[SPEAKER_00]: brought to you by BedroomBattleField.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the table top miniature movie podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: On this episode of the Table Top Manager Hobie Podcast, it's a re-roll of a classic conversation from February 22, the guest is Pete Berry from back his 6th Mel, and he's here to teach us everything we need to know about getting started in this small yet sweeping scale.

[SPEAKER_00]: My jump and off point was to ask Peter about something he mentioned a few times and lead up to her chat, something called Pony Wars.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Pony was project started a long time ago, back in the 1980s, and I am that old.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was part of a group of four of us who put on a participation game for our own show as the North of England.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we did various thing, resting good and fight, glad it's all come back, chariot racing.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the idea was, people could just turn it and play a game.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that sounds very run of the mill now.

[SPEAKER_01]: But during that period of our war game in history, it wasn't a common thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: People didn't go to a show and play a game.

[SPEAKER_01]: You went to watch games, or put on a demonstration games, but the idea of a participation game was was a bit out there.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then the leader of our little group was a chap called Ian Beck.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was, oh, just a towering figure at the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was when we came with the ideas, wrote the rules.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he, his enthusiasm was infectious.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was an amazing guy.

[SPEAKER_01]: And one day we all turned up at his house, which is where we did all the playtests in the working on these.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he kept with this idea of, I've got a game.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a bit different.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it was.

[SPEAKER_01]: The premise of it is based upon all those old 1950s Hollywood cavalry movies you've seen.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know the John Ford trilogy of Westerns, she wore a yellow ribbon and everybody is on the same side.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the, the engines, the hostiles are all controlled by effectively a pack of cards and fewer reaction tables, and it sounds very crude, but that particular little set-up created one of the most devious and let's be cutting opponents, you could ever ever hope to come across.

[SPEAKER_01]: The odds were really stacked against the cavalry actually getting anywhere.

[SPEAKER_01]: and there's only who's played the game over the years.

[SPEAKER_01]: We'll test you find that remains a case.

[SPEAKER_01]: On the idea was there were some home steds littered around the table, you have to go to the home steds but swear the settlers to pack up the well the goods and get back to the safety of the fort before they were basically pounded upon by year by hostiles and warpath.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then you added to this the fact that the civilians wouldn't always do as you were told and while you were playing the game and walking train might turn upon the table and you were responsible to get that back to the to the 14 safety you might have other characters turning upon the express rider a stage coach even the lone ranger made an appearance.

[SPEAKER_01]: And everyone was different, though there were just random events and random happenings all the time, no two gave forever the same.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they were just massive fun.

[SPEAKER_01]: There were the sort of game whereby people would play.

[SPEAKER_01]: They would come on the table, they'd had their command wiped out in 15 minutes, because it was ablody.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then they'd immediately sign on for the next bit, because the next cavalry or the next civilians to come on, they would take, take a board, they would play them.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there was spent all day at the show playing that game.

[SPEAKER_01]: And as I said, it became a bit of a legend of that time around that part of the country.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, very sadly, Ian died in a car accident in the mid-1980s, and the remaining three of us really didn't have much of a heart to carry on taking the game around, very much something which he led.

[SPEAKER_01]: We kept in touch, but we've pretty much went our separate ways.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that really should have been the end of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Pony Wars rules themselves had been put into print by a clinical tabletop games.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think they're so quiet well for them.

[SPEAKER_01]: But obviously, tabletop games over the years, they filled with the guy who run that died, the company passed into various different hands and it folded.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there was just no source for these rules.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there was a constant, constant demand [SPEAKER_01]: of people wanting copies of these rules.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, as Bakus became more prominent from the fact that the term of the millennium onwards, people began to associate my name with the ponywaters and I've been getting emails for the past 20 years saying, it's funny what are we going to get reprinted?

[SPEAKER_01]: Can you get me a copy of the other rules, can you get me an old copy?

[SPEAKER_01]: And there was a head of steam, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, [SPEAKER_01]: quite touching for us that the rules of themselves are remembered with such a fondness by people in the game was.

