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I already have a tyranid army that I play with all the time, and recently was able to buy the beginnings of an IG army for dirt cheap. Since I already have an army to play with all the time, I figured I'm going to take my time and paint these guard right. I want to make them look great.

Now, I have been practicing and learning all kinds of things with these guard, but the one area i haven't figured out is how to paint the shoulder pads. I have cadians, so I need to figure out how to paint the cadian gate symbol, as well as Company/Platoon/Squad on the other shoulder.

I was thinking I could make a full designation, e.g. 315, by using a hobby knife to cut out a stencil from painter's tape, then drybrush skull white on to make it look hastily spray painted.

what have you guys used? How well did it turn out?

Thanks in advance for all your help.

I free hand all the squad designations and Cadian gate symbols on my guardsmen, but it takes a while to perfect it and also takes a lot of time to do it for every single model. If you want to do something like stenciling, as what you had in mind, I would just try useing the decals that come in the box. If you do this though, you will need some decal softener to get the decal right on the rounded shoulder pads, otherwise it won't work.

I think that free handing looks better than using decals (the Cadian gate symbols are a bit "fat" imo ), but you get much more consistent results with the decals and it doesn't take nearly as long.

I hope this helps.