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I have a standard, run of the mill Cadian army, 1600 points. I am looking to make it stand out from other, standard Cadian Armies. I don't have a whole lot of money to spend on 40k at the moment, but does anyone have any suggestions as to how to individualize it?

Try painting it.

Posting one-liners like this is just spamming the forum and it's also pretty rude. Both are against our rules. Please avoid doing this in the future. Thanks ~ Manchu

Basing I would suggest Basing them with Snow, than getting Cd Cases (Like Music CD or Computer CD Cases the plastic ones) then cracking them apart to have shards of plastic about half size of the base or 1/4 glue them on paint it to look like ice put snow around it then you have a good iceworld base for cheap if you have cd cases at least.

Or look online for other cheap unique basing articles since if you are painting them Cadian style the bases is really the only thing that can make them unique and I find snow to be a rarer theme generally.

If you have the skill a cool paintjob maybe? If you have some money you could bitz order parts from GW or other 3rd party companys. Or you could sculpt some GS additions. Not much else to say.

IGdude354 wrote:I have a standard, run of the mill Cadian army, 1600 points. I am looking to make it stand out from other, standard Cadian Armies. I don't have a whole lot of money to spend on 40k at the moment, but does anyone have any suggestions as to how to individualize it?

I would say either a lot of "at model level" customizations to make each character feel unique when you look at them. Or the other, which is choose an environment you would want your army fighting in, and customized around that. Add terrain and maybe some custom camo if it's a winter environment or something.

Additional detailing can go a long way

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/351008.page

Heads are the biggest and easiest thing to change. And the Cad heads are (IMHO) terrible.


Check out some bitz sites like The War Store or Hoard of Bitz for options.

Just swapping them for Wargames Factory gas masks or historical heads or even Catachan or Fantasy would make a huge difference. Heck I have a box of Napoleonics I'll never paint if you want those heads (they're a bit small but you can say the armor bulks them up).

Failing that, how about doing them up as Police or SWAT uniforms, dark blue and black. Make them look more like an urban war force than field infantry.

name them individuly and paint the name on the base

Thanks for the responses. I'll definetly give basing a try... right now I just painted them green (lack of basing knowledge or material) but a snow theme sounds good. I've also already tried naming every one, but that's a little hard considering I have around 130-150 guys to name.

I've looked into other heads, will definitely give that a try

kenshin620 wrote:Additional detailing can go a long way

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/351008.page

Ah, I found this guy quite inspirational as well.

IGdude354 wrote:I've also already tried naming every one, but that's a little hard considering I have around 130-150 guys to name.

Movie credits. Especially for modern movies where they list everybody, a movie has ready-made lists of diverse names.

Paint jobs and lots of detailing as others have mentioned are an easy and relatively inexpensive way to make your army stand out.

Look up photos of real military vehicles and see how they're painted, see how they're weathered, and also see how extra gear, fuel cans, etc are stowed. Few 40k modelers do much more than just put the vehicles together straight from the box and paint them.

A few sites I can suggest off the top of my head for some help in that area would militarymodelling.com and armorama.com, but you can find a lot more with a little Googling.

Thanks for sharing.

Gear them up, give each of them a water bottle at the very least and various sort of grenades/ammo pouches, back packs and shovels.

You can also give each squad a vox operator and not use it in game, tho that might confuse people.

Spicing up the paintjob slighty, marks on the shoulderpads different from the regular cadian markings, maybe make them whitestripe squads? there is a few things that you could do. Or even cadians with a camo edge.

Also interesting bases with gear/guns and giving the members of the squads gear that would help them do their job.

A few suggestions:

1.Base your army, snow,grass,urban area bases. Whatever you find aesthetically pleasing. Basing is an inexpensive way to make your army stand out just a little bit more. Sprue bits can be roughed up and painted to appear as steel girders for ruins or urban areas, desert themed guard bases are a pinch as well.

2.Work out a visual indicator system for both rank and squads.

A few examples:






These types of insignia are both customizable and easily painted and provide a layer of detail that is not only consistent across an army but lends a touch of realism.

3. Individual unit patches or phrasing. Many soldiers real or fictional add touches to their armed forces uniforms, from an ace of spades stuck in their helmet to more elaborate designs like this:


Even simple pictures like a smiley face can lend a more lively look at an individual soldier.

All in all these are just a few simple inexpensive touches that can really make an army stand out on the tabletop.

Good luck!