[SPEAKER_01]: So as a result of the past 18 months, we decided we reprint the rules, the three of us got together, we decided we'd reprint the rules and bring them up to modern production standards.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the originals were the old [SPEAKER_01]: The one we've produced is full colour, lots and lots of photos in there of games and progress, gorgeous lip painted figures, lovely scenery, proper professional layout.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the game came with a pack of cards.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, back in the 1980s, you've got some file cards and wrote these out by hand.

[SPEAKER_01]: Today, we've actually got, it's a double deck of cards, or properly colloprinted, laminated.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, we went to town, we gave it a really good makeover.

[SPEAKER_01]: and it's being phenomenally popular.

[SPEAKER_01]: It really has all of the world where we're getting people buying it from as far as field as Russia, which is really you wouldn't expect to have much interested in this.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've sold them all over the world as well as to the places you may expect to be US and the UK all over Europe and people want to play the game.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a cheetah and legendary [SPEAKER_00]: With that, you mentioned the sort of AI, so as it's something that lends itself to solo play, I mean given the way the world's been for the last couple years as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, it's a major, major strong point of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, to be honest, the system that we put together has been [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to say copied, I'm not going to say plagiarized, has inspired other sets of rules and other ideas and people have adopted the basic mechanics to other eras, so for example again I'm going back into a bit Peter Gilder who used to read a holiday centre, run a Sudan based upon exactly the same principles, lifted straight from the rules and I know people have used it for fantasy.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good guys against the the orcs and the goblins and I know two people are putting it for use for the zulu wars and yes the great thing is that can all be done solo.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's got a it's got a very broad appeal outside of what you might think to be it's it's very narrow focus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just pulling us back to the concept is six millimeter award game in itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when someone sees these managers for the first time, I mean, they are tiny.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, a lot of people who come into the hobby, they're immediately familiar with 28 or games or shop style these days, which is a lot bigger than that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So why six millimeter for your peer?

[SPEAKER_00]: What was the attraction for you to dive into that aspect to the hobby?

[SPEAKER_01]: OK, well, I'll preface all of this by saying, your introduction sound brilliant, but you're looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

[SPEAKER_01]: Six millimeter figures are tiny, 28 millimeter figures are very, very big.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so you have to sit at the front of my world view I first got a trip to the idea of six mill and believe me until at this point you wouldn't have dragged me anything away from the largest scale figures until I hit this barrier I for one reason of the hard to do some six mill buildings for Modeling and selling [SPEAKER_01]: And one period of history that's always fascinated be it's been the 18th century.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Mulberry Wars Great North Wars.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a time of seizures.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the idea of, you know, the the vulbanesque, star forts and fortifications, always wanted to do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: But in 2528, Mill is so impractical as to be not worth bothering with.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the Mill, I actually produced this six mill hexagonal trace [SPEAKER_01]: This little light bulb went on in my head, and I went, you know, in six, this was going to be so easy to do and it's going to look so great.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can get the entire game on the table.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can play a game and I could do siege lines and all these ideas about possibilities, opening doors being flung open with something there before me and why didn't I think of this before and I haven't thought that before because.

[SPEAKER_01]: we don't like everybody else.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'd start to doff with many fakes and initially figures back in sort of the 70s, 80s.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'd progress through foundry because that's what you did, that's what we always did and you never look beyond that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you've started your project to know how in practicality is in the scale you're used to.

[SPEAKER_01]: You just go that way.

[SPEAKER_01]: This very [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, a six-mill proof to open a lot of doors which I have thought closed.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, through a long and convoluted story, I obviously got into manufacturing the little guys.

[SPEAKER_01]: And alongside that initial revelation, you begin to realize, [SPEAKER_01]: Well, the read it paint, that may sound counterintuitive to so many of you listeners, but honestly, they are really easy to paint.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're quick to paint.

[SPEAKER_01]: So in terms of gratification, I could get my army painted and on the tail in two weeks, whereas in two weeks with my big of figures, I probably didn't actually need that.

[SPEAKER_01]: get half a regiment done and they look great because suddenly all of the individual figures were small, they went to the detail, they went lots of them and I had regains and looked like regains and then you find other ways where they become advantageous just by using them [SPEAKER_01]: uh you can carry the train for that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a good looking train in the third final box, um you can carry all that lot on a bus train, put it in the back of a car, [SPEAKER_01]: So easy to do, storage, you know, you've just got a small little cupboard at home, you could put it in there, they take, don't take up any more room and a couple of boxes of an ugly.

