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So, over my lifetime, miniatures have increased about 50% in size, where "35 mm" is the norm. The forces driving larger models seem pretty obvious (more detail, easier to paint to a high standard, higher profit margin, out compete smaller figure lines) So assuming the hobby survives another 50 years, where does it end? What is the largest possible size that is practical for miniatures gaming? Obviously you could have specialist games like the old Inquisitor game that use very large models and terrain, but for your general purpose miniatures gaming, where does terrain, table space, storage and such reach a point where they just can't get any bigger?

Post your predictions here and I will come and check them when I'm 100!

I predict about 45mm as the end of the line for any game involving multiple squads of miniatures.

Here's the thing - they've tried 75mm games before. GW tried, a few other firms have tried. You get even MORE detail and such - but its never taken off. Bigger models means bigger tablespace; bigger terrain and more things to transport.

28mm to 35mm is a small shift up; esp when "28mm heroic" scale can often be pretty close to 32mm and 35mm already.
Most of the terrain you have can basically do ok since most things like buildings and trees are already at a different scale to models on the tabletop. It's all "close enough it works".

45mm though is a bigger step and I suspect it won't happen. See its not just table and terrain but also the number of models you can field at once that changes. So you'd be needing new terrain, new tablesizes or fewer models at once.

Sure each model might cost more; but you'll be buying less and you've outright invalidated everything that came before.




I don't see it happening outside of a very niche skirmish game.

I hope it's ended now, but I'm not sure. I'm opting out of anything bigger than 28mm myself, just refuse to buy the bigger miniatures because I like the older scale. I used to look at the guys with 20mm or 25mm minis and think "Huh, they sure feel strongly about that!" and now I am that guy.

I think it's driven by the internet in part - close up photos of really nicely painted minis are a big part of the hobby now, so models that look good in up close photos are preferred. That's why you've got all this extra detail and dynamic posing as well, to make for a cooler picture for your social media post where you get most of the feedback on your painting.

I still paint for tabletop. I dipped my toe in this high end painting world but I just don't find it satisfying. I like to get large armies done and play with them on nice battlefields and I don't get much out of sharing photos, especially since my photography skills are crap and I'm not very interested in photography as a hobby.

For me, the 32mm minis are already too large. I'm annoyed that the miniatures have gotten bigger and the battlefields smaller, all driven by GW to invalidate older collections. But I'm the MOST annoyed that for years people denied there even was scale creep and made out like people like me who were upset about it were being crazy.

One of my biggest hobby bugbears honestly.

Where is 35mm the norm? Outside GW and Conquest, hard plastic is still 28mm.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Where is 35mm the norm? Outside GW and Conquest, hard plastic is still 28mm.

It's fairly prevalent in 3d printing though scale there is a bit more fuzzy cause you can often scale down a 35mm to a 28mm or scale up fairly easily.

In my opinion the size of the models is in effect, when we talk about what's on offer now, not as relevant to practicality as base size. To go with AMG's offerings, both Crisis Protocol and Shatterpoint use 40mm models (or around 1/42 scale) and are skirmish games with low model count. But the base sizes are hilariously large compared to the models. Might serve a point in terms of rules, and people sure seem to love the visual opportunities that come with base sizes fit for a diorama, but in the end the physical dimensions of such large bases determine how many models you can meaningfully fit on the table.

Take that and then go back to Inquisitor. Sister Brother Artemis, a massive chunk of metal, came with a 40mm base like the rest of the early models at least. Can't say about any latecomers when the game had already failed. Now someone like him or Inquisitor Tyrus were very cramped on their tiny 40mm bases, but technically worked and functioned fine with the rules.

When it comes down to it, AMG's 40mm models are by far not the largest at least low number skirmish games can go. All you need is the willingness to put all that empty space above your oversized bases to use.

It works the other way as well. Star Wars Legion's basic trooper bases are 27mm in diameter. That effectively allows you to have the same number of models on the table as any 25mm to 28mm game whose standard base size is 25mm. So in spite of being a 35mm game, Legion loses precious little practicality compared to common smaller scales, and does large numbers more effectively than GW these days does with their move to 28mm bases as the standard for many weak troops and 32mm bases for elite infantry.

