Scale for SG

Okay, Laserlight, close your ears. I'm about to 
utter a Heresy in the Scalist Wars and I don't 
want to see you jigging in the streets. 

25mm: 

Pros - Easier to paint. Can buy individual 
figures. More pose selection by a long piece. 
Can sort of work with some 28mm stuff. 

Cons - Expensive relative to smaller scales. Not 
so good with standard SG groundscale (which 
really is 6mm!). Hard to find (in general, not 
counting GZG) a lot of good terrain, buildings, 
etc. in the right scale - most are off by a bit too 
large (28-30mm stuff) or too small (1/72nd 
scale or 20mm). 

15mm: 

Pros: Can still put a good paint job on them (I 
was convinced after we bought several 
thousand 15mm medeivals and dark ages guys 
and I saw what could be done). Can paint them 
fast! Good levels of detail in modern castings. 
Cheaper - you can often field a 15mm squad 
for the cost of 2-4 25mm guys. And vehicles 
cost about a third. Selection of vehicles is good 
(Brigade has some lovely 15mm vehicles, as do 
other makers) and there are some 15mm 
figures made by other manufacturers (current 
and prior, such as Martian Metals 15mm 
Traveller stuff). Figures work better using 
standard SG gaming scale or you can even 
compress scale to give you a bigger area of 
battle. And did I mention cheaper and faster to 
table? And scratchbuilds based off existing 
Rocco vehicles or other 1/72 kits look more in-
scale. You can also use 1/72nd scale buildings 
(from model makers) and smaller (shorter and 
hence far cheaper) trees from the scenery guys.

Cons - A little harder to get "single character" 
type detail (as opposed to "soldier" type - the 
kind that looks good at a distance) on a figure 
this big. Still too big for figure/ground scale to 
match. Can't buy "per figure" and have fewer 
poses available in canonical forces (from GZG). 
This may change as 15mm grows in popularity. 

6mm

Pros: Figure to ground scale correct. Fast to 
paint. Poses almost don't matter as figures are 
so small. Cheap to buy, relative to larger scales. 
Terrain plentiful from various manufacturers like 
Brigade and GZG and others (incl Geo-Hex). 
Let's you use far smaller trees/buildings etc. 
thus again reducing cost. 
Cons: Pretty darn small. Hard to do casualties 
to infantry mounted in "clusters" on a penny or 
equivalent base. Not quite as visual (IMHO). 

I'm thoroughly married to 25mm, but then I 
had about 400+ plus 30+ vehicles then (now 
probably double that at least). I've bought 
15mm for new friends (key manufacturers are 
GZG, Brigade and DLD who all make some 
excellent 15mm stuff) and have been impressed 
by detail and quality levels. And by costs - you 
can field a force for 1/3rd the price, not 
inconsiderable if you plan to build big armies or 
buy lots of different forces. Selection is 
somewhat more limited in canonical forces, but 
I expect this to change as time goes by and 
there are a lot of non-canon manufacturers 
(Peter Pig, etc IIRC?). 6mm, though in scale, is 
just not quite visual enough for me for SG and it 
is what I play DS in (rather than 2mm or 
something). 

So in summary, despite my own firm adherence 
to 25mm, I'd advise anyone new to the game 
to delve into 15mm for cost and 
availability/cost of models for scratchbuilds and 
buildings/terrain and trees etc. reasons. It also 
paints faster and looks good with less painting 
effort. 

That's my 0.02, and lord knows I've probably 
bought a couple of hundred 15mm guys and 
about a dozen or more vehicles in addition to 
the 25mm stuff. 

Tomb. 

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Mr. Thomas Barclay
Software Developer & Systems Analyst
thomas.barclay@stargrunt.ca
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