[SPEAKER_01]: 20-year-old.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you've got the complete reverse of that, as I say, they're very, very big, which means a lot of them make very, very heavy.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the boxes you carry them in have got a big volume.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's that little practical side of things.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then when you come to play a game, the six millionics have got obviously much smaller footprint on the table.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, [SPEAKER_01]: The equivalent sized army, say lined up on a table with a 6mm army and it's going to 28.

[SPEAKER_01]: The 28 will form a curtain from one side of a 6 foot 4 by 6 foot wide table from one inside to the other and your tactical options consist of being able to go forward quickly or absolutely and that's it really.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas in 6mm you put that out there and suddenly you can't anchor blanks on a table [SPEAKER_01]: your arm is not big enough.

[SPEAKER_01]: You've got to have deployment in depth because you need to keep reserves to be able to shore up a wing.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you gave me a bunch of becomes more realistic.

[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't become playing the game because that's your option of just moving forward and moving back.

[SPEAKER_01]: It means that you've got to actually think about how the game's played and how your [SPEAKER_01]: And it produces a very, very different mentality in gaming.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think one for the better, but there again, very, very biased.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you tend to play these games on a sex by four then, despite the, the degree size of the minister?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: What role sets do you typically tend to use then when you play?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll answer that generally, I'll hold you on specifics.

[SPEAKER_01]: The great thing about six millis, you do not need a set of rules designed for the little toys.

[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't work that way.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can use any set that's designed for pretty much any scalar figure with six mill figures.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can do it a number of ways.

[SPEAKER_01]: One way, which is how some people start, how I start on this line.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you've got a 28 mill figure that sits on a 25 mill square base, [SPEAKER_01]: You remove the 20-able figure and you replace it with 8-16 signal figures, so the unit front is unit footprint remains the same, but instead of having 24 figures, you've got 96, 120 figures, so then you play the games as normal, so if you get a figure removal, you should [SPEAKER_01]: When you move over to the more modern ways of playing games, which is to use a base as a unit.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it looks like the EBA family.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's even easier.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have a 60 by whatever it is base, DBA, which is normally housed for 28th of the Legionaries.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you just replace that with 96.

[SPEAKER_01]: all on one base, but you actually have it all gaps between the lines and you make this little mini diorama with them with the guys.

[SPEAKER_00]: So how many yet?

[SPEAKER_00]: Just a good to cut and then how many units are we talking on a 6x4 per hour?

[SPEAKER_00]: Typically.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I would say you could play a game comfortably with 24 to 30.

[SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of depend on the rules.

[SPEAKER_01]: For example, [SPEAKER_01]: a very popular choice of rules for six month moment, are the one-odd games, Blackpound, and Hail Caesar?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they use multi-base units, so you might have a large unit, which comes actually consists of three.

[SPEAKER_01]: basis each measuring 60 by 30, so that's quite a large table footprint per unit, and that will reduce number of units you'll have on the board.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you use our in-house rules of the rules we produce under the back of Spanner, they predicate a 60 by 30 base as a standard for a standalone unit, so a battalion will be one of those.

[SPEAKER_01]: but you'll use those put into brigades so three or four of those becomes a brigade new brigade becomes a unit of movement So you've got this bit of blurring between what's the unit and what is the formation using on the table?

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things I'm curious about some of my struggled with a wee bit myself was immediately identifying which units were which, if I was playing with quite a new army, is that just a thing, you know, you get to know your army pretty well, because it's not sometimes immediately clear, you know, the guys got crossbows or bows, or is that a rare problem at that scale?

[SPEAKER_01]: Not really, no, I'm perhaps, again, I know my little mind quite intimately I haven't sculpted many of them so they cast quite a lot of them so I never read out that issue.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'd pull it a little unit mark as on the back of the vases, you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a deferred regiment or first battalion, whatever, on the back of the vases.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've not really done so because I've found that's that's that detracts to me from the appearance of the base One comment that had from me from people who don't play six mil and this is the the guys who use the big thing is normally They say well I've seen a game.

