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So I have begin painting rank symbols in the base of my guardsman. So far all I've done is a CCS and gave them a captain, 1 2st lieutenant, and 2 second lieutenants. What would a good rank symbol be to paint for the common guardsman

If you want to base it off the American army here is the current insignia:

Commissioned Officers
Warrant Officers
Enlisted Personnel

I'd offer up the idea of using waterslides or dry transfers to do it rather than painting. Or alternately, make yourself a stencil to airbrush them on. You could brush them on with a stencil too but it wouldn't be as smooth. I made a stencil to get the Iron Warrior hazard stripes done and it worked a charm with my airbrush. Check these Archer transfers to see if they have anything you're interested in.

edit: Also, this is more a question for the painting and modeling subforum. You might get better advice there I think, and also searching that subforum could yield some good results.

Those archer transfers are beautiful!!! Roughly how big are they?

tbh I haven't bought any yet, but they've come highly recommended here on dakka. Pretty sure I checked and the ones I checked were the right scale. They do look good though hey, I was going to pick some up soon.

They do come in both waterslide and dry transfers, so pick your poison. There are pros to both. Painting and modeling forum might get you some first hand experience with them, or some google-fu.

Well I fell like I have a nice foundation to start from. Thank you very much sir

My pleasure, let us know how they work out for you if you get them. Would like to see how they look in practice on 40k stuff!

I'll post pics here when they come in.

What sort of Guardsmen do you have? I'd make it depend on the world and thus the culture they're from - probably by looking at whatever army or background inspired them, then taking symbols associated with those warriors and changing them slightly.

Some worlds may even have no rank insignia for the common Guardsman at all!

As was suggested up above, you could use rank insignias from any modern military from today. You could just create your own
IG ranks.

SYKOJAK wrote:
As was suggested up above, you could use rank insignias from any modern military from today. You could just create your own
IG ranks.

Only today's militaries? I have US WWII insignia on the pauldrons of all my guardsmen. It's tough to explain the fluff, but I like red and white to add depth to the sea of khaki and dark green Cadians.