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Hey folks!

I'm building up an Unending Host Renegade army with 12 seperate Infantry Squads and (as the title suggests) I want to obviously seperate them on the tabletop.

I DON'T want to achieve that by painting every squad different as I think thus destroys the look of the army.

I had the idea of placing some flashy markers to do some kind of a "cut" between two squads.

What do you horde players out there do to make your game easier?

Just do something similar but different for each squad. A stripe on the helmet of one squad, a chevron on the next, etc etc.

So long as it ties together, yes it's more work but they will be identifiable. In-universe, that's probably exactly how they mark squads to differentiate them.

For my squads, I don't paint the whole squad differently, just one key detail. Squad markings are easy on space marines. For Dark Eldar, hair color or their loincloth/arm bands are another good choice.

Originally, for my Salamnders I did their bases differently. Not huge differences, just slight enough that I could tell them apart at a glance. (F'rex: grass and rocks; one rock each on squad one, two each on squad two, etc.)

Personally i'm a fan of different colours for around the outside of base; blue, red, green, brown etc

You could put a stripe on a shoulder and divide them striped and non striped or you could put a single stripe on the rim of the base

What I do is buy a pack of loom bands, essentially small coloured rubber bands, and stretch them over the model's legs. That way it's not permanent for if I feel like running different loadouts on squads. Helps differentiate between squads and allows me to swap out for vet squads with more weapons and the like.

GAdvance wrote:
Personally i'm a fan of different colours for around the outside of base; blue, red, green, brown etc

This is the best system I have ever seen on a tournament White Scar army. There was NEVER a question what belonged where and it could be reduced to four lines on the edge of the respective color.

Personally, my Tyranids have a stripe on their white heads. Red or Blue stripe, since all I have is two units of any creature type (except Genestealers but I haven't started to paint them yet). Obviously, more units mean more colors. The small splash of different colors doesn't hurt the overall look of the army one bit.

Roman numerals in shoulders/knees/chest/tatoo/scarification do the trick for me. A combination of all of these goes well with the rag-tag look of renegades or even penal legion.

You could try differing bases (i.e grass and dirt on one, rock on another)

Different colored plants on the bases like flowers. Failing that, painting squad marking on their shoulderpad could work.

Given that you are fielding Guard, why not do some sort of squad markings on the uniform?

That way you have something that both helps you as a player, and makes the models seem more 'real'. Colored base rims is way easier and more obvious, but it's another way to make the models seem more like game pieces. Obviously you can't do big shoulderpads with squad numbers on them, but there should be some way to put squad markings on helmets/badges/whatever. Heck, simple squad numbers on the helmets would work, if a bit boring.

I pull a little trick to keep the squads seperate. I give ~1/5 of my models a little extra detail. Like shovel on their base, the extra grenade bits, the throwing grenade guy, etc. These guys go to the outer edge of the squad on the left. Thus I can tell the difference between the units by the grenade thrower to lasgun only barrier.

I use a very classic alphabetic system for my Guardsmen. Cyrillic letters on the right soulder to differentiate every squad. Sergeants have more sophisticated markings like stripes plus the corresponding letter.

 ansacs wrote:
I pull a little trick to keep the squads seperate. I give ~1/5 of my models a little extra detail. Like shovel on their base, the extra grenade bits, the throwing grenade guy, etc. These guys go to the outer edge of the squad on the left. Thus I can tell the difference between the units by the grenade thrower to lasgun only barrier.

I'm not a fan of people who do it like this to be honest, because while you may know where your squads change your opponent may not.
My personal preference is small squad markings on a piece of armour, maybe a shoulder pad or breastplate. It keeps the army looking cohesive, but is still pretty obvious who belongs to which squad.

Many good suggestions here, thanks for that!

As I want to represent the scum of the Chaos forces, squad markings won't do it for me.

The idea with rubber bands is indeed very interesting, but kinda annoying to do on nearly 200 models, I think.

The best solution (game-wise) would probably different coloured base-edges, but 12 or 13 (with HQ squad) different base colours would just look... awkward, at best.

Doens't make me happy yet, gotta think about that some more time.

I glued washers underneath my bases and made green stuff 'rocks' with a magnet in them. Paint markings on the rocks, or make different colored rocks, and presto.

Do different base rim colouirs! Say one squad's painted with The Fang, the enxt Averland Sunset, and so on. That's what I'm doing with my Orks.

In as far as the bases concerned...

I do all the bases for horde armies identical to each other. Except for one thing. Where the back of the model would be, I paint a thin stripe on the edge of the base. By differing that color between squads/units, I can still easily discern what squad the model belongs to, while still maintaining the overall look of (very nearly) identical bases. You don't need to paint the entire edge of the base, just a small stripe on it where the back would be.

I am sure 95% of my opponents never even noticed until I pointed it out.

Yeah, do the bases a little different.

They don't have to be dramatically different, just enough so you will know.

options I've used before:

1)color, things like this squad has red left shoulder pads, this one has blue, etc. still gives unity and visual variety
2)base rim color, read above
4)weapons, in the orks case: sword squad, axe squad, etc.
5)basing style, this one is tricky if not done right, but if you are clever, squad A has a more rusty kind of city scape, squad b is Verdigris, squad c has more browns etc.

hope at least one of these helps.

These are really good suggestions since I'm also going to be running 100+ troops that need to be visually seperate but still look the same, thanks for the tips.