[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't tell exactly what I was facing You know when they were lying or guard or I couldn't tell you whether there were heavy cavalry or medium cavalry and my point is and that's a problem how [SPEAKER_01]: because real life generals didn't know exactly what they were lined up in facing.

[SPEAKER_01]: So why should you untill the public?

[SPEAKER_01]: So to me, that's a boat that's pretty pretty.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: But in the organize of our troops now, I've never had that as an issue.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not something that's come back to me much of a customer's either.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've played a few games using the Kings of War rules and I just hit them, scared I've written down and it works really well, we're really happy with it and yeah, just that that different experience at different perspective because I love all the imagery, the huge battles and you talk to about seedes and stuff but when you're working at 28, [SPEAKER_00]: unless you're going to create something huge, it's a little more than a skirmish often.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas six months you can really say like this is pretty accurate with the number of guys on the table.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's, it's the best use of the space but the problem with we humans and war gamers are humans is we've only got so much of a reach, we talk about the ubiquitous six foot by four foot, that's because that table hits a sweet spot in terms of how much you're you can get and how easily you can get to any point on the table.

[SPEAKER_01]: you start bigger than that and you're in trouble and the problem with the larger games is to actually get the impact you need.

[SPEAKER_01]: The one you're talking about, you would need tables probably measuring 16 foot wide, 30 foot long and you're not going to be able to move the troops as you need them unless you've got some sort of flying poly system in the middle of the table.

[SPEAKER_01]: and you can go, like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, and move your things around.

[SPEAKER_01]: You just can't get over unless you start chopping tables into strips, and that looks really clumsy and quite awful to be honest.

[SPEAKER_00]: The genre is represented, it seems to me, and again, excuse me, because I don't know half as much about it as I'd like to, but it seems to be overwhelmingly historical.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've come across a wee bit of fantasy, but is that correct or is it just me showing like them and saying?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not, I'd say it's pretty well correct, it's not that the demand isn't there, I think it's because...

[SPEAKER_01]: the people, the manufacturers have many constraints on historicals, that's my major point of interest.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's where I push an direction of the company.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think the possibilities for fantasy, massive, you can imagine, say, recreation of Pelleno, the climax of the Lord of the Rings, literally get tens of thousands of Orcs.

[SPEAKER_01]: on the table, and a massive line of rowhand riders just just coming straight to the ridge and into them.

[SPEAKER_01]: And a beautiful model of minister, if we could actually look reasonable at that scale.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the possibilities are amazing.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just that traditionally, and we are very traditional, that the larger companies working in six mill of stuck to historical.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I've got a very, very small fantasy raid, which is a pretty whimsical thing [SPEAKER_01]: My son when he was about eight or nine years old, but there are a couple of new companies, our new work companies, who are beginning to produce quite decent fantasy ranges and I think you'll see more of them as more and more people come into six mil, especially if they're coming from something like a workshop background where fantasies, these former acceptable.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've got a nice little range, there's called Ray Pia, we're actually doing some gloromethane miniatures.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's the only appeal to people of a certain age, but they're from the room quest world.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're producing those, which are the little figures.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a company I mean, the United States, called Microwave, they do a very decent range of six ball fantasy.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's something we'll be moving into in a more serious way [SPEAKER_00]: He ever stuck a 28-mell miniature on the table as a giant.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, that's a sort of thing we will be doing, except we will call it a 6-mill giant and not a 28-mill figure.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: But our dragons will look good.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I, and, um, again, that ability to have loads of big characters, like you say in dragons, a warm machine stuff like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're working at 28 mil, you know, that that thing is going to be unique.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas, um, if you're working at six, they could be many rather than just a one-off.

[SPEAKER_00]: So.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you've also got the cost of all of this, so it's not a fact I've mentioned before, but the cost of something look of the scale we've been talking about in the larger scales, if prohibitive, even if you've got plastic, it's primitive.

[SPEAKER_01]: The small scale stuff is cheapest chips, as they say.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can get a lot of bang for your books when you pay money out.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's another wonderful aspect of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when I ordered my guys, can't remember exactly what ordered.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to get a lot of stuff and just form up two different armies.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Mike Weller, being the same army, I'm just going to paint them in different colors.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the way sex, well, miniatures come or on like a little strip.

