Ground Scale

[Ian]

Can anyone tell me roughly what the BA ground scale is?

I know this is a difficult subject. We are fighting a campaign off Ordnance Survey Maps and I want to relate table size to ground scale (i.e. is a 6′ x4′ table the equivalent of 1km x 1.5 km land scale?)

Thanks all.

[Steeljackal]

Miniatures and scenic elements are in scale +/- 1:56, so 6′ are 102 meters

[Stuart Harrison]

I’d be more inclined to scale to small arms ranges than figure size – If you go by figure size, ranges are ridiculously short – less than 150m for rifles.  Your 1.5km by 1km sounds pretty good to me, it corresponds to long range for a rifle being 251m to 500m.

[Ian]

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for that. 1.5km by 1.0km “feels” about right for the 6′ by 4′ table. I was just wondering if BA had an official ground scale as there is nothing I can find in the rule book about it.

 

Ian

[Stuart Harrison]

No, it doesn’t have an official ground scale or time scale per turn.

[Kar98k]

Bolt Action doesn’t really have any strict ground scale (or time scale for that matter), but rather the ground scale (and time) for Bolt Action is somewhat abstract. The game has been adjusted for play-ability rather than for any true representation of range. This would be something to take into account when using your Ordnance Survey Maps. You will probably need to make some tweaks and adjustments to get a “correct feel” for your campaign.

[Ian]

Thanks all,

Looking at it again, I think in built up areas with lots of streets, buildings etc. will reduce it to around 1200m x 800m. That seems to work with terrain, movement and ranges. Where the land is more open it feels better to open the scale up a bit to around 1500m x 1000m

I will let you know how it works out once we get around that table again!!

Thanks again for all your help and advice

Ian

[Enquiring_Mind]

I think it depends on the terrain you’re fighting in.

In rural terrain, I’d personally use the weapon scale as the yarstick to measure it by. The 24″ maximum range of a rifle will probably be 400 yards/metres. So a 6 foot x 4 foot board would be 1200 yards/metres by 800 yards/metres. Maybe 1.2km by 0.8km? (3/4 of mile by 1/2 a mile). This isn’t too far off what you’ve gone with.

In urban terrain, you could treat minature scale and ground scale the same. So the 6 foot by 4 foot board would be 100metres x 70 metres. You can never fire as far in built up areas anyway. If this seems a bit too small (as it does to me) go to 600 metres x 400 metres, half the rural distances?

[Steeljackal]

Sorry I don’t understand. But how do you consider scales other than +/- 1:56?
How do you represent 1.2km on a 6feet table if the miniatures and scenery remain 1:56 scale? It gets all out of scale, how do you make roads, buildings and units that fit 1.2km into just 6feet table (which by the scale of the miniatures is only 100m)?
If in reality in 1.2km there are 30 buildings, in a 6feet table you cannot put 30 buildings if you do not use miniatures and scenery in different scales (+/- 1: 660 instead of 1:56 of the warlordgames miniatures and scenery).

Weapon ranges is too short, but if you change battlefield/table scale, you have to change miniatures and scenery scale.

[invisible officer]

Steeljacket, it’s normal to have ground and weapon scales that are different from minatures scale. BA is strange anyway in having a 1 miniature =  1 soldier and in normal sized units ratio   but guns are normally used as  singles, not batteries.

The buildings are done by most as symbols for rural area, not true single ones.

The ground scale, given by weapon ranges, is a bit crazy.  Some big tanks like the French Multi turret one are so long…. front and aft would have different postal codes.

 

The only important thing is that all units use the same scales. And so the game works.

 

[Enquiring_Mind]

Hi Steeljacket, thinking about the various wargames that I’ve played there are very few that have the same miniature and ground scale.

The only examples I can think of are Roman gladiatorial games or skirmish games with maybe a dozen miniatures a side. Examples here are the cowbiy skirmish game systems you occasionally see.

Everything else has a ground scale that is smaller than the miniature scale.

 

• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by Enquiring_Mind.

[Ian]

Hi Steel Jacket.

The figure scale is 1:56. If this is translated and used as the ground scale, a standard 6’x4′ table would measure 110m x 75 m, maximum rifle range would be 38m and a man could run 18m per move!!!

To make movement and firing ranges more realistic it is conventional in most wargames rules to have the ground scale different from the model scale.

BA is slightly abstract in its ground scale and move times which works OK for one off battles. However it becomes an issue when you are running a campaign and trying to relate off table map movement onto the wargames table to fight an actual battle. (You can’t  have two reinforced platoons with artillery and amour fighting over an area of 110m x75 it would be rather crowded!!)

It is conventional to therefore use rifle range as a marker for the ground scale. If you take the average killing range of a rifle as 400m in combat then our 6′ x 4′ table is now around 1200m x 800m, a more realistic ground area for two platoons to be fighting over.

The problem with this system is that a road is now 50m across, a steam becomes a wide river and a single house model becomes a whole village. With a little imagination you can overcome these anomalies.

[Steeljackal]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>But BA is not so abstract in ground and miniatures scale. A building represent a building, not a whole village. in fact the regulation says to draw line of sight and measure fire range from the single windows, not from the building as an abstract and symbolic representation of a building or set of buildings. each single model represents an infantry man, and line of sight are drawn from the head, and towards the head and torso of the target, are not symbolic markers, but scale representations.
Then I know that rules has a wrong scale for the range of weapons, but so they decided for reasons of playability and not realism.</p>

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