Metric or Imperial: Where do you stand?

Have you ever stood over a wargaming table with a tape measure in hand and wondered why so many of our favorite rulebooks still rely strictly on imperial inches? In my latest video, [Wargamers do it in Inches - Watch on YouTube], I take a deep dive into the classic debate between measuring in inches versus centimeters and explore how a simple shift in how we measure can completely transform the way we play on smaller tables. For something as straightforward as a unit of measurement, the choice between imperial and metric units can stir up surprisingly strong opinions across the hobby. My own approach is all about practical flexibility, advocating for using both systems depending on the space and figure scale you are working with, without ever locking yourself into rigid dogma.

To understand why imperial measurement remains so dominant in historical tabletop gaming, we have to look back at the origins of modern wargaming itself. The majority of traditional rulesets trace their lineage directly back to British design traditions, starting from H.G. Wells and carrying through to mid-century pioneers like Donald Featherstone and Charles Grant. Because these foundational authors grew up with yards, feet, and inches, imperial measurements naturally became the standard vocabulary of the battlefield. As our hobby has grown internationally over recent decades, more designers around the world are creating rules natively in metric, giving us a much broader landscape of design choices today.

Both systems bring distinct advantages to the gaming table that are worth recognizing depending on what you want out of a battle. Inches keep movement and range numbers wonderfully small and digestible, while carrying a delightful thematic resonance for historical periods where commanders calculated distances in yards. Metric measurements, on the other hand, align smoothly with how the majority of modern gamers calculate numbers, offering effortless base-ten arithmetic for half-ranges and templates. Rather than viewing one system as superior, recognizing their individual strengths helps us decide when each one serves our specific gaming setup best.

The real breakthrough comes when we use measurement conversion as a tool to shrink table requirements or shift figure scales. When I want to play a game originally designed for 28mm figures using my 6mm miniature collection, I happily swap inches directly for centimeters. I have used this exact method for years with rulesets like The Men Who Would Be Kings for my 6mm Zulu War battles, effectively turning a modest dining room table into a vast battlefield capable of handling grand regimental actions. Squeezing epic historical conflicts into compact living spaces becomes effortless when we stop treating printed measurements as unalterable rules and start using them as flexible design tools for our home battles.