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Hi all.

i've gotten an idea into my head that i will start applying medals and awards to any units of mine that survive a battle victorious, and for any unit which takes out a particularly important target (say, 20 ork boyz take out a dreadnought and survive the battle they get medal for living and medal for the dreadnought, etc etc).

My question is, are there any official bits you can use for this purpose, or if not, what do you lads suggest i can use? and do you think i should award a unit citation for these things, or only to the individual models that survive the battle?

i'll be using an ork army, if that helps.

i've allways been sentimental about veteran units like this in any other games i played. e.g: gold experience units in rome total war only got used in the most vital of objectives, and i always made sure to replenish the unit. something i would not do for a lesser experienced unit. i'll be doing things like upgrading much decorated units to ard boyz etc as a reward, yadda, yadda.

i've not really done much converting, so any and all tips would be much appreciated.

Cheers, Roy.

I imagine purity seals wouls be ideal for this if you played space marines. I always figured an orks reward for valour and bravery etc. was not getting killed by his boss. Maybe add some trophies and skulls to show past victories. I like to paint the space marine heads on my bosspoles according to chapters I've defeated. Hope thats helpful.

Good idea Cruelcoin !
Use something like skulls, battle scars, bosspoles etc.

I'd recommend against going down this road. After a while your models will begin to look like they are dictators of third world countries with all the metals you're going to be pinning on them. In addition (in my own experience), once your opponent realizes what the medals/kill markings represent, that unit will become their primary target and will never survive another game again.

Instead, what I would do is get yourself some really nice heavy paper (maybe a quill pen if you want to be really fancy) and get it bound into a leather book. Dedicate one page or so to each unit in the army, and then record their victorious/valorous/noteworthy acts in the book.

For example:

21 May 2008 - Echo Squad of Second Platoon of Fox Company of the 21st Cadian Regiment are hereby awarded the Meritorious Service Crozius for their valorous conduct in the defense of the Tannhauser Gate on the Planet Ixnay by order of Colonel Ahab. May the Emperor Protect their souls.

You can theme it more appropriately to different armies, for example orks would be something similar but far cruder, like:

may212008 - Da Gubbinz Ladz of WAAAAAGGGGGHHHH!!!! Grazrut are gettin' da gold squiggoth teef fer krumpin' lotsa humie' 'edz on Gorkamorka.

If you would really rather model it instead of writing it, then what I would do is build a "guidon bearer" for each squad in your army. Basically just a guy with a pole with a little streamer (or big banner if you want, doesn't matter) that identifies the unit, and every time you award them something, they add a new streamer with different colored stripes and such signifying whatever award they were given. And if you want to go farther than that you can put purity seals and medals and stuff on the banner/banner bearer.

That is a rather cool idea, Chaos

chaos0xomega's ideas are good. A 'Guidon bearer' sounds a lot more practical than individual medals for each model. Or just give all the 'medals' to the nob?

For orks, I wouldn't go for actual medals as such - other than Blood Axes maybe, I don't see orks wanting a little ribbon with a shiny coin on the end . Some other form of 'medals' would be more appropriate, probably small trophies - enemy helmets, skulls/bones, weapon bits, uniform fragments or whatever.

For orks I would say teef... you kill an enemy and survive... you get his teef!

Buttlerthepug wrote:For orks I would say teef... you kill an enemy and survive... you get his teef!

But 'Umie teef are just too puny and wimpy, naw ya can't spend teef unless de're proppa ork teef!

If you were going to have a trophy for an SM Dreadnought I would use a zombie head since the pilot of a dread is a withered husk of a body barely kept alive.

Norwulf wrote:

Buttlerthepug wrote:For orks I would say teef... you kill an enemy and survive... you get his teef!

But 'Umie teef are just too puny and wimpy, naw ya can't spend teef unless de're proppa ork teef!

lol, followed by bigger lol.

cheers for the ideas lads.

i reckon what i will do is go for the banner bearer idea, and strip his armour down, so i will adorn him with one tooth for each unit defeated and something painted onto the banner.

cheers lads.

I have a bunch of my IG models with battle honours and trophies, etc. My Vet Sergeant is standing on an old bosspole after his squad took out a 900 point Nob squad with Warboss and Painboy in one turn. I have a regular sergeant with a Tyranid claw after he survived (and almost killed!) a Carnifex in a round of hand-to-hand. Adding extra little stuff adds a ton of character to your stuff, especially with orks! Add helmets and heads for trophies, extra weapons, etc. I remember in the 4th Edition rulebook, there was a campaign between IG and Orks, and for every vehicle kill the orks had, they painted a crude Leman Russ on the side of their vehicles.

With my red "khorne" corsairs if a model performs well I name it and give it a better paint job

eg:
"Lucky" Mukar, in one battle against IG SM and eldar,
suvived 5 turns of almost constant sniper attention, a few shots from a star cannon AND managed to wound a wraithlord with his las-cannon

"chopper" Harrin, last suvivor of a beserker squad that was charged with a warboss and then a killer nob unit, went on to kill off a big mek with shokk attack gun

I'm in the process of making "stat cards" for each unit. The cards will record their victories and awards. Also, I think I'm going to "dynamically" add weathering. i.e. more weathering based on how often units take casualties, if a vehicle receives a particuarly nasty hit to one facing, and just generally add it as I play more games. I'll also probably add to banners based on participating in campaigns/tournaments.

lol so many ideas... lets make an article !

Yeah, I dunno, the only problem might be, if your gonna give an extra skull to every boy who survives a battle, soon you'll be playing with an army of skulltakers. I reckon the best way to have recognition of kill is what Norwulf said, painting the heads of different teams and chapters on your tanks, sorta like a reminder of how badass your orky vehicle can be.