I can believe that AMG went with larger models for Crisis Protocol and followed up with Shatterpoint because they wanted a certain, slender style to their miniatures and cast them in hard plastic, and for technical reasons needed to up the size of the models to make casting viable. They are still smaller in size than 1/35 scale kits (which would translate to 47mm or 48mm "scale"), which to my uninformed self seems to be a favored scale among scale modelers because it makes models large enough to show even very fine detail. No infantry model in that scale would struggle to fit on a base size that is already commonly in use by AMG. Nor with GW games where common infantry models are also on 32mm and 40mm bases already.

The one thing that is impacted by such an increase to the point of becoming impractical is terrain. You'd have to find solutions like favoring scatter terrain, ruined buildings or 2D area terrain to account for it. Or be modern GW and simply not write functional terrain rules.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Where is 35mm the norm? Outside GW and Conquest, hard plastic is still 28mm.

Star Wars Legion is 35mm and all hard plastic for new releases since a few years back. Wild West Exodus is 35mm and has at least most of the core warbands in hard plastic. I think some specialists, too. I'd have to check Malifaux. I think that's only 32mm, but I'm not sure. Dust used to be 35mm and plastic.

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I still paint for tabletop. I dipped my toe in this high end painting world but I just don't find it satisfying. I like to get large armies done and play with them on nice battlefields and I don't get much out of sharing photos, especially since my photography skills are crap and I'm not very interested in photography as a hobby.

1:1 is the largest it will go. People would not like playing with models larger than themselves, so I predict 1:1 is the top of scale creep.



Note: 1:1 scale has been done before in wargaming. I offer up the game Fairy Meat as an example. The game was explicitly 1:1 scale. but since the models were "Fairies" they were normal size for wee-folk. All terrain on a table was also 1:1 and anything you had on your table to start with such as salt and pepper shakers, a glass of Orange Juice, a plate of eggs and bacon, etc.

Fairy Meat! God, there's a blast from the past.

28mm sole-to-eye (sometimes up to 32mm) is the top for me. I'm already using 3d printing companies to meet my Star Wars minis needs in order to not have to chase Legion and Shatterpoint and their ever-increasing miniature size.

I would not be at all surprised if premium (especially those of a popular IP) small-skirmish games end up pushing up to 45mm (maybe even 54mm).

There's just no reason for these companies with games of less than 10 miniatures per size and a built-in fanbase to not continue to increase the size in order to justify higher prices and deliberately make them "Exclusive" and incompatible with other/earlier model lines.

Star Wars and Marvel fans have already shown that they'll continue to invest in a new scale every time Atom Mass says so. Why should any popular IP not follow suit?

Judgement also had 55 mm initially and has shrunk down to something closer to 40 mm for the second edition. It's pretty clear that scale creep only really works with small model counts and the current creep is definitely in part due to the switch to smaller scope games.

I remember the nigh unplayable Inquisitor game, not because of the rules, but the giant pewter models were a pain to put together and no one had any terrain for us to use.

We all must define our own limits. There's no way to trust game developers wont continue scale creeping indefinitely, you just have to pick a point in time you are happy with and stick to it I guess.. The alternative is rebuying your miniatures every few decades in ever changing scales

Obviously scale will creep up until they get up to 54mm and 40k becomes more like Inquisitor.

 Easy E wrote:
1:1 is the largest it will go. People would not like playing with models larger than themselves, so I predict 1:1 is the top of scale creep.

Do note that 1/1 scale is no longer miniature wargaming and gets disqualified from the discussion of scale creep on technical grounds.

You might get away with 1/(1.01-0.01) scale as the top end, though, especially in discussions among American miniature wargamers.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I remember the nigh unplayable Inquisitor game, not because of the rules, but the giant pewter models were a pain to put together and no one had any terrain for us to use.

That last part is the main reason games stick to something around 25-35mm scale. If your game requires a bunch of terrain that's hard to find at the scale you're using it's likely to fail. Almost all wargames terrain is for that 25-35mm scale, with a decent amount for the smaller 15mm scale, but there's barely anything above that.

 Geifer wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
1:1 is the largest it will go. People would not like playing with models larger than themselves, so I predict 1:1 is the top of scale creep.

Do note that 1/1 scale is no longer miniature wargaming and gets disqualified from the discussion of scale creep on technical grounds.

You might get away with 1/(1.01-0.01) scale as the top end, though, especially in discussions among American miniature wargamers.

True but 1800mm scale (to top of eye) would still count, depending on how tall you are I guess

The real issue is scale creep in Epic.

