Scales - What is the best scale for WW2 Company/Battalion level actions?

 As I'm sure regular visitors are fully aware, I'm a little bit addicted to 3D printing items for my wargaming!

One of the real pleasures of 3D printing is the ability to resize files to suit the scale you wish to play your games.

I've recently been building up some armies to use with WW2 games and have made the unusual decision to go with a non-standard scale...........

It all happened by accident.

For many years I've played WW2 forces in 1/200th Scale (primarily - Skytex Action 200) using Blitzkrieg Commander rules. Then when the PSC 15mm range started to appear, together with the Art of War range from Zvezda, I started to collect new forces with a view to replace the 1/200th ones as I found the larger models a little easier on my eyesight!

This continued at a leisurely pace, with little or no plan ever since. Today I have reasonable sized late war British and German armies in 15mm and still have my 1/200th ones as well!

Enter the Creality Ender 5 Pro which has delivered me in one go the means to manufacture any AFVs, terrain pieces, ships etc. that I want.

After producing my Team Yankee/Seven Days to the River Rhine armies in 15mm I decided I tackle a long held ambition to own forces for the Western Desert in WW2.

This has been a long held dream as My late father used to assemble Airfix shermans etc. for me to play with as a child, and always painted these up as desert vehicles as he and his brithers served there during the war.

So if I was to print my armies, what scale should I choose?

• 1/200th scale? - generally referred to as 10mm scale, most of the free files available (Thanks to the wonderful Marco Bergman) are designed to this scale so would be easy enough to print. They'd be small can be played on smaller tables, easily stored and cost next to nothing in materials. However they would be harder for my aging eyesight to deal with.
• 1/144th scale? - or 'N'guage or 12mm as it's sometimes called. This is an interesting scale for me as it offers reasonable scale, relatively smaller playing areas and I have already tried a few in this scale to play What a Tanker successfully. They dont take up much space and there are large ranges commercially produced to fill any gaps for 3D files that do not exist.
• 1/100th scale - or as we more likely call it 15mm scale. Actually this would be 18mm scale but as so many figures these days are "Heroic" in stature I guess that where we really are. These models are larger, cost more, take up more space to store and need larger play areas, but detail is very good and the choice of commercial versions of unusual vehicles is endless.

You can see where I'm going with this......there is an awful lot to commend 1/144th scale as the ideal one for WW2 Infantry.Armour actions.

So (I thought) it was decided. I set off and started to print out my M3 Grants. However, fate and my dodgy mathematic ability (😁) intervened. I took files created in 1/200th scale and did a quick mental calculation that increasing this by 150% would give me something near enough to 1/144th scale.

How wrong I was! In reality I should have increased the file by just 139%.

I now ended up with afvs that were actually printed to 1/130th scale. But was this bad? When I compared them to figure that I intended to re-cycle to use with these models, they actually looked correct?

This reveals the state of figures for these smaller scales as I'm sure we are aware. They are mostly called 10mm, occasionally 12mm but in reality most figures are around 12-14mm tall.

A man who is 180cm tall (foot to eye) would be 12.5mm at 1/144 or 13.8mm at 1/130 scale.

I have figures from Pithead, Pendraken, Magister Militum and Minifigs and all these go well with my new 1/130 scale vehicles!

So there you have it....I'd created my own unique scale and I've decided to stick with it.

As I always collect both sides in a conflict, the fact that I have non-standard playing pieces is immaterial. Similar to most commercial figures, most commercial buildings are at the top end of their intended scale and look fine with my tanks, and If I print any it's easy to make them the correct size to match.

So with my Desert armies completed and their owner chuffed to bits with the outcome, I decided to embark on collecting armies to refight western European battles 1944-45 between Axis and Allied forces. These will also be in 1/130th scale.

So there you are, my only problem now is what to do with my 1/200th and 1/100th collections😂