yeah Firangi is right you really aren't saving much by doing it in resin so have to wonder why you would consider doing 54mm too? It is an odd scale that most people don't use and makes your miniatures automatically not compatible with other manufacturers and most people collections.

54mm is uninteresting to me because you're going to be halving the effective size of the playing field by doing so. For skirmish games this means ranged weapons are either always in-range or there's some funky short ranges even worse than 40k.The solution to infinite range weapons is scenery, which means you need interesting playing areas and such...

54mm gaming is probably the cheapest gaming in the world
free rules from GW
1/35th models are cheap enough in the numbers you need, 1/35th terrain is easy to get
and hey presto 1/35th wargamng = (practically) 54mm wargaming

I am think of making a street level skirmish game with 54mm models because of the amount of detail that can be sculpted into the model and because of the option to magnetize arms to change them so people can change the weapons a model has with out buying a ton of models. The game is mostly character based so I wanted high detail models. I'm not totally sold on 54mm which is why i put this question out there.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
I want this game to have some what limited range attacks but to allow for longer range spells. I would also like to see tables set up that look like city blocks and not just one city street. I'm thinking ally ways and larger streets all interconnected.

I would if I liked the game but I would prefer to stick to 28mm. Purely because I already have a lot of scenery for this scale.While 54mm scenery may be cheaper (free if you use one of the many paper building templates) I would rather just avoid the hassle of getting a lot of new terrain. Realistically the normal table size is about right for 28mm skirmish games, 28mm large combat games have very unrealistic ranges to fit on the table.

I would like to play 54mm games, but the amount of scenery that would be needed and the detail of the scenery would be annoying, I am thinking along the lines of scaled up necromunda terrain.

The awkward thing about 54mm, and making drastic changes in scale, is that you need to make all new scenery. And you can then only use that scenery with those figures.

But otherwise I like the idea of 54mm gaming, it means less figures and mass gameplay and introduces more complexity and character. Inquisitor was a big break from the direction GW have been taking over the last decade and more. It wasn't competitive, it doesn't work if all you want to do is table your opponent and some people couldn't get their head around that. Not surprising given that GW has long taken the direction of making their games more competitive than roleplay.

There were no points, you could take what you wanted and make your characters however, games weren't won and lost on victory points, you needed a GM to guide character creation and control the game and people had to understand that the game was telling a story. Sometimes it's not in the interests of 'the game' for a character to die or to allow metagaming, ie that people make their characters react to stuff they don't know is there like booby traps or other characters lurking around corners. For instance in regular 40K you don't have to justify things like indirect fire against troops you've never seen. From a narrative point of view you would say that you can't fire your weapons like that because the only reason your troops know to do that is because they are being controlled by a gamer who has a view of the whole battlefield. It's not playing the game out to fit a reflection of reality but playing to win.

Inquisitor encouraged the opposite, and meant that the GM would encourage people to do things that weren't always advantageous to the character but made some sort of sense in reality. You couldn't throw grenades around hoping to blow up people hiding behind a wall if you didn't really know they were there, or it might not be right for your character to suddenly change their mind at the last moment and retreat after running half way across the table to an important room, because the other player has just teleported their dude in there with a wup-ass weapon.

Inquisitor lived in a strange grey area, it was quite strictly bound by stricter dice rolling and rulers dictating movement like a regular skirmish but then aspired to be a narrative roleplay. That's why it probably became a bit of a flop, because it didn't meet the expectations of either wargamers or roleplayers, but on its own merits I think it was actually pretty good.

Well that was a bit more than I meant to write. Anyway there are a few 54mm games out there. There's this new Smog 1880 thing which has really lovely figures but I know nothing about the rules.

Funny enough, it almost looks like the Cities of Death tiles were meant for Inquisitor, especially when you look at those massive tall doors from the Mechanicum set.

It depends on the game, imho. GW, large scale battle type games, imho, are better suited for 15-20mm which permits more terrain to be used and better variations in weapon ranges. For RPGs when you're running a just a couple, individual characters, I'd love some 54mm. Personally, for RPGs (D&D etc.) we don't use terrain anyway. We use battlemats and dry erase markers for terrain.

I think people are bing too negative. 54mm could work very very well, and it would (IMHO) attract people who enjoy painting and modelling as well as those who enjoy wargaming.

The scenary isse isn't really an issue at all. And those people who complain that they can't or won't use scenary that was produced for (lets say) WH40K, are people who never intended to play an alternative game anyway.....so, you were never going to market your game for these people as they never intended to change.

So people who are genuinely looking for a new game experience will be happy to produce a new table, just as they would be happy to buy new miniatures....kinda stands to reason.

People complaining about ranges....well, in the far flung future (assuming that's what this 54mm game would be) people whould be worried about range, because as time goes by, the range of weapons is going to get further and further.....I think having unlimited range on all but the most obvious weapon types (Shotguns and pistols) is very acceptible.

