Know the difference - What is 10mm wargaming scale?

Know the difference - What is 10mm scale?

10mm is the smaller of two popular compromise wargaming scales, for land battles, and is equivalent to 1:185 ratio-scale. It is often considered to be 1:200 scale, but that provides slightly smaller models. The larger compromise scale is 12mm.

Matched to 10mm scale for popularity is the railway modelling Z-gauge scale of 1:220, which has good support from plastic kit manufacturers. It is possible, with a little forbearance over size discrepancies, to use all of these scales together on the same table.

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10mm Wargames Models

10mm scale appears to have arrived in the wargames industry during the late 1980s. One of the first manufacturers that I remember displaying models at conventions was Skytrex of Loughborough, UK, with their first series of WW2 North Africa Long Range Desert Group models. Like everyone else who saw the early releases, I drooled over them as a micro-armour gamer.

Since then the scale has penetrated all periods from Ancients to post-modern and science fiction/fantasy, though it does lend itself best to periods with mechanised vehicles.

Strictly speaking, 10mm is 1:185 scale, however, the early manufacturers actually released their ranges as 1:200 scale, and it was the gamers themselves who named it 10mm (maybe because of the aversion for part millimetres in scale names – 1:200 is 9.5mm scale). As a designing scale for buildings and vehicles, it ranks alongside 1:100 for ease of making master models due to the simplicity of the maths.

(page incomplete – more to follow)