Tabletop Wargame Building Scale: Figure or Ground?

Subtitle: 

...or neither?

FASA's Battletech wins the honor of being my first tabletop wargame but we only played with paper markers (were they stand-ups or chits? I honestly don't remember). My junior-high chums and I soon discovered proper miniatures wargaming with Rogue Trader and with it the curious difference between ground and figure scales.

Despite our dutiful reading of Mr. Priestly's every word, we accepted that the ground scale compressed greatly compared to the (back-then) 28mm figures, but we failed to similarly compress the dimensions of our terrain features. Of course, those were the days of seemingly limitless free-time and negligible responsibilities, giving us ample opportunity to construct 3 to 4 meter (!) game boards that wouldn't be dominated by our figure-scale buildings.

Returning to wargaming in my time- and space-poor adult days I discovered that figure-scale buildings seemed massively bloated on my typical meter-square battle mat. I chalked this up to the 28mm scale; in fact, avoiding this apparent "parking-lot battle" spurred me to explore 10mm and 6mm figure scales.

Looks great but too big???

Preparing for a 10mm campaign saw me scratchbuild some 10mm buildings, true to figure dimensions, which I've only now started painting. Looking for a paint scheme, I popped on over to the Pendraken site, since I'm using their figures and hoped to find some in-progress game pictures featuring both buildings and troopers. Instead of those I found the dimensions of their buildings, immediately noticing their two-story layout measures maybe 2/3 of my two-story farmhouse, proportionally.

I double-checked my math and found no errors, leading me to look to the internet for answers. Mel, the Terrain Tutor, came through like he always does. In the linked video he explains how most commercial wargaming buildings are scaled down proportionally to the figures, except for the doors and windows which remain figure-scale to produce the illusion of matched size. The doors and windows, of course, brilliant!

Further internet rabbit-holes, mainly discussion boards, suggested that many wargamers match their scratchbuilt structure proportions to the ground scale. That left me wandering: do the commercial manufacturers use an intermediate building scale, between ground and figure? Perhaps 2/3 of figure scale for the buildings and trees, and 1/3 figure scale for board size?

I'm not sure of the answer but I've decided to try it out for myself. In the coming months, when I finally get all my terrain done and figures painted, I plan to repeat a platoon vs. platoon 10mm game (one figure = one trooper), playing it once with my figure-scale scratchbuild farmhouse, and then again with another scratchbuild sized to Pendraken's offerings.

Figure scale (left) and "commercial scale" (right) scratch builds

I'm not done with the smaller farmhouse yet but I've blocked out the basic shape in polymer clay and included a comparison pic with my (primed but unpainted) figure-scale farmhouse. It'll take a full game with other terrain and figures to determine exactly which one "feels" right. 

DIY Trees and Flock

Covered with DIY Flock

I still have my moon table set up for playtesting my future tank game (last post) but most of my wargaming effort right now lies in getting a 10mm Cold War-gone-hot scenario going.

Years ago I bought some beautiful Pendraken 10mm figures, specifically Argentinians from the Falklands War range, to represent late 1950s-early 1960s U.S. Army.  The project stalled however because I couldn't find a suitable proxy for Soviet forces of the same era.  Pendraken suddenly revived my project by recently producing a range of Cold War Soviets, which of course I snapped up.

I plan on using Ganesha Games' Flying Lead rules, with a fire team (represented by two bases) activating in the place of a single figure (as the assumed scale is 28mm).

Still need to paint and flock bases

I needed terrain, specifically trees, for the 10mm game so over the last months I've been twisting up wire and coming up with a way to make my own flock.  Like nearly all of my methods it's super time-consuming and requires some dedicated (but common) tools.  The results have blown me away however and the best part is the raw material (recycled paper) is totally free and abundant.

FREE!!! (Except for the time...)