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This discussion is for folks who actually PAINT their armies.

I play Guard and have yet to use squad markings for my multitudes. Mainly, this is because I keep swapping around special and heavy weapons. It also makes storing my army easy since I have lasgunner trays, Heavy weapons trays and a special weapons and officer tray.

This does, however, make life difficult when Khorne Raptors show up and engage multiple squads in melee... since sometimes I have survivors and things get jumbled.

So how do you folks manage large squads? Squad Markings or (very) careful models movement (or something else)?

All of my Eldar guardians have individual paint schemes so I just make a note who is deployed where.

As an ork, I am very similar. Heavy weapons can float between units pretty easily. The only units I really have with unique heavy weapons are my elites and 'ard boyz'. (3 Big shootas with +4 armor, 2 Kommandoz with burnaz) Almost all the other weapons are interchangeable.

Also, being able to split that 30-ork unit into 3 trukk boy units does a number of squad markings painted on.

Since all my boyz have magnetic bases, I have begun using colored washers slightly larger than the base. That means I can simply put 30 red washers under these boyz and 30 orange washers under those boyz and it keeps the two units distinct. But that only works for magnetic based models, I have a few resin ones too. I don't know if I want to resort to 'sticky' bases.

I am not totally happy with it and am trying to figure something else out but that is all I have for now. I have an idea for 'rubber' bases that can fit snuggly onto most common base sizes that can be slipped on or off easily. Like a rubber band around the base of a model, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Well I haven't actually DONE it yet, but I am planning on color coding my Guard squads' bases. Just paint the whole base. Or possibly a small line on the back. And I may just number them, to keep with the whole munitorum level of organization. The Special Weapon problem is easily solved, each squad will have a guy dedicated to special weapons.

Theoretically how this is going to play out is I will have a varying number of special weapons, depending on how often I use them. So I'll have a Plasma for every squad, Meltas for roughly half the squads, a handful of flamers, and one or two grenade launchers. And they can swap out as needed from the squad 'pool'(Because I'll likely never field more than 2 squads with Grenade launchers).

It's a horrible waste of minis, as I'm guaranteed to leave quite a few guys from each squad (up to 3, per squad) out of each and every combat, so there's no way I can ever field my entire army. But it's a small price to pay for the ease of use it will provide.

The heavy weapon issue is a bit more challenging. I'm thinking, though, that they'll end up just being a generic color and I'll have to remember which one goes where. (this really doesn't seem so hard). Really, Guard seem like the biggest perpitrator of this problem, but also present the easiest solutions. I mean, you're always going to bring 10 Guardsmen persquad. Not like you have a choice. So the problems of "Well what if I break them down into 3 units of 10 instead of 1 unit of 30" never present themselves.

Currently I just have to tell my opponent "I know what are squads and who is in them. If you have any questions just ask". Which... is a really bad strategy, actually.

"Well I haven't actually DONE it yet, but I am planning on color coding my Guard squads' bases. Just paint the whole base. Or possibly a small line on the back. And I may just number them, to keep with the whole munitorum level of organization."


i was going to do something similar. but i'm now thinking about using small colored magnets attached to the back & bottom of
the bases.that way i can switch out the magnet when i switch out the trooper.

i'm sure i'll change my mind again by the time i get around to doing it.....

You can just paint the outside of the bases with a different color.

I paint the interior of the epaulettes of my praetorians. The right pad is the platoon color and the left pad is the squad color.

Even marking the bottoms of the bases somehow is preferable to playing musical models in a tight melee.

alarmingrick wrote:"Well I haven't actually DONE it yet, but I am planning on color coding my Guard squads' bases. Just paint the whole base. Or possibly a small line on the back. And I may just number them, to keep with the whole munitorum level of organization."


i was going to do something similar. but i'm now thinking about using small colored magnets attached to the back & bottom of
the bases.that way i can switch out the magnet when i switch out the trooper.

i'm sure i'll change my mind again by the time i get around to doing it.....

There's no saying you have to keep the Heavy weapon trooper the same base color as your squad; as long as all 'Heavys are a separate color from all squads, it's hard to get them confused between squads. (e.g. Heavy's "Brown" Squad A "Blue" Squad B "green"); you'll only get into a problem if you've got two weapon troopers with the same loadouts adjacent; at which point it should still be obvious which one belongs to which squad (assuming you aren't doing something arbitrary like interleaving squads.

I'm in the process of magnetizing a bunch of marines. The arms with shoulder pads and insignia are inter changeable. So if I need an assault marine with a melta gun, just pop on the 2 arms for 2 handed weapons then pop on the appropriate weapon. Need to change it to a power weapon and bolt pistol no problem, how about a power fist... etc etc.

One of my friends with an IG army painted his guys with different colored helmets so he could tell the difference. Most were neutral colors so they didn't screw up his paint scheme but made it very easy to tell what guy belonged to which squad. Painting bases (or just the outer rims of them) is another way to work it out.

If you are going to be swapping heavy and special weapons around all over the place, you could make something interchangable on the bases. For example lets say you have 3 squads whos' bases are red, yellow, and blue. You could then have your special and heavy weapons guys modeled up so that there is a magnet on their base (under the base or modeled into the top...whatever works for you). Then you could have little strips of cut sheet metal (or other magnets if it doesn't end up being too strong) in red, yellow, and blue. Now all you have to do is put the colored strip of your choice on the model you want to be attached to each squad. Its a little extra work on the modeling end, but its fairly simple and means that you don't need to have a bunch of extra guys sitting around in your case.

With my Orks.. Each unit gets a colored vertical line in the back of the base. about 1 brushstroke wide. That way I can see em as I play.. and if there are multiple combats going on, a glance can see who is where and who just died.

Blue Boyz, Red Boyz ... etc.. simple and it works.

The only drawback is if I wanted to customize the mobs on the fly.. swapping heavy weapons etc.. so I have a fairly "standardized" force. (for orks)

-Porkuslime

I play marine's, and since I am not the best painter in the world my scheme is terrible. So I paint the right leg lower portion (marines) the color of the squad. Heavy Weapons do not have a color added to them since they are interchangeable. Special Weapons, each squad has 1 of each.

My guard friend paints the pauldrons of his guard, but makes platoon markings on the bases as well as squad markings. It is very intricate but he is a great painter.

I don't use squad markings at all, and it's actually very rare that I run into a situation where I can't tell who goes where. Granted, I play with a smaller amt of troops compared to most others.. in a 2000 pt army I have about 900 pts for troops and 1100 for tanks.

I've always meant to do squad markings, I just never did. I was hoping to have "red platoon" and "Blue platoon", where the left shoulder has a red or blue stripe and then just a number for their squad, 0 for hq, squad 1, squad 2, etc. Just never got around to it.

Hmm, I like the idea of maybe painting my squad markings on just 6-7 lasgunners at a time and leaving the heavies, specials and leaders generic. Part of my problem is my Guard are Tallarn, so the pauldrons are inconsistent for proper marking anyway. Hmmm, maybe I'll do the backs of the bases.

Someone already mentioned it, a magnet in/on the base. It's probably the least intrusive and allows some flexible modelling options. If I was going to go this route, personally I'd embed the magnet into the base and cover it with sand/etc as normal. Then use some type of "terrain" for each base that's unique to each squad. A single rock, 2 rocks stacked, a destroyed chaos space marine helmet, a discarded bolt pistol, etc. Embed a magnet into that, then you can "label" each squad as you see fit, anytime you want.

My Tau have squad markings on their shoulderpad. My orks, not so much, that army has been rearranged countless times.