In terms of playing space, again, reduces greatly the playing space that 28mm uses....roughly....so a 6x4 table gives you a, what? a city block, or the interior of a building or research centre....I love it.

The 54mm games would be like MERCS or Infinity, small forces of elite operators fighting over specific targets. The battles would probably centre around key objectives like securing classified data from a computer terminal in a high security facility....or, something like Space Hulk (which incidentally would have worked well in 54mm) where each battle concentrates on a specific section of the ship...etc, etc, etc

I think something along these lines would work very well. Would be exciting and fun to play and very engaging.

There are few games coming out that use 54mm figures, SMOG for example.....so I think people are starting to see that 54mm can be a very attractive play scale!

My initial thought would be no-thank you.
-To expensive per figure
-Too hard to convince other folks to play.

However, it might be possible iif you went with 1/35 scale figures. Rather than making an entire miniatures line, make accessory kits (heads, weapons, gear) to allow you to customize the extensive and quite affordable lines of hightly detailed 1/35 scale figures already produced by many model makers.

1/35 (roughly 46mm) is a nice large scale and is very popular with model makers, resulting in lots of available vehicles and even some terrain and buildings. Also it works with many of the accessories, buildigns and terrain currently manufactured for toy soldiers (54mm)

Also, if special figures were produced, they would be a bit cheaper than 54mm.

I miss Inquisitor. Or so I am being told by a friend who was really, really into it back in the day.

Personally I feel that size of the models is a personal preference really. I'd rather go with 28mm, seeing as a large chunk of the wargaming scene also does that.

Stella Cadente wrote:54mm gaming is probably the cheapest gaming in the world
free rules from GW
1/35th models are cheap enough in the numbers you need, 1/35th terrain is easy to get
and hey presto 1/35th wargamng = (practically) 54mm wargaming

I gotta say tru dat. 1/35th scale, there's tons of stuff out there already to convert and paint. It's one of the main scales in the plastic modelling industry. So much room, so much out there already to convert with.

Sadly tho, for me I'm hooked on 25-32mm gaming. I likes tons of minis on the table. I don't know that 54mm would do it for me. But I'd give it a go, if there was an interesting theme with a well thought out set of rules backing the figures. Up until now I've only ever bought 54mm scale to appease the hobbyist in me. Painting FTW!!

My 2c

-MightyG

I would love to paint some 54 millimeter figures some time, but I have absolutely no interest in playing any kind of game at that scale. 30mm is about the highest I'm willing to go, and actually for full-fledged army games I'd rather go smaller rather than larger.

Even for playing a game with very few figures, like an RPG, I think 54mm is just too big. The advantage of being able to realistically depict the pimples on my character's nose don't counterbalance the disadvantages that everyone else has listed here.

JOHIRA wrote: The advantage of being able to realistically depict the pimples on my character's nose don't counterbalance the disadvantages that everyone else has listed here.

However, there are no absolute disadvantages, at least none that I have read so far, just peoples preferences.....theres a big difference. Of course, if you want to flood your battlefield with miniatures than of course, you need to have small minis.....but thats not what the OP is suggesting (I think?). I think it's clear from a practicality point of view, that a 54mm miniatures game would have to be of a small skirmish level.

You can have a mass battle in 54mm. It just takes up alot of space. Here's the Alamo battle from this year's Little Wars.

This is only half the battle, the other half is taking place to the right on a smiliarly sized area with the other half of the alamo and fields.

This would not be a full army game. This is the streets of an early 20th century city. Small groups in objective based missions who are fighting. I would love to see very dynamic terrain as well, e.i. destructible, movable, or people with the ability to make terrain. I also see a dynamic movement system with the ability to jump over walls and fences and the ability to move inside buildings.

I think 54mm would also let you set fights in doors like Delephont was saying before. They would be large buildings but that offers something different than other games.

Smog is making great 54mm models but the game itself is run on a paper map so i'm not so sure if that would be too fun but the rest of the rules look good.

Imagine using guys like this, painted to this level in your war games

Inquisitor was great... but it was more of a Pen and Paper RPG game with detailed model rules than a true skirmish wargame.

And Space marines totally PWNed face and of course everyone wanted to play as the space marine.

I think people like 28mm because it is cheaper, parts are more available, and terrain already exists. I would like a 54mm skirmish game with good models.

Delephont- While 54mm look great painted well when painted to an table top standard (95% of the minis you will see) they don't look any better.

There was an unspoken rule of letting the GM always run the Space Marine and not little Timmy.

This game will be nothing like Inquisitor. There is no GM or no broken space marines. It will be a skirmish wargame with point values that will keep thinks balanced. There will be some customization but it is built into the rules with changing point values for different options.

4M2A wrote:Delephont- While 54mm look great painted well when painted to an table top standard (95% of the minis you will see) they don't look any better.

That's a very good point, I hadn't considered. Thank you

I think I've based my comments on the assumption that people would generally spend weeks painting their 54mm miniatures, in reality, I guess people who are not that into painting will treat them like any other miniature.....which may actually end up looking worse at 54mm scale.