There's plenty of little tweaks we always want to do to our armies, some are brought out of rules changes others just for the sake of clarity on the table top.
Squats and Power Weapons:
Originally when I assembled my Squats up, I left the Sergeants of the units with just out-stretched hands to try and keep the squads cheap. However, with 6th edition and the rules difference between Power Axes and Power Swords, I've wanted to add Axes to each of the Sergeants.
Dark Eldar Vehicle Markers:
Currently, GW only make "hanging-off-the-side-of-a-Raider" models for Wyches and Kabalite warriors. However, I've been running a Raider filled with Incubi and an Archon in my last few games and I like the unit.
Currently, what that means is that I have to cram the base of an Incubi underneath the middle sections of the Raider and hope he stays on when moving.
Likewise, the armour on my Archon (who I tend to use as the hanger on) looks very similar to the Kabalite Warriors so it's hard for opponents to tell exactly who is in what Raider.
So I'm toying with the idea of making detachable flags that can be plugged into each Raider with a laminated bit of paper on, that I can use a Whiteboard Marker to write on what unit is inside each.
If I do get around to this, I'll try and get a tutorial up.
This would also help with my Venoms, as I'm currently balancing them precariously on the end of the vehicle.
Squad and Vehicle Markings:
One of my other issues is how to differentiate between certain units and vehicles on the table.
For Imperial armies it's pretty straightforward, they have shoulder pads I can put numbers, symbols or colours onto. However for armies like Necrons and Daemons, it's not as clear as that.
Angryman, for example, has painted the bases on his Tyranids different colours to mark which squad they belong to. This is also really clear to look at on the table. The only problem with this is, I like all my bases to be the same style and colour. I think it'd annoy me to have 1 squad with blue bases, 1 with red and then all the elites and other units to have black bases.
As an example of this, my Ork army is a Deffskullz army which is predominantly blue in colour. I originally painted my second big mob of Boyz to have red warpaint which would differentiate them on the table. But they stuck out like a sore thumb in a sea of blue paint through the rest of the army.
This also extends to my vehicles as I found out on Monday. My 2 Dark Eldar Raiders are assembled pretty much exactly the same (bar some different heads on the crew) and painted exactly the same.
I'm thinking of going back to the bright coloured way, sheerly for clarity:
- Imperial Guardsmen have one of their shoulder pads coloured to show their Platoon
- Orks have just their arm paint as a different colour and then a splash of that colour on their attached Transport vehicle.
- Dark Eldar have the flags on their Raiders a different colour.
- Daemons of the same God have their Tongues painted a different colour to each other.
- Eldar I'm not sure on yet, but I was thinking about doing different coloured Jewels on the models. Red as one unit, Blue as another, etc.
- Squats are another awkward one as they have no shoulder pads or obvious place to put squad markings... so I'll have to have another look into these.
Conclusion
There's probably more stuff that I can't remember at the moment, these are just the ones off the top of my head as I was painting some Dire Avengers before heading to work this morning. The squad markings is a big one, although I'm put off somewhat just because it means if I mob some squads together to change lists a bit, it'll look a bit odd.
What do you guys do for your squad markings, showing what units are in what vehicle and do you bother updating a models Wargear for new editions, codexes and FAQs?
Cheers,
SB
Some nice ideas there. Rather than painting the whole base a certain colour for squad markings, why not use just a splash of the colour? So a single vertical coloured stripe for one squad and a different coloured vertical stripe for another?
ReplyDeleteThe laminated flags seems like a good idea, a nice way of tracking who's in what vehicle. But won't that make it easier for your opponent to target the more important models?
The vertical coloured stripe would probably be the best solution to the problem. I'll have to give it a test run over this week and see how it looks. For Guard I'll probably have to do 2 stripes, 1 for platoon, 1 for squad.
ReplyDeleteAs for the laminated flags making it easier for opponent to target more important models issue - I always try and make it clear what's in what transport at all times, so it's not really too different from me saying what's in what, it just saves me the hassle of repeating it every other dice roll :P
I always stick sgt or equivalent on top of their transports & any hq with the squad as well as a dice & corresponding dice against the squad off the table.
ReplyDeleteToo many times at comps, when i used to go, its suprising that your opponents flamer /plasma / melta squad just so happens to be in the right place they're needed everytime. I make sure I always find out what's in which transport when they deploy. Comps seem to bring out the WAACs/CAACs too much for me, though I have met some good enjoyable & honest gamers at some so not everyone at these events are all bad. But enough to put me off lol.