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I could use some help going through the numbers to see if I'm in the correct range. I'm taking a short break from miniatures painting, started to look at my terrain to work on and rebuild. I'm trying to separate, organize and redesign terrain to work with the games I'm playing now. Some of the scales are all over the place so I figured I'd start from scratch, figure out the measurements for buildings on average and then compare to the terrain. Then I can keep what matches, modify or throw out ones that don't match anymore.

I'm essentially working with two different scales. We have the 6mm for Robotech and Battletech games. Then I have my 28-32mm games for Warhammer, Infinity, Malifaux, etc.

6mm: From what I can tell measures roughly 6mm to the eyes or top of the head (depending on the company). It seems to be that 0.987mm equals one foot. If I use that to compare to the game figures I get the following:
Battletech: Height - 14m (45.5 ft) which equals 45 mm scaled
Robotech Veritech: Height - 12.68 m (41.6 ft) = 41 mm scaled

Now if I translate that to buildings:
Pentagon Building: 5 floors (77 ft) = 75.99mm scaled
Apartment Building: 5 floors (56 ft) = 55mm scaled
House: 2 floors (25 ft) = 24mm scaled
Garage: 1 floor (15 ft) = 14.80mm scaled
Security Fence/Walls (10 ft) = 9.87mm scaled

28-32mm: They seem to measure 28-34mm to the eyes or top of head (depending on the game) which translates anywhere from 4.17mm - 5.33mm per one foot. Translating that to the same type of buildings I get:
Pentagon Building: 5 floors (77 ft) = 385mm scaled
Apartment Building: 5 floors (56 ft) = 280mm scaled
House: 2 floors (25 ft) = 125mm scaled
Garage: 1 floor (15 ft) = 75mm scaled
Security Fence/Walls (10 ft) = 50mm scaled

Does that seem about right?

Are you building them for basically skirmish type games in which a figure represents one man and the horizontal and vertical scales are both the same?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Are you building them for basically skirmish type games in which a figure represents one man and the horizontal and vertical scales are both the same?

Yes they would essentially be skirmish type games, one figure represents one man. I haven't really thought about the vertical scales, but yes I would think they should be the same. I will have to check the terrain I have to see that was taken into account, I would think it was but I know some things weren't as they were based on grid 3x3 game.

The point about keeping the horizontal and vertical scales the same is that if 10mm represents 10 yards on the ground, and it also represents 10 yards vertically, your buildings end up being very tall if they are built to match the figure height, or very small if built to match the ground scale. I am talking about a 6mm game.

OTOH if you make the buildings a realistic height they tend to look much smaller than they should be. A garage might be 2mm tall, for instance.

Of course if your ground scale is say 1mm for 1 foot, then building models can match quite nicely but you could end up with a problem of longer ranged weapons shooting all over the table. Even a rifle can normally shoot 200 yards. It might not matter in the games you are playing.

Most people make the buildings look either a realistic match to the figures, and count them as built up areas rather than individual buildings, or somewhat smaller in both dimensions.

If you want to play true one to one skirmishes, it works better if the buildings are closer to a realistic scale size in all dimensions.

Note that buildings may be to scale in terms of height of doors, windows and floors, but they are rarely built to scale in wargaming in terms of overall length, width and number of floors for an entire building. Buildings are nearly always compressed and because there's no point in ceding that much of the playing surface to buildings, especially in smaller scales like 6 or 10mm where space occupied by buildings is often essentially "dead space" as far as gameplay is concerned.

As far as sorting your terrain, rather than going by any direct measurement, your best bet is probably to just set them all on the table next to figures and each other and see what looks right and get rid of the rest. A bit of variation is inevitable and can look quite realistic. Complicating this is that the 28mm lines you mention cover a fairly wide variety of scales.

Your eye will tell you what works, and often it's not what's perfectly scaled. Remember that we're dealing with figures that are essentially standing on a 1/2 to one foot plinth depending on the size of base and basing materials. Also, with some exceptions (infinity for example) wer're dealing with figures that are heroic in proportion so their shoulder width and bulk is often considerably larger than a true-scaled figure. The result is that true-scaled terrain can sometimes seem too small on the tabletop. Ever placed a 28mm figure next to a 1/56 scale car? The car looks tiny.

All this to say, don't get too hung up on exact measurements. If you feel the need to have a hard standard, rather than basing it on maths, take the piece of terrain in your collection that you feel looks best in proportion to your minis and use that as the standard for door sizes, windows, floor height, etc.

Here for 6mm I spent a ton of time and with some help to compile a list:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/531655.page
I hope this helps, I keep playing Battletech and waiting for Robotech so this should work.

