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So... I'm developing a little skirmish game and will be getting some minis sculpted soon. Talking with a few different sculptors & production companies now and I'm pretty glad that the costs involved aren't nearly as bad as I expected I'm also looking into terrain ideas too but that is much farther down the line.

Anyhoo. It's fictional theme but based on wild west history and folklore. Once I get the rules finalized I intend to reuse them for other games in the future with different settings, pirates & madmax themes come to mind.

I was thinking it would be cool to have it compatible with other ranges out there so people can find terrain and stuff to match a lot easier and make the game easier to get into. It seems like most historical minis are 28mm tall with "real" proportions. That would go well with a lot of other lines like Foundry's wild west minis or Perrys' american civil war minis.

But, IMO, 28mm always just feels too small for me. I prefer GW's style of 32mm "heroic proportions" and that's the feel I want to go with for my stuff. I also prefer the look of Warmachine style rounded edge bases, and they're a 30mm diameter which would look way too big on a 28mm figure. I know it's only a 4mm difference but to me it's pretty noticeable.

Will scale even matter? Or will players just want cool models? If you were starting a new game, what would be more important to you.. how cool the models are or how easy it is to get into with minimal investment?

The rule of cool dictates my initial interest in a game. I don't care how innovative the rule-set is, if the models don't resonate with me I won't be buying into the game.

That being said I do not have a preferred scale, but I absolutely desire that the miniatures within the game's range are in scale to one another. I really dislike when companies have models that are out of scale to one another (especially when they are part of the same faction). It seems like this sort of scale discrepancy is inevitable for a game, especially when the game has multiple sculptors working on a single range, but it is annoying nonetheless. If you focus on making sure the miniatures in your range work as a cohesive unit I think you will appeal to a lot of miniature players.

Your game sounds interesting but be careful because even with your vague description of the setting of your game my mind immediately jumped to "its a Malifaux spin-off!" I know that isn't fair but it was an honest knee-jerk reaction.

Good luck, Necros. New minis are always welcome and I hope your game does well.

Thanks actually it's nothing like Malifaux. I never even played that and only briefly browsed the minis. They get into scarey fantasy-y stuff, mine is more a true wild west game, it just takes place in a fictional area "somewhere in the south in the late 1800's"

I guess you could compare it more to the video game red dead redemption, which was really what gave me the inspiration. I wrote the rules a long time ago for a RPG and I'm adapting them for this game.

GW also has a similar game in their warhammer historicals line, but I wanna do my own thing And I agree about the minis, for me they are what sell the game, not the rules.

I also agree about the models not looking right. The game will have several factions and I'm intending to have 1 sculptor do 1 faction to avoid scale issues, and I'll probably send them a miniature I like just to say "make them this big".