[SPEAKER_00]: And do you recommend painting them on that little strip before you put them together into our regiment?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, if you go to my website, there's a how-to guide or start a guide on this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the way to paint Fix Millies is a little mantra you're here again and again in the 6-mill world, which is paint that you need not the man.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I will get, say, a battalion where I put in 24 figures, which is six of our strips, [SPEAKER_01]: and that will be my unit production.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we're in larger scales, you might paint those in batches of six, complete six that move another six and another six.

[SPEAKER_01]: In one sitting in 40 to 45 minutes I will have that unit painted.

[SPEAKER_01]: From that ready to go and then it'll be based [SPEAKER_01]: The advantage of doing that is first, or you get the uniform finished to it all, but you have to learn to let go.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not everything is going to be perfect.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, there's going to be mistakes, probably in every one of them.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it won't matter, because what you're painting, what your appearance is going to look like is the finished entirety of the unit put together.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the individual is the unit that's the important thing to keep in mind when you're doing your painting.

[SPEAKER_00]: So would you, you would paint each strap, then would you, would you put about a varnish, because being a main word won't link in the mails, would you put about a varnish over them for glueing them onto the base?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I always, I always drop a bit of varnish on them now.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, years ago, I used to varnish mine, my big fingers, I used to sort of like put household polyurethane gloss varnish on them, to present them, and then put a couple of layers of matte varnish on them to the gut the down to the sheen that I wanted.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a little, first, you know, I just bang some matte varnish on them, but yeah, and also varnish just pulls your paint job together as well, it's a very strange, very subtle but it does just enhance the final effect.

[SPEAKER_01]: As your varnish, you spray it on on, is it brushed on?

[SPEAKER_01]: I just brush your tonics, it's very, very nice little matte varnish.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, yeah, I think that's the one I've got, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a really nice, efficient little Polish, I find spray varnish is a messy [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I just hate spraying stuff because you have to go outside and you know, I haven't Scotland enough of it, it's never conducive to doing anything like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't want the local kids thrown stuff at me because they see me spraying toy soldiers either.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what about when you when you glue them on to the be basis.

[SPEAKER_00]: So [SPEAKER_00]: Are you putting a little bit of bass and round the edge just to kind of finish the effect off for the grass as opposed?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, again, no.

[SPEAKER_01]: For quite a while now, I've actually been selling a basing system.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some of you could listen as my answer to live, come across it.

[SPEAKER_01]: To me, there's a lot of nonsense talking about basing.

[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people make life really, really hard for themselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: where you put them on the base and then you get tertiary and filler right up to the edge and then you have to paint the whole thing and then drive, you know, I just laughed too short.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very, very simple system.

[SPEAKER_01]: You glue your figures on, just use a PVA glue.

[SPEAKER_01]: Once that's dried, cover the rest of the base in PVA glue, dip it in a very, very fine sand with talking 6 mil here so it's really, really fine sand, but the stuff you do for the big [SPEAKER_01]: you let that dry, which doesn't take a long, you drop a brown wash on to that, which is a matter of seconds because the sand basically just sucks the washing just spreads it over the tire base.

[SPEAKER_01]: Again, let that dry, don't take it long, a bit of dry brushing, and then [SPEAKER_01]: It is a very, very quick and dirty system.

[SPEAKER_01]: You could tell all the filler and everything else like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: The grass will cover the base of the base.

[SPEAKER_01]: You'll see the base at all.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you'll just, I, is drawn to the unit to the, sort of the brown green effect around the, around the unit.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it looks great.

[SPEAKER_01]: Dead easy, dead simple.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you've been on my website, you'll have seen a lot of the figures in the catalog.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're all best using that system and it's by the time you've done batch basing with it.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's probably about a minute per base until it'll.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a question for your Peter F.

Hypothetically, there was a moron who'd glued all these guys on at the base before he painted them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's potentially a podcast host called Matthew.

[SPEAKER_00]: What might be the best way for them to this hypothetical guy to paint his managers and they still look pretty decent?

[SPEAKER_01]: OK.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'll answer this for your friends.