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

Using this chart, 6mm is approximately 1/300th scale while GW's supposed 28mm would be approximately 1/64th scale.

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

Using this chart, 6mm is approximately 1/300th scale while GW's supposed 28mm would be approximately 1/64th scale.

Whatever you do, don't use that scale. It's completely wrong for anything bigger than 15mm. It uses top-of-head measurements, whereas nearly every company since the 80's uses 'Sole-to-eye" measurments (and sometimes fudges even bigger) for scales of 20mm and larger. Using the wikipedia scale, for anything related to 28mm you will end up with alot of vehicles and buildings that look awfully small. The exception would be largish buildings where you can fudge the size a bit. I've got a bunch of warehouses made from 1/64 ERTL Farm Buildngs, and the pedestrian doors are awfully small, but I use them anyway because the garage doors and overall height looks right.

A much more closer to accurate scale is available here:
http://theminiaturespage.com/ref/scales.html

True 28mm is currently accepted to be 1/56 scale as evidenced by the fact that historical wargames companies use it as a benchmark. As I mentioned before, 1/56 is still going to look small for many heroic figures or figures on a base, but it's a functional baseline.

And that scale however will get him into the ballpark of what will look 'right'.

 Ghaz wrote:
And that scale however will get him into the ballpark of what will look 'right'.

Sorry, for larger scales it's just not close enough, It's not a scale that can be relied upon, especially when so much buying of terrain, vehicles, toys-for-conversion, etc takes place on line.

I'm sure you meant well, but someone who sees that, and then goes out and orders a bunch of 1/64 scale toys and models is going to be really disappointed when they get a batch of stuff, almost all of which is unusable.

For 6-15mm, it's ok as the scales are so small that there's not more than a mm difference between eye and top of head anyway. Bigger scales however, really need the proper comparison of to-the-eye equivalent scales.

28mm figures are normally reckoned to be 1/56th or 1/48th scale. 1/64th is rather close to 1/72 which are really quite small models.

My advice is to build a few simple buildings quickly and cheaply using card. This will let you test your preferred dimensions against the size of your figures by eye, which is the method that counts for making wargames look good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
This thread actually will get more help and advice from the Painting & Modelling forum, so I shall transfer it there.

Thank you. A lot of good information to think about. I am working on some mockups in card.

I've used O'scale model railroad buildings and they look good for 28mm gaming and chunky enough for GW miniatures as well

 adamsouza wrote:
I've used O'scale model railroad buildings and they look good for 28mm gaming and chunky enough for GW miniatures as well

A very good suggestion. At 1/48 scale, O scale models are a great fit for 28mm figures and they're just oversized enough that a mini on a base doesn't dwarf the doorways and other openings.
Here's one that we use:


I've even used HO scale buildings, but only industrial buildings so far with large garage type openings and large windows. Here's an HO Walther's Engine Shed with a few mods that I use quite often:

It originally had 3 identical garage doors the same size as the opening on the left, but I combined and expanded the other two so you can drive a Leman Russ through it!

What about sidewalk and road sizes? What do you think are proper width for those to be?

I'm thinking about 1.5" for a sidewalk but not completely sure on the road size.

 Dark Severance wrote:
What about sidewalk and road sizes? What do you think are proper width for those to be?

I'm thinking about 1.5" for a sidewalk but not completely sure on the road size.

I actually think that sidewalks and roads can be quite variable.

Sidewalks on are often larger on the table top than real life. 1.5 inch sidewalks comes to an equivalent of over 8 feet wide. Fine for downtown, but much to big for anywhere else.

Roads on the other hand often look fine built smaller than scale. Real roads are usually quite wide, but in wargaming that's mostly empty space and a big fire lane, something most folks try to avoid having too many of on their table.

I don't have the exact measurements anymore, but here's a picture showing both of these in practice. Below is an architectural model I modified for wargaming. Essentially it's an interesection of two 4-lane roads.


The roads are scaled for about 1/72 scale models (a bit smaller than Matchbox andHot Wheels cars) The car going the wrong way in lane 2 of 4 on the south side is 1/43 scale, yet it looks just fine on the undersized roads, and I think most folks would prefer not to have the roads any bigger.

The sidewalks on the other hand are either 1.5" or 1.25" which is a good deal wider than your average town sidewalk, but looks fine because the figures and their bases make good use of the wider size.

So you have two drastically different scales of roads and sidewalks that look right together.

I'm going to have to finish putting together my APC and Police Car and probably design it so they look correct in the roads.

That's probably the best solution. Make your roads, vehicles, minis and sidewalk look"right" together. And make that more of a consideration than "scale".