A Crisis of Scale

Welcome to my new blog. I'm going to be posting up progress of my collections of 10mm Ancients as well as some other stuff as and when the fancy takes me. I collect 10mm Ancients (based for Warmaster Ancients), Infinity, a 28mm Sci-Fi Skirmish game, as well as the staples of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K. However you'll mainly be seeing the ancients stuff here.

I have recently finished an Imperial Roman army made up from Pendraken figures (pictures to follow), and I have just bought some new figures to start making up a Carthage force.

I've tried to do this cheaply, but also to make a nice looking force (one of my primary aims!), and with that in mind I thought I'd go for Pendraken figures for the allied Gallic Warbands (as they're cheap) and Magister Millitum figures for the rest.

These are my first Magister figures and whilst I think the quality of the detail is probably a little better than the Pendraken ones the differences in scale are causing some problems.
Comparison in scale between Pendraken and Magister Millitum Ancients Figures:

The shots below show the size differences between the two manufacturers. The left hand picture has 3 troop type comparisons, (Magister figures are all on the left of the pairs).


1) Carthage spearman and Roman Auxillary

2) Carthage spearman and Roman Legionary

3) Rhodian Slinger and Roman Archer.

The right hand picture shows a Carthage Cavalry and Roman Cavalry

At face value they appear pretty similar, and height wise there is not a lot in it (less than 1mm), however the Magister figures are significantly more "bulky" and have larger heads. The heads aren't really a problem, I personally think that a proper "head size" is somewhere in between the two manufacturers and its not really noticeable when ranked up.

However the bulk could cause more of an issue in mixed forces, it most noticeable in archer/slinger comparison in the left-hand photo. You can see the slinger's legs and torso are quite a bit broader than the archer.

Where this causes problems is in the ranking up of troops on a 20x40mm base. There is just far less "fresh air" between the troops with the Magister models and I personally think that it makes basing 10 models to a base undesirable.

In the picture opposite I have placed 5 Carthage spearmen from Magister and 5 Roman Auxiliaries from Pendraken "shoulder to shoulder" on my cutting mat. A warmaster base is 4 yellow squares wide, so you can see that the Magister figures would be stood almost touching on a base, whereas with the Pendraken ones you have a little bit of room between them (maybe 1mm). It's not much, but it does make a difference.

I've mocked up some bases to demonstrate as well, the left hand base is 10 Magister Carthaginians the middle is 10 Pendraken Romans, and the right is 8 Magister Carthaginians. To my eye the base of 8 seems more practical.

The only problem this creates is that my Roman Legions are 10 to a base, and so it might look odd that 10 figures are fighting 8. Ho hum.