Slipspace wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I remember the nigh unplayable Inquisitor game, not because of the rules, but the giant pewter models were a pain to put together and no one had any terrain for us to use.

That last part is the main reason games stick to something around 25-35mm scale. If your game requires a bunch of terrain that's hard to find at the scale you're using it's likely to fail. Almost all wargames terrain is for that 25-35mm scale, with a decent amount for the smaller 15mm scale, but there's barely anything above that.

Part of the reason AMG went with 40 mm is that they could use O scale model train buildings for terrain.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
1:1 is the largest it will go. People would not like playing with models larger than themselves, so I predict 1:1 is the top of scale creep.

Do note that 1/1 scale is no longer miniature wargaming and gets disqualified from the discussion of scale creep on technical grounds.

You might get away with 1/(1.01-0.01) scale as the top end, though, especially in discussions among American miniature wargamers.

True but 1800mm scale (to top of eye) would still count, depending on how tall you are I guess

I'll allow it, but only because the wargaming industry is direly lacking in standards!

 LunarSol wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I remember the nigh unplayable Inquisitor game, not because of the rules, but the giant pewter models were a pain to put together and no one had any terrain for us to use.

That last part is the main reason games stick to something around 25-35mm scale. If your game requires a bunch of terrain that's hard to find at the scale you're using it's likely to fail. Almost all wargames terrain is for that 25-35mm scale, with a decent amount for the smaller 15mm scale, but there's barely anything above that.

Part of the reason AMG went with 40 mm is that they could use O scale model train buildings for terrain.

I've heard logic like that for scaling up before, but the reality is that 28mm wargames minis are already as wide as proper O Gauge (1/48) miniatures and when on their usual 3mm bases they're already as tall. Many 28-35mm wargamers already use lots of 0 Gauge/Scale stuff.

That is to say, I don't buy it as anywhere near their main reasoning which I firmly was to move into a more bespoke scale (40mm exists, but is not common) to deliberately be out of scale with almost any contemporary items bought outside their brand.


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 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I remember the nigh unplayable Inquisitor game, not because of the rules, but the giant pewter models were a pain to put together and no one had any terrain for us to use.

I think the rules were also the culprit, but it may be just my dumb brain that read them and said "I can't do this".

GW players in 2001 weren't unfamiliar with assembling multipart metal miniatures. Finecast was still a decade away and virtually all characters and many other units were still entirely or partially metal. Also, terrain was an issue, but IIRC, the plastic terrain that was released around the same time was deliberately made tall enough to be suitable for 28mm or 54mm.

That said, I do think going 54mm was silly. There just weren't enough folks who wanted to invest in a whole other scale.

Still, I do occasionally thumb through the Rulebook and my print of the "Thorian" sourcebook occasionally for inspirational fluff. Perhaps most importantly, if not for Inquisitor, would we have the magnificent Eisenhorn novels? The first Eisenhorn novel was released around the same time as Inquisitor and he was sort of the main hero character for the game.

I just wish everything crept together. Marine vehicles have looked like ridiculous clown cars since the end of the RBT01 guys

I've built some 1800mm terrain. Usually have to keep it outside though.

The scale creepn ends ... sometime after the Japanese build actual walking General Purpose Utility Non-Discontinuity Augmentation Maneuvering Weapon Systems (Gundams ).

Because I am willing to bet everything on the fact that if people had access to giant robots they would play games with giant robots.

Check out the Osaka World Expo this summer....

I ordered some MESBG 3D prints form Etsy and didn't check the size and was very confused when Boromir ended up as big as a space marine. He makes an excellent D&D mini now.

 blockade23 wrote:
I ordered some MESBG 3D prints form Etsy and didn't check the size and was very confused when Boromir ended up as big as a space marine. He makes an excellent D&D mini now.

Put him next to a MESBG Faramir for the authentic Denethor experience

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Check out the Osaka World Expo this summer....

Sorry I missed that

The 1:1 Gundam will be back this summer!

I don't mind some differences in scale. Some differences in size actually look good in units to me. Real people do vary quite a bit after all. In more modern settings it's an issue though. Not because of the size of the people, but because their standardised equipment then varies as well. And that just looks off.

That said, scale creep is more and more getting out of hand. At least, from the GW side of things. Those size differences no longer really are believable. I however think that we're unlikely to see more such dramatic steps (28 to 35 mm is a 25 % increase. That would now mean going to something like 44 mm).