[SPEAKER_01]: Shall I?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, my friend.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's right.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's not alone.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's many people do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And while he's making a lot of work himself and he should have done.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, just paint them.

[SPEAKER_01]: By the time you've done the paint job and you've looked at some three feet away, they'll look fine.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll just look fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a contrast paint, which I think they make life a [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I've seen him use on six with mixed results.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen some quite good ones in some bits of look like miniature car crash, but yeah, on the whole, especially if your friend has taken off the bases and clubbed them together like that, they'd really really going on to detail in them.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think the contrast paints probably his best friend.

[SPEAKER_00]: I, because it's going to be getting the, trying to get the, when my friend does this, trying to get the green grass in between the soldiers is going to be tricky.

[SPEAKER_01]: Really, because all he needs to do is to get what PVA glue.

[SPEAKER_01]: Get it down to about the consistency of milk.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then use it a paintbrush, just paint it literally in between the bases.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it won't be a problem, provided to you goes about it sensibly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well that would be a first.

[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever come across in your life, somebody trying to paint an eye on a sex millimeter soldier?

[SPEAKER_01]: Not quite.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I do talk to a lot of people at war game shows, [SPEAKER_01]: I, they'd come up to my pain to display and so I try to paint it and these I couldn't do it and you start talking to them and they're typically typically guys who've got decades of experience in the big figures to try to paint a small figure and they've tried to exactly the same way they do the big figure.

[SPEAKER_01]: I had real trouble painting the piping on the colors and you're going, why?

[SPEAKER_01]: You don't need to pay the piping, let it go, and it's that sort of level where people are trying to just use exactly the same techniques and the big guys with a little guys, it's not going to work, but the condition to do things like that, you know, where can I put the buttons on?

[SPEAKER_01]: No, no.

[SPEAKER_01]: Forget buttons.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, anything you do pupil on the eye.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I can't I can't even do eyes on a 28.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm the thought I thought I'd do an insect just then.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's insanity.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the first painting in six consists of there are two techniques but the easiest one is you put a blob of flesh on.

[SPEAKER_01]: not just mine, but you'll find across the board, the college school to get six is amazing nowadays.

[SPEAKER_01]: Those are cavities, and you will find the face at peace.

[SPEAKER_01]: They look excellent.

[SPEAKER_00]: The terrain as well, like what sort of terrain do you like to see on a table?

[SPEAKER_00]: I know that completely depends on what kind of game you're playing, but um, [SPEAKER_00]: where you do lots of houses, where you do reveal ideas, rivers, castles, stuff like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, everything you do in VickScale, obviously you can represent in the smaller scale, but you can do it, I'm going to say better.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, look, let's take an example of village.

[SPEAKER_01]: In with a big figure, a village is a building, because if you try to put three or four buildings, that's about three causes your tail space gone.

[SPEAKER_01]: because of footprint to the build, so large.

[SPEAKER_01]: And even so that single building is still disproportionately large in terms of the ground scale of the figures you're using.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's just a fact of life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's six.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, you can make a little village.

[SPEAKER_01]: You might use three, four, five buildings.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can put little bits and pieces, but it won't dominate the battlefield.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like the big buildings do.

[SPEAKER_01]: You want to do a wooded area.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you can do a big wooded area.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's lots of work rounds of how you can play a game through that, but essentially the way to do it is to do a base with, uh, I can put this, uh, uh, an outside line of tree trunks, and a canopy that sits on top of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're going to put troops in the wood, you're just with a canopy and you move troops inside that little girdle of tree trunks around the outside.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's easy to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: It looks good and it's practical.

[SPEAKER_01]: but you can also take it to the extreme, I don't know if you've seen any pictures of it, but the winner of the Best In Show at Salute this year was a game based on the Battle of Paltava from the Great North War in 1709.

[SPEAKER_01]: and the terrain on that was just quite efficient, there was everything in there, beautifully sculpted, rolling scenery, a big river valley, a big hillside, an entire Russian town, monastery, city walls, everything you could do, but that was just the bottom of the game itself, because the game itself was played without just there, so that set the scene, it told the story, it created the narrative beautifully, [SPEAKER_01]: and having the ability to manipulate your scenery.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it doesn't become the dominant thing on the battlefield, but becomes a partner in the game.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is massive, it's very advantage.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'd just seen too many big games ruined by the dominance of scenery where it shouldn't be dominant, but it has to be, yeah, get.

