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I've become more and more aware of an issue I've been having with newer (and some older) 40k models and I'm not sure if other people have this pet peeve. I've discovered recently that the only way that I get really annoyed at an army is not so much when the units are over-powerful or the fluff is occasionally stupid (both are immutable laws of 40k and part of what makes the game the game) but when continuously, throughout the game, I have to ask "what is that again?"

I mean, take a space marine. We'll call him 'Joe'. Generally speaking, Joe's model will be a simple, clean dude, making clear two things to the casual observer. "I", says Joe "am both a space marine, as evidenced by my power armor, and I am carrying a boltgun. If I am carrying a special weapon, it'll be dang obvious because I will be different. If I am the sargeant of my squad, I will be similarly easily spotted." I have no problem with Space Marine Joe.

However, enter Steve the grey knight and Wolfy Mcwolferson the space wolf. Steve will be either a grey night, an infiltrator, or a purifier (something that my opponent will have to explain to me several times) and he will be carrying a force weapon or a power glaive or a power weapon or a laser sword or a shmazer eviscerator or a psychic scythe or a razor chainsaw of slicery along with some sort of ranged weapon. Wolfy will be either a grey hunter, a blood claw, a wolf guard or a lone wolf, and he might even have one of three kinds of special space wolf equipment that are simultaneously REALLY IMPORTANT and as far as I can tell, completely and utterly devoid of any sort of wizzywig. I'm talking, of course, of anti-psyker wolf tail talisman (every single space wolf model has a freaking wolf tail talisman! Which one is special?!?!), or sneaky stealth terminator armor ('runic' armor), or a 'mark of the wulfen' which is a sneaky invisible upgrade that is absolutely made for players who like to bounce upgrades around their squads depending on who gets killed and gives them a bunch of extra attacks and rending.

Those two are the worst and most frequent offenders, honorable mentions go to the Necron "stick that does a thing" and its numerous identical variants (see: every melee weapon in the Necron arsenal), Leman Russ tank guns, Tyranid variants of 'the big ugly bug one', and DE skinny nasty melee weapon havers.

I propose (since the new Chaos marines codex is a good indication that GW's not going to change this trend) a set of grass-roots, player based guidelines for how to designate your tricky to model upgrades on your models, using parts that an owner of the army would have and simple greenstuff procedures.

Some examples of proposed guidelines:

-Take your extra space wolf bits. Remove all the wolf tail talismans from them. If you own one box of space wolves, you should now have at least three dozen wolf tails. Fashion them into an elaborate hat for your wolf-tail talisman haver.

-Greenstuff highly elaborate extra facial hair and moustaches to your mark of the wulfen models to demonstrate their superior manhood and clarify exactly where those extra attacks are originating from.

-Necron staves: Staff of light stays as it is. The quake staff is now a great bloody hammer. Fashion one of your spare gunzy bits from either wraiths, spyders or immortal/deathmarks into a shoulder mounted laser for an eldritch lance. The despair staff actually looks just like a ghostbusters gun. Model your chrono-tec with a d6 in his hand, that's what he's really there for. Lightning-tek gets an ork custom mega blasta.

Instantly, battles become far more clear! It's easy, everyone can do it!

A cloak made entirely out of wolf tails talismans

Clearly this is an important guy.

OR keep some tokens next to them that designate things lol.

HERESY AND WEAKNESS.

It sounds like you just are unfamiliar with other races weapons and what they look like. Tyranids look quite different, if you know what your looking for. Same goes for DE. There are some upgrades that cannot be modelled (things like gift of mutation for chaos marines, or virtually all of the daemon upgrades) or that don't actually have a model to represent them, but all you have to do is ask before the game, and if it's a big deal, ask them to put a marker next to their guy. If I were a xenos player who had never played marines, I would have no idea about which gun is which, or why that guys sword is a power sword wheras his buddy next to him has a force sword. Asking people to put way more time and effort into converting up their models because you can't be bothered to ask or remember their wargear before the battle is unfair.

Naming clarity and modeling clarity is mostly what I'd like to see. Having a power sword and a force weapon is one thing-both are universal rules of the game that show up in many armies and have a rule in the main rule book. I'm happy to assume a randomly chosen sword-based weapon is a power weapon, but when there are numerous different weapons all with different special rules that all happen to look similar, then I'll be the first to admit I get confused. Necron staffs are the best example, I think. The necron codex contains 5 cryptek staffs (along with a harp with no model or description), staffs of light, rods of covenant, the empathic obliterator, imhotekh's special staff, and warscythes which are not staffs but look similar. Keeping the rules straight even as a necron player is a challenge.

Tyranids I'll admit ignorance, but I have real trouble with knowing what the differences are with many DE units because of the amount of 'extraneous wargear' the people I play with add. Every unit's got guys with knives, different hats, different armor, different heads and weapons and whips and flails. And telling the difference between grey hunters and BC when grey hunters also have chainswords thrown into their group, it's not like I can see the difference as with ork boyz, where one group is clearly waving choppas around.

it's not that I stop the game and go "NOT FAIR I didn't know that unit was that!" but I do get annoyed when I have to keep asking for clarification through the game as to what people actually have.

I am sort of with you on this. There are many upgrades that will get shifted around a squad by a sneaky player based on him simply not having modelled it. It's like the old 'hidden powerfist' in 5th ed where often the sergeant wasn't even modelled differently.

Anyway, my brother and I work on our armies together a lot, and we intentionally represent these harder to WYSIWYG things on our models. Gift of mutation on his champions for example is represented by mutant chaos bits, an extra spike or tentacle added here and there, or some green stuffing.

We also mark the bases of our models on occasion where things are a bit trickier.

I play Tyranids though, and that's hard to hide anything with. I can only think of warriors and termagaunts when I try to think of units that can have variable wargear, and the termagaunt options are useless, and warriors are almost entirely useless themselves. Even if they take a warrior squad with a 'heavy' weapon, it'll be really obviously visible by being bigga.

Just remember that every Tyranid model probably has poisoned attacks and you'll be fine.

Aren't wolves with mark of the wolfen supposed to be mutating into a giant wolf man? At least whenever I have seen them, that is what they look like. They mutate and get some extra powers.

IG tank guns are easy for me to identify, but i am a Guard player I suppose. They do all have distinct looks, except I suppose the battle/vanquisher cannon could be confusing, as it is just a length difference.