Just wondering about it.
What does 28mm mean for instance?
One of my players bought a bunch of reapers minis and i was hoping to go cheap and use little proped up pieces of paper to match up with them yet staying to scale.
Hope that makes sense to someone:)
What does 28mm mean for instance?
Not being overly concerned with minis in regular D&D and not playing the Miniatures game at all, I'm probably the least qualified to comment on your question, but since no one's replied to you in over 2 hours, I'll give you my two bits.
AFAIK, the 28mm minis are simply meant to represent Medium-sized creatures. The "28mm" refers to the minis standing approximately 28 millimeters tall. The minis themselves and their relative scales are purely aesthetic. It's the space they take up on the game mat that's important. Since a Huge dragon has a space of 15 ft. its mini should take up 9 squares (3×3 inches). Heck, to approximate the correct "footprint" you could let a coffee mug stand in for the dragon.
My groups have stooped to using everything from "cheap" propped up pieces of paper (well, bent cardboard, really) to the paper minis that came with an old Marvel Superheroes product. Other things have included a purple d4 to represent "the orc with the double axe", assorted chess pieces, and the pawns from boardgames like Sorry.
I've even used Scrabble tiles to represent M- and S-sized creatures. The nice thing about Scrabble tiles is they mark the location of creatures in a very abstract fashion, leaving the vivid action for the players' imaginations. If Elwyn the Elven bard, who wears blue heralds' garb, is abstracted to a tile marked "E", Elwyn's player isn't distracted by the green elven archer mini unsatisfyingly meant to represent him.
Somewhere on these boards is a recent thread that ascribes various sizes of ammunition to represent various sizes of creatures.
I do believe it's only the actual size of the mini. But I do have a counter question: Does anyone know what scale the minis are as far as scenery goes? I used to work in a general hobby shop that was filled to the rim with scenery for train layouts, and I was curious to see what would be best suited for them.
As a base though, I do know that the MechWarrior Clicks are N scale...then maybe the normal minis are either O or even G scale....any thoughts?
28mm refures to the base the mini is standing on. So a medium humanoid or what ever medium mini is on top of a base that is 28mm. DMs guide and the Minatures hand book have all the information on the sizeing and the number of squars that a miniature takes up and the size of the base used for the Mini.
28mm refures to the base the mini is standing on.
That can't be right. Sorry to disagree with you Psyicman, but a mini's base should be measured in inches, and one inch equals 25.4mm. I'm pretty sure 28mm refers to the height to which a mini of a M-sized creature stands. Scaled up (see below) this mini would stand about 5-feet 6-inches in real height, which works out believably well.
...I do have a counter question: Does anyone know what scale the minis are as far as scenery goes?
I don't think scenery for the 28mm minis has a letter-scale designation; AFAIK, it's simply 28mm-scale. If you're designing your own scenery, just remember that 1 inch on the game grid = 5 feet. Since 25.4mm = 1 inch you could round down and say every 5mm = 1 foot. Restated in model-car/plane ratios it works out to exactly 1:60 scale.
You might like this: I stumbled across hirstarts.com a year or so ago. It knocked my socks off, and I don't sweat miniatures play. These are mold kits you get to cast, assemble, and paint yourself, but all the scaling and molding has been done for you. And there are dozens more sites that offer prefab mini terrain and scenery.
Ok so I know when to admit I was wrong but I am not completly wrong. On page 122 of the Miniatures Handbook under the word medium it stats that a medium ceature has a base of 25mm and a large creature has a base of 40mm.
Normal convention has it that a given line of minis measurement, almost always given in millimeters, is the number of millimeters it takes to equal 6 FEET. Most of the older D&D miniatures are 25mm scale, as are the current batch. This is also the scale of the Star Wars and Axis & Allies minis. Some companies use a 28mm scale. The slightly larger sculpt allows them to put more detail into the miniature. Examples include any of the Games Workshop minis. Both sizes usually come on a round or square base of less than 1" in diameter, suitable for use on a grid-type battlemat. The larger minis often look nice, and the 2 types can be mixed, but may look funny side-by-side. On the other hand, if you need a particularly large and impressive looking monster or bad guy, purchasing one in the larger scale makes it all the more impressive when placed next to smaller minis. The 25mm scale is somewhat easier to convert if you are building scenery from scratch. 1" = 6' is a simple, on-the-fly rule, and requires less accuracy in your sculpting. Hope this helps.
|
Just wondering about it.
What does 28mm mean for instance?
One of my players bought a bunch of reapers minis and i was hoping to go cheap and use little proped up pieces of paper to match up with them yet staying to scale.
Hope that makes sense to someone:)
The short answer is, "That depends."
Since that isn't especially useful, I'll expand. 8-)
The measurement, "28mm" in your example, is the nominal height of the miniature. But:
* There are two common ways of measuring the height of the miniatures: to the top of the head, and to the eyes.
* There can be a substantial change in the size of a miniature between the time the sculptor makes the master and the time the first production model comes off the line, and some sculptors (or the companies that hire them) are better at estimating the shrinkage than others.
* Some sculptors will scale based on an assumption that the scale reference is 6' tall people, and some will assume 5' 8" tall people (or whatever) -- this will influence the heft of the figure.
* Larger figures generally look better, so some companies will make their figures larger than the stated scale warrants. The usual excuse is that the figure represents a "hero", so should be larger than the run-of-the-mill person.
So, given all that, there's really no consistent way to tell what, say, 28mm really means without comparing figures side-by-side.
D&D 3.x assumes a ground scale of 1" = 5', which is 1/60 scale. Using some set of the assumptions above, this is probably reasonable for 25mm - 28mm figures. If you want to buy miniatures accessories from a hobby store, you might be able to find some stuff at 1/64 scale (S Scale to a model railroader). Regrettably, that's rather uncommon. The closest common modeling scales are either too large (1/35, O = 1/48) or too small (1/72, OO = 1/76, HO = 1/87.1).
Hope that helps.