Friday, August 21, 2020

Urban Ruin Test Hexes: 15mm or 6mm?


One day conventions will come back - when?, well none of us are sure, but they will be back.  I've been thinking of designing a tactical Stalingrad Campaign to run over a multi day event and have been debating scales between 6mm and 15MM using hex terrain.

Both tests have the same 3D printed building on them and were painted and dry brushed the exact same way, which was:

1) Dark Grey primer
2) Black ink wash
3) Dry brush Medium Grey
4) Dry Brush Green-Brown

Let's take a look at the 6mm version.  Obviously, one can fit more on a 4" wide hex in 6mm than 15mm but the level of detail is limited.

 The positives of 6mm is that it will be easier to have iconic buildings like Pavlov'sHouse or the Unimag Department Store (all of which are available for 3D printers.

The cons are more artistic in nature - it's a lot harder to add details to the rubble like bricks etc.  Not impossible but a lot harder.  Also this is mainly an infantry fight with a handful of vehicles and a wise club member has a rule 15mm for infantry fights and 6mm for armor.
The 15mm version of the building requires two hexes for a single building ruin.  It's a lot easier to add more interesting textures and shapes to the rubble.  It was also more time consuming and I struggled to get the right mix of adhesive (diluted PVA glue) and ballast to really adhere.  I needed to use a lot more tile grout!

The rear picture shows a more interesting set of textures and there is a lot of opportunity to add small details - weapons, damaged equipment etc.

In addition to testing scales, I'm going to need a lot of city hexes to fill an 8x4 table so I was also tweaking with the build process and set of the following "Rubble Making Station".  My collection of model railroad ballast and talus rock was laid out from smallest (left) to the largest (right).  Not shown on the extreme left is my trusty light brown tile grout.
 The builds in progress.  I added a lot more little detail bits to the 15mm test
Close up of the 15mm before priming.

I really had a fun time building both test pieces and each has their own +'s and -'s.  I think I'm leaning to 15mm as the goto scale.

What do you all think?

2 comments:

john de terre neuve said...

Boy, a tough one! What level is the ruleset...Skirmish-Battalion-Division. I think I would go with 15mm if one of the first 2. I think it will be less work although you say the 15mm version is more detailed, it is less 3D prints tec.

Curt said...

6mm.