Ground scale.

Yes, I'm whittering on about scale again.

One of the common criticisms of Heroics scale games is that the models are too large to be in scale for firearms. Those that choose to continue will often explain that this comes from the early games focusing on archery and other pre-gunpowder artillery, or from a model representing a squad rather than a single soldier. The former explanation has some accuracy, with a number of early games focusing on Agincourt and similar mediaeval conflicts; the second, also has some warrant, since those same early games involved conflicts where actual units could be hundreds strong, and that would be very unwieldy on the the tabletop. Even Warhammer Fantasy's third edition suggested that each model could be considered to represent 5 or 10 actual soldiers.

The arguments, thus, tend to favour using a smaller scale for terrain than the armed forces miniatures. This is fine for formation combat, but starts to cause difficulty the more the soldiers interact with the terrain, whether because it's guerrilla fighters battling in the mediaeval streets or C20th soldiers fighting for control of a devastated city quadrant. Basically, if the models need to be able to enter and move around in the terrain, the terrain needs to be significantly closer in scale than when it's just there to impinge upon movement and block lines of approach and lines of fire.

Most Heroics games give an assault rifle, such as the AK-47, a range of somewhere around 24-36"/60-90cm, 100cm is the most I've seen in most games. This translates to somewhere in the region of 36-60m for a weapon whose listed range is 360m. This upsets a lot of people far more than most other concessions and compromises in the hobby.

Many argue, and quite rightly, that this reduction in range makes movement and manoeuvring more important, and prevents the games becoming simple exercises in dice rolling. This is true: if the entire table was in range of every pistol and rifle in your force, why would you ever move out of the prepared firing positions you deployed in. If everything is in range, movement is an entirely pointless phrase, and close combat, around which most games have been built, becomes something that will never get used.

There is a further factor, though, that is often overlooked. That effective range for the AK-47, 360m, is based on how far a trained shooter, familiar with the weapon, can accurately hit a target while taking time to aim in an open range. In actual combat, the situation is very different:

1) Few battles are fought over flat, level, open terrain. While it's the terrain that gun lines nominally love, it just makes no tactical sense to advance across an open field if you can do so through almost any other terrain. Even the famous slaughter of the Somme wasn't an advance over open ground, rather through a devastated landscape of shell craters and blasted terrain. While barbed wire is unlikely to stop a bullet, it can drastically affect the accuracy of any shooting.

2) There is the infamous fog of war. This refers to a combination between natural climatologic idiosyncracies, say a foggy morning that would allow hidden movements of troops, the smoke generated by gunfire, the smoke from burning terrain, and the simple chaos of exploding ordinance throwing clouds of dirt and dust into the air. When visibility is reduced, shooting at anything that moves is likely to result in a lot of friendly fire incidents at worst, or at least a lot of wasted ammunition.

3) In the midst of all this chaos, with random terrain, limited visibility, etc., with an enemy shooting at them, few soldiers will take the time to stop and take careful aim at anything but the closest range. Those that do will generally get shot by someone at a closer range before they can get their long range shot off. Yes, in certain circumstances a sniper can hit a target accurately at 800m with an M24, but at that range most weapons are outwith their effective range, and so a game at that range will be limited to snipers shooting at single targets, with carefully aimed shots.

In basic terms, yes, the range on firearms in a game are greatly reduced compared to their ranges on a shooting range, in part because it's needed to make the game more engaging, but it also adds to the immersion into the confusing, close-quarters nature of modern warfare.