[SPEAKER_01]: We'll be model on the table to show off.

[SPEAKER_01]: You've got to sacrifice table space and therefore at your stores the game a bit like a buck hole.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've talked a wee bit on the show in the past about the problem with 28mm mass fantasy, sort of a rack and not necessarily fantasy, but rank and flank games.

[SPEAKER_00]: I often find that you do need this big area, this big football pitch in the middle of the table, so all the units can get around and then you're seeing these almost just when they're dressing because it's all around [SPEAKER_00]: but they're not really interacting with it too much.

[SPEAKER_00]: And at a dare say, there'll be a few listeners who might disagree with me there, but that's my own experience, you know, the sceneries are around you and you're inside it, but with sex, there's a lot more scope to move through the scenery and use it a bit more, I think.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, that's one of the sort of appeals of it for me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, just I know we've been talking about sex and concentrating and obviously I've been taking compare and contrast and clicking giving the guys who normally use 20 years a bit of a hard time.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not, we are talking sex, I'm trying to explain the advantages of these are the larger scales.

[SPEAKER_01]: Big scales are great for the appropriate sort of game.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I've got 20 more things and they're brilliant [SPEAKER_01]: So, if you're doing a game which is a small scale action, big figures are great.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think you'll see most of the commercial releases over the past five years where people have reached a new range of concept figures or something are skirmish games.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's where 28 mil strength is, and I think it's where companies coming new to the market realize that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, even gay's work shop, they're very effectively taken, what's it being mass battle system and brought it down to just, you know, different figures.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas the converse is the largest scale of action you want to produce, you need to go with smaller figures.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, it keeps it accessible, doesn't that?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's about using the right tool for the job.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've always like trying to do the back of the water fluid 28mm, it's like trying to use a hammer to put the screw in.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, wrong tilted, wrong job.

[SPEAKER_01]: You've got to have the appropriate tools to do properly.

[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, Tonya, it really is great when you're doing one-to-one gaming, when you're doing that sort of actually where you've got a lift off roof, and you move you figure out the house brilliant.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm...

[SPEAKER_01]: not going to be so, but doing the big games, I think it's a bit of a dead end.

[SPEAKER_01]: Controversy there, because I'm sure you all listeners will rally to the defense of what you got, but I'm allowed my opinion on it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I potentially don't have any any ways to [SPEAKER_00]: I was the sex male side of things in the hobby looking in terms of young people because famously you know the youth date they come and via games workshop I think that's a fair statement so I'm many sort of youngsters the year 10 to see playing sex just now.

[SPEAKER_01]: A few, to be honest, I'd say it's pretty representative of the rest of the hobby in terms of a cross section, and the feeder mechanism for new players in historicals, a way for workshop, it's workshop, it's something like Warlord, there's a great world of historical war gaming out there, and then they move in through that.

[SPEAKER_01]: The problem is at feeder mechanism is 28th all-based, so it takes a bit of time, but yeah, I would say that at geosix, we, which is a war game showed purely for six and all figures, so it's a pretty good cross section of our community, it's pretty much the same sort of age range you would get with the big figures.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think there's many things massively different.

[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, so I would love to give you an instant revelation.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's to watch great for Youngen's, but Other of course, it is great for Youngen's because it's decent.

[SPEAKER_01]: They get a lot of money for the bank for the book But I find that younger gamers are more dorned to buy the size of the figure than the bigger ones.

[SPEAKER_01]: The new older ones That that is probably a barrier and what I found which I said it's easy [SPEAKER_01]: If you're used, your comfort zone is being in your little games workshop, shop or your little store, Peyton becomes playing with the begins, and you're not that necessarily competent in your company, Peyton Pentea Velitude, so we just try and try these things which are what are the soys.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that can seem like daunting.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we try and bring people on, but you've got people got to come to us first, just to enable us to show them how to get on with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: What was it?