I'm starting a renegade guard army and my theme is trench warfare so I use bent paper clips for wire sand and some plasticard as well. I don't have much money for it ethier so all these materials are pretty cheap.

the heavy weapons teams are your friend with individualizing a guard army , the bigger bigger basses give you lots of options, use the running cadia legs , fold up the tripod (with a knife) and have some teams running with the weapons ( you get to use the kneeling legs for your normal troopers as well which helps, or leave off the sheilds or use plasticard or spare bits of tanks to build walls or bunkers and set up any spare vox casters or ammo canisters you have. or you can uses spare barrels of tanks and bits and peices of electrical cable and or straws to make machines in the corner of the base

another simple one is cut the ariels from the voxcasters drill them and fit whip ariels made from single core electrical cable or paper clips and grenades or packs attached across the shoulders rather than on the belts work well too. and little things like cutting the power pack off some of the lasgus and puting it into the models hand as though its reloading, and laying a couple of models down never goes a miss either

well thats me done hope it helps

Wow, really amazing replies all! I think I might try out some of this stuff.

I don't think anyone said it yet, but simply creating a backstory for your army, and creating different "divisions" (like armored assault brigade, etc.) gives it a lot more personality.

Even if you don't have enough models to put together a massive strike force to base your storyline off of, you can say that some divisions are assigned to other sectors and such.

Try grabbing one of the catachan kits and mixing it into the rest of the units. Will add a lot of character to each squad. The two guys running around without shirts might bug you though.

Little touches can be nice to. Like different shoulder pad markings. What I am currently doing once I get round to it is just giving squads a single coloured shoulder pad to help differentiate.

So the first ten guys may all have one red shoulder pad with whatever markings on it. The next may be blue with different marks etc.

The idea of individualising the armour with little logos is a great one to etc

Write a short story about the army's history and go from there. Flesh out its colors, traditions, morals, ways to pass the time, where they're from, what experiences they've been through, ect. Nothing is more individual than a story, and you really don't have to tell anyone about it either, but it will definitely inspire you as to what paint scheme you might use, how you'd like to base them, visualize and model the things they may carry, and overall attach you more strongly to something you should be spending considerable amounts of time on anyway.

Characters may appear in your mind, then your story, and finally you'll figure out a way to make him/her part of the army.


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White Ninja wrote:Try grabbing one of the catachan kits and mixing it into the rest of the units. Will add a lot of character to each squad. The two guys running around without shirts might bug you though.

If you buy green stuff you can cover their manly bodies with torn rags/gauze to symbolize how hard your army has been fighting and be less tacky then.. "oh, it's really hot in here, i'll take off my shirt and armor in the middle of a warzone..."

I always thought it was assumed that their massive abs were just as effective as flak armor so they had no reason to keep the stuff on.

I've used the catachan arms on cadian torsos and write squad numbers on the left shoulder and rank on the right. You could also change the weapons they use. I bought 1:32 scale M-16 variants to use as lasguns.

There are a lot of great suggestions in this thread but to answer your question in the OP

IGdude354 wrote: but does anyone have any suggestions as to how to individualize it?

Don't. We all love our armies and we want them to stand out, but let's be honest IG aren't supposed to stand out. If your army is painted and built create a uniform base scheme and let it be. If you have a cool awesome concept for a themed IG army it's going to cost. For this Vanilla one let it go, play and be merry.

AustonT wrote:Don't. We all love our armies and we want them to stand out, but let's be honest IG aren't supposed to stand out. If your army is painted and built create a uniform base scheme and let it be. If you have a cool awesome concept for a themed IG army it's going to cost. For this Vanilla one let it go, play and be merry.

As a guard player i'm going to agree with AustonT. Guardsmen are just your run of the mill human slobs and as such really dont need to be individualized. At least not on a model to model level. Leave the individualization for command squads or Veteran squads.

A good way to get some flavour into your army is to personalise squads. Start out by maybe painting a shoulder pad a different colour for each squad. Or paint their lasgun casings different colours. Even a simple coloured stripe across a shoulder or gun casing can help make squads stand out against one another.
For example...
Squad 1 - Red squad
Squad 2 - Blue squad
Squad 3 - Green squad
etc etc.

One trick i've used for my guardsmen is to have every squad doing something different. I've gathered up things like all the running legs or the firing arms and turned them all over to their own unit. So i have one squad that is Standing and firing, another that are running. One group of guys looks like they are searching for something (an objective maybe, or that last hormogaunt that got away). I am even in the process of making a heavily wounded squad that looks like they are just returning from the front lines.

Now all that being said, if you want to personalise and individualise each and every guardsman then well you're a mad man but more power to you for really taking the effort. . The idea BairdEC had of using the movie credits is genius really. Might just do that myself actually now that i think about it. Also incase you don't already have one (or both), the Cadian and Catachan command squads have a wealth of bits that will no doubt be invaluable to you. Rebreathers, heads, backpacks, weapons and wounded solider bits. All very useful for customisation.