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As the title implies, what are some good ways to distinguish ork mobs? Right now I am considering either painting their belts different colors or a ring around the base (in neutral tones like grey or brown).

What techniques do you guys use to help distinguish your mobs?

I've seen and used some different things:

-Pretty overt
--Paint the bandana a different color (most have a bandana somewhere)
--different ring around the base
--different uniform ie shirt color

-Kinda subtle
--paint or tattoo a single shoulder
--terrain feature on each base unique to the unit

-Crazy subtle
--paint or carve dots under the bases

I paint my orks as bad moons with yellow details on mostly black clothing. The pants and shirts aren't actually black though. They are just really dark colors, and the colors of the shirts tell units apart. I paint the pants and shirts bright colors then wash twice with black.

I recommend painting every mob in significantly different colours. The reason is, once you have a few models on the table, you really don't want to be be having to look for the belt or some minor color somewhere to tell them apart.

You want it to be obvious to both you and your opponent from across the table, which squad is which.

Even single-clan armies can do this, as most clans have two or three colors to work with easily. And you can go shirt/pants in different colors, so, for example, bad moons are yellow & black.

Yellow shirt, black pants
Yellow shirt, yellow pants
black shirt, yellow pants
(black/black too, maybe, but might look too much like goffs)

But orks, also, aren't always single-clan armies, so mixing up the clans for your boyz mobs is an easy way too.

 Redbeard wrote:
But orks, also, aren't always single-clan armies, so mixing up the clans for your boyz mobs is an easy way too.

This is what I'm doing, more or less. Uniform is black across the board, since I'm lazy (hey, there are a ton of the buggers and it comes in a spray can... er, I mean, I like the cohesion it lends the army ), but each unit is getting markings/armor/trim painted in the color(s) of the unit type's associated clan (slugga boys get B&W checks and dags, trukk mobs get red armor and hair, etc.). Once I start duplicating units, I'll pick an alternate clan for the subsequent one(s). With six clans (if we stick to the canon) to choose from, you'll be hard pressed to have to duplicate the color scheme of any given unit type, short of amassing an Apocalypse-scale hoard army.

differnt orkish runes on clothing or as tattoo's?
tattoo's in general might also be a good way
or war paints

I mark the base of all my models with a small strip of electrical tape in a specific color. This allows me to change between games orks from a single squad of 20 to two squads of 10. I find this goes a long way so when I say 'orange' squad, they can see the edge of the base is orange opposed of looking for a doo-dad on the model which is orange.

The best way is multi-clan as it is super clear but defeats the ability to have a coherent force or limits your flexibility. (like if you own 20 lootas and want to run 15 one game and two squads of 10 next game... different colors can cause issues)

Also, Electrical tape is easy, doesn't leave marks as it is not really sticky and can be removed easily unlike painting base rings.

Currently I'm using differences in trim and moderate detail -My AoBR slugga mob all have black shirts and pants, with brown leather straps and Boltgun Metal weapons. My Warboss has brown pants and shirt, with darker brown boots and straps, and a red PK, bosspole and other gubbins.
Just keep changing clothing colours (the 3E Ork codex has some great schemes for each of the clans) and you'll have easily distingished mobs that still look like a cohesive whole from a way away.

I've begun adding at least one shoulder pad to each orks boy, then paint the shoulder pads different colors to show which squad they belong to. So I have a green squad, red squad, etc. Really easy to identify on the table. Include a colored shoulder pad for the nob as well.

Thanks for all the replies guys.

My orks are intended to be Goffs so I'd rather not paint mobs with different colored shirts/pants. I also want to avoid that "Skittles" look that I've seen with some green tide armies.

@nkelsch Interesting way to do it. Do you put it on the bottom of the bases or what? I like the idea of tactical flexibility as I won't always be fielding the exact same list with the exact same sized units.

@Madmax1 I like that idea. I am still leaning towards something like picking out a smaller detail on the model (shoulder pad, belt, etc.).

You could do goffs with different patterns on shoulderpads. One could be checkers, one dags, one red, etc.

I use different weapons
axe choppa
chain choppa
sword choppa
Shoota mob