I won’t lie gentle readers, 99% of all the wargames I have played have been 28mm scale. Obviously a huge part of this has been Warhammer 40k (and Warhammer Fantasy Battles) but there has also been Necromunda, Mordheim, the Great Rail Wars, Gangs of Mega City One, Infinity and many more that have vanished into the mists of time. I was never into historical games, I could never get into my head that a stand of 5 models was actually 200 men! I was also one of those who never got into Battlefleet Gothic or Epic 40k, I always liked my minis to be 28mm scale.
The reason I bring this up is the upcoming game Star Wars: Armada by Fantasy Flight games. I am super looking forward to it. A fleet of ships made up of Imperial Star Destroyers supported by whole squadrons of TIE Fighters is just SO COOL. Where else can you have TIE Fighters? Oh yeah, X-Wing by Fantasy Flight games! And yet X-Wing never had the same appeal. The models are cool, there’s no denying that. There’s just something about the game itself. I’ve watched it played a few times, mostly on YouTube and… meh. A tiny squad of x-wings fly in circles opposite a larger squad of TIE fighters, also flying in OCD inspired patterns until one group leave a gap and then BAM they pounce and destroy the enemy. Doesn’t really have the joy of dogfighting spaceships that I wanted.
For me, this is all about scale. X-Wing is like the fight between the Millennium Falcon and the TIE Fighters in Episode IV when they’ve just escaped the Death Star. It was exciting thanks to the peril the characters were in and the direction. If you’d have seen it from a different angle (the players angle) it would have been the Falcon in the middle with fighters doing attack runs time after time. Woop (he said, sarcastically). Now, Armada is more like the battle of Endor. Massed fleets of ships, facing off against each other with more things going on than the mere non-Jedi brain can keep up with. From the players point of view this looks epic and awesome. I can imagine it now. Turns 1-2: The fleets come together slowly, Star Destroyers strangely uninvolved. Turns 3-4: A Mon Cal Battleship is destroyed, finding out that this battlestation is fully operational. Turn 6: The Millennium Falcon has not been destroyed so makes it’s attack run on the Death Star and blows it apart once the shield has been taken out. Now that’s what I’m talking about. Scale makes a huge difference in this case
Now I want to experiment with scale even more. Dropzone Commander (10mm), Batman and Wild West Exodus (35mm) are calling my name like the sea calls the sailor. Do you only play one scale of wargame? Will you be experimenting? Does size matter? Don’t forget to leave a comment below, the best one wins a chance to explain their scale preference to their significant other. “I think you’ll find 35mm is quite large actually!”
Until next time gentle readers.
TheBattlehammer 