Having been out of touch with gaming figurines since about age 14, at which time I actually did create similarly sized Napoleonic figurines from twisted wire and a plastic modeling compound, I picked up “modding.”

I was fascinated in 2016 to learn about the Perry Brothers’ endeavor to go small and plastic with their TravelBattle game. The simplicity and space-saving aspects were particularly intriguing.

Officially, their scale is 8 mm, or “Z scale.”

This is roughly 1:200 to 1:220, not that you can tell in some cases. 8 millimeters is roughly equal to 5.5 feet (“from the ground to the eyes”). When you get to 10 mm, it’s kind-of 1:160, or about N scale.Wikipedia has a better review of scales.

I am going to refer Z to N scale as ZeN scale, interchangeable with saying 8 to 10 mm scale. No philosophy involved here.

As such, you can get away with avoiding a lot of detail here in design and painting. The “3 foot rule” of visualization is very forgiving, though there’s room for enough detail to still drive yours truly batty.

This is also an accepted architectural and model railroad scale, so guess what? You can get more varied plastic figures for modding from cheaper Chinese sources and more pretty sources such as Preiser. These are closer to 8mm scale than the Perry figures, which are perhaps 9mm. It’s not that easy to tell, though, and these can all be intermixed. It turns out that various fantasy and sci-fi games use metal figurines that are in the 9 or 10mm range. The Dropzone Commander series has lots of miniatures to choose from. They have some plastic sets, but the metal ones are prettier.

There’s work involved, but modifications can be performed even on the railway figurines for not just military games, but fantasy/sci-fi ones. So far, in the latter category, I’ve attempted Cowboy Bebop (TM), Harry Potter (TM), Farscape (TM), Flash Gordon (TM), and John Carter of Barsoom (TM). A recent mod of the Perry’s Napoleonic figurines morphed them into knights. And then there are creatures, machines, buildings, terrain, etc.

So there are lots of topics to discuss if you want to tag along or join in.

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