A question of scale

[Last Hussar]

If we take a 10mm figure as being approx 1:160 scale (Dave's figures are actually 11mm to the crown, so at 160th they are 5ft9 ish; 10mm is 5ft3 ish).

I can just about get 3 figures from WSS on a 20mm frontage.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lasthussar/4946261594/in/set-72157624726193297/

They LOOK close, but that is three men on a frontage of 10 feet 6 inches. 

OK, so the ones at the edge will be closer to the next stand along, so look at it this way: Distance from middle of one base  to the middle of the next is also 10' 6" (3m20 at 20mm x 160).  In that distance we get 4 men (1 each end, 2 between). One every 6-7mm. That means approx 3 1/2 feet between  men.  Mark that on a floor - a line 10 foot long with you and three mates- with your left feet at each 3ft6 mark - you have a lot of room.  If you don't have mates handy stretch out your arm - your finger tips would JUST rest on the shoulder of the man next to you!  That's a lot of room.


Yet our figures look packed together.

[Leon]

I'm sat here with rulers and tape measures now!  

I've just grabbed the nearest figures to me (painted Holstein figures for the new range, and yes... I'll get some pics) and from shoulder to shoulder they're 5mm, which in your scale calculations would equate to 2ft 10, wider than your average house doorway.  My own shoulder to shoulder is 1 ft 8 (I do have a slight build) but an extra 1 ft 2 would be unlikely on the average man.  So there's an extra foot of room being taken up by the 10mm man over the real-life man.

I'll stop there though, cos Lynne's just asked me why I'm holding a 30cm ruler across my chest.  

[Hertsblue]

Figure-height and ground scale are usually different in most rulesets, and the bigger the figures the more out of kilter the two get. If, as you say, your 20mm frontage equates to 10ft approximately then the range of your muskets (a nominal 100 yards or 300 feet) will be 30  x 20mm i.e. 600mm ! See the problem?

Moreover, your wargames units are drastically scaled down anyway - your 20-30 figure battalion is only a weak platoon in real life. So how many men do your three frontage figures actually represent? This is a circle wargamers have been trying to square since the hobby began.

[Last Hussar]

Figure-height and ground scale are usually different in most rulesets, and the bigger the figures the more out of kilter the two get. If, as you say, your 20mm frontage equates to 10ft approximately then the range of your muskets (a nominal 100 yards or 300 feet) will be 30  x 20mm i.e. 600mm ! See the problem?

Moreover, your wargames units are drastically scaled down anyway - your 20-30 figure battalion is only a weak platoon in real life. So how many men do your three frontage figures actually represent? This is a circle wargamers have been trying to square since the hobby began.

Know what your saying - but this is a different point.  I reckon in BP that 20mm frontage is 20 yards groundscale, and my figure scale (36 man units) is probably 1:20 ish.  The point I was musing on (to no real point, I'll admit) is that on figure scale the vertical does not seem to match the horizontal - this is independent of rules: imagine the base as a diorama.

I get 1 figure to 6mm at best - that is over 3ft 1 - Leon 1 to 5ft 10.  Again this is Diorama scale, not rules scale.  I measured my self - left shoulder to Right fingertip is approx 3 ft 4 - I woul;d be able to get my fingers on the next man's shoulder on my basing.  This is more than the drill books tell us..  When I based my 25mms I did acurally lay out a virtual base on the basing scaled to human full size, and got my sons to join me - HUGE distances between us - almost open order, but in 25mm the y looked right.

[Last Hussar]

HOWEVER in WW2 I put 3 on a 30mm base.  Looks good. BUT that is 15ft 9inches a side (again figure not rules scale) .  That's too close in theory.

[Aquahog]

We once modelled the heat loss of a human body due to evaporation of sweat in grad school. The human was approximated with a cylinder of 1.8 meter's length and 30 centimeter's of diameter. (Tall, skinny fella) Granted that assumes arms aren't stretched out, perhaps the fella was standing attention, what do I know?

Anyway in 1:160 that equals 11.25 mm height and 1.8 mm diameter. Less than half of your average Pendraken marching figure width, yes? Now how fun would such a miniature be to paint? I assume there'd be much less area for detail.

[sunjester]

I think Last Hussar's got too much time on his hands! 

This was time that should be spent painting, we discussed the list of things you needed to do in the car going to club last week.

[goat major]

its because the figures aren't in proportion. At these smaller scales it feels better to have out of proportion figures - which make them easier to paint and allow detail to be emphasised but they arent 1:1 replicas of a human being. The need to exagerate proportions gets greater at smaller scales too (but then there are some 28mm horrors out there as well!). Tom Meier's wonderful blog  (http://thunderboltmountain.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/P2.html) has many dissertations on this but the pic below gets the point across - the 'figure-ized' picture looks all wrong on a photo but quite acceptable at 10mm scale.






EDIT: Pic resized

[Hertsblue]

The pose also has an effect. Those figures standing side-on with one leg advanced look far less crowded than the ones standing square to the front of the base - mainly because they take up less frontage, I guess.