[SPEAKER_00]: Was it a show you said?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's called Joyce of Sex, Joyce of Sex, Joyce of Sex, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the fader sex, six drugs and rock and roll, yeah, we think, but yeah, the joy is, yeah, yeah, you say to people, we hold the gold to sneak it to themselves, the first time, you've just, thank you very much, show we started about eight, nine years ago, it's grown from, we never had any ambitions for it, it's grown from being what was just a gathering of a few signal gamers, [SPEAKER_01]: big.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, really big.

[SPEAKER_01]: In successive years we've had to take a more more room each time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now the last event that we had pre-COVID had 35 games being played on the same day, which isn't held up for a small show and we actually had to turn [SPEAKER_01]: massive reputation of the six-mill world for the quality and quantity of games we put out there.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's turning into a showcase for our side of the hobby.

[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, so we invite Edita Zawoggins magazine, we have a panel session, and we've had Edita Zawoggins of two of our illustrious walk-in magazines appearing on that, and we'll hopefully get a third this time room.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it is an amazing show.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's an eye opener to anybody who doesn't know anything of it all about the scale.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's well worth to have a visit because it's showing the little guys at their best and brightest.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's great fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't win, does that take place then?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's takes place in Sheffield, Sheffield Hall of the University in July.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's July the 3rd this year, which is a Sunday.

[SPEAKER_01]: We do have a website, which is very basic at the moment, called the joys of six.

[SPEAKER_01]: but it's all over the the the six more groups if you just tap into a signal phase but group you'll find references to it there it is the mech and now for six more gamers from all of the country and all of the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: The thing is most we've had to do it because we've found that no matter how good a game you put on a earth at a conventional show it got pretty well ignored but the big guys sort of muscle in and nobody looks at your little game.

[SPEAKER_01]: and got people very frustrated so we decided to give a nice old friend this show for people who could then go along relax and show what they can do and it's grown from that to the point now whereby one of our aims now is to actually get people who aren't sixable gamers coming along to the show to have a look at it and so we really recommend it and the great thing is [SPEAKER_01]: If 6thmal isn't your thing, it's one of the cheapest shows you'll have to come to, because there's nothing on sale there that you'll want to spend your money on, so you can just know and say, looking at games, however, I think by the end of the day, your fingers will be itching and your wallet will be open because there's lots of 6thmal trading, and it will awaken your enthusiasm for the scale, and I will guarantee that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Peter has been a really good conversation, and I hope that a few of the listeners who may be not checked out sex mouth stuff, or you know, pretty interested in going and have no look, is there anything that we've not covered that you would want it to bring up for touch upon?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not really, I find with these, it's best for you to lead, I can spend all night talking about what we do and how we do it, and to be honest, it would get very, very boring.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you're in the slightest bit curious about six-mallow, we would just, uh, [SPEAKER_01]: peachy curiosity about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: The recommendation says have a go, don't think I can't paint it always too small or whatever.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just get a packet of figures, pick him up, put a show, just mail order it from us or from, say, for many of the guys on the 6th of the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: And just have a go.

[SPEAKER_01]: and ask advice.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean people can always email me very responsive to emails or contact me on Facebook through for our messenger service.

[SPEAKER_01]: You'll find it a really, really nice welcoming environment from the, well, you guys are splined to figures, but the people who play with them, you see, it's a really close-knit-look community.

[SPEAKER_01]: But, most triumph, if you can think of it, I can't do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll try it one day.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, just do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just order pack of Romans or some French blind infantry and have a go.

[SPEAKER_01]: and then you can find out whether basically I've been talking rubbish or leaving or they are as easy and as friendly to pay those I've said and they do look as good as I've said.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think actually of you're coming down on my side of the argument once you've actually done that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and just don't be like my friend and glue all the guys down before you've been a dumb as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, no.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there is help for your friend out there, councillor service and that sort of thing, but I'm sure it can touch me by email.

[SPEAKER_01]: I will be happy to help your friend out with some more practical advice.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks very much for listening to this episode of the tabletop miniature hobby podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you enjoy the show then please do share it with someone else you think might enjoy it too.

[SPEAKER_00]: And be sure to check out our Discord community of like-minded hobbyists which you could find at BedroomBattlefield.com forward slash discord.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be great to see you in there.