Toy Tanks

One thing I've been thinking about the last day or so is the idea of miniatures for A Time of War games.  Getting scale right is somewhat difficult; obviously Total Warfare-scale miniatures are much too small to represent their equivalent units on the A Time of War battlemat, but nobody manufactures BattleTech miniatures of considerably greater scale.  For instance, representing a 12-meter tall BattleMech would involve a six-inch tall miniature on a 2m/inch mat.  A large vehicle would be of similar dimension in its footprint.  The scale works out to be something on the order of 1/78th Scale.

Automobile models are commonly produced in 1/24th scale, which might be close enough to work with, but tanks are largely produced in 1/35th at most.  The latter scale is pretty close to using a scale for your BattleMat in which 1 inch equals 1 meter, instead of 1 inch equals two.  That cuts the gamespace area of your Battlemat to a quarter of its previous size, but permits considerably greater selection if one is inclined to use large-scale miniatures for their campaign.  I suspect the investment is most worth it for games being run at conventions, where production value is everything, but even for more private games that want to add a special twist to a session, using mass-produced modern tank models as stand-ins for combat vehicles seems perfectly viable.  Otherwise, the next stop is at 1/72nd, which is probably more economical, and provides more space for units on the board.