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I miss the days of banners on your models. Models look so cool with them, like Draigo and Crowe and Azrael.

They always looked silly to me.

I agree with both of you. The "I'm important, please shoot me" banners were brilliantly silly.

Personally, I always model with a banner or icon wherever possible, even if I don't intend to actually pay for/use the banner.

They're a little goofy, but I kinda love them. I have a bunch that I'm intending to make into modular add-ons to my Space Marines. I also really like the idea of doing the samurai style ones on at least some of my Eldar, when I get to them.

Not silly for Astartes or Eldar though as they already paint their armour in neon colours lol Plus orks don't care if they stick out like a sore thumb unless they are kommandos.

Part of the problem is that banners are treated as part of the body now, so are a disadvantage

I’ve lost my Iconward more times because so,done can see the tip of the icon above cover...

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
Not silly for Astartes or Eldar though as they already paint their armour in neon colours lol Plus orks don't care if they stick out like a sore thumb unless they are kommandos.

It's not just that having a banner is silly in the first placd, it's also that (especially) the paper stick on banners just don't fit in with how the actual models look. That looks silly to me. The modelled ones are a little better.

I vastly prefer the old banners to the silly "giant metal statue on my backpack". The banners at least had some art and character to them, and you could see them being magnetized or screwed into the backpack after departing, etc.

Also, some free-hand artists made tremendous samples.

I also miss when Eldar had originally been imagined carrying Samurai-esque banners, different to the Imperial ones (more reminiscent of Romans).

I've always found the banners too flimsy and broke to snapping off.

BrianDavion wrote:
I've always found the banners too flimsy and broke to snapping off.

You just have to drill a pin through the banner pole.

Snapping them off and having to glue them back became a nuisance. To this day, I even avoid antennae.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Snapping them off and having to glue them back became a nuisance. To this day, I even avoid antennae.

I mean pin it when you assemble it.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
I mean pin it when you assemble it.

To each their own, but just my thing? I don't have a lot of guys with a 'shoot me' flag.

Love banners, have many, but really frustrating that it just makes them easier to kill.... oh I can see the end of your long wavey cloth banner, I can therefore kill you. House rules help, but it still is silly.

barnacle111 wrote:
Love banners, have many, but really frustrating that it just makes them easier to kill.... oh I can see the end of your long wavey cloth banner, I can therefore kill you. House rules help, but it still is silly.

True LoS is and always has been an incredibly dumb rule.

The Newman wrote:
True LoS and shooting from and to any part of the models are incredibly dumb and counter-intuitive rules. Always have been.

Agreed, I find it silly that I can shoot at the tip of a Custodes jet biker lance tip and kill models, or that the model can somehow see through the top of their lance/banner to fire their weapons at my models.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:

The Newman wrote:
True LoS and shooting from and to any part of the models are incredibly dumb and counter-intuitive rules. Always have been.

Agreed, I find it silly that I can shoot at the tip of a Custodes jet biker lance tip and kill models, or that the model can somehow see through the top of their lance/banner to fire their weapons at my models.

Hitting a power weapon and killing the bearer kind of makes sense, who knows what happens when one of those power fields collapses. Killing a guy by shooting the banner he's carrying though, that makes zero sense.

I've always liked TLOS because it makes sense that the units are not static. Yea in one particular moment I might only see a tip of a sword but a second later maybe I get a bit more and take my shot.

The Newman wrote:
True LoS is and always has been an incredibly dumb rule.

I've never seen anyone enforce this rule at all.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
I agree with both of you. The "I'm important, please shoot me" banners were brilliantly silly.

Personally, I always model with a banner or icon wherever possible, even if I don't intend to actually pay for/use the banner.

No sillier than fluorescently bright armour colours (although some would come in handy if the environment contained large expanses of some of the more exotic salts and oxides.)

Marines aren't about the "intelligent military theory", stop thinking about them as part of a modern military paradigm. This is not a realistic military simulation and never has been about that.

They're all about the "knights and ego" thing. The banners and colours are so that they CAN be picked out by the enemy and "feared" (the whole "Oh crap, it's HIM.")

"Camouflage is the colours of cowardice" (even though RT SM armour included a mimetic coating, so that it could take on camouflage colouration OR Parade dress OR normal BDU colours on command). Space wolves used to love using Camo, too. It's ALL about "being seen". A warrior should be seen in battle.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I've always liked TLOS because it makes sense that the units are not static. Yea in one particular moment I might only see a tip of a sword but a second later maybe I get a bit more and take my shot.

Yeah, but on the flip side units not being static is one of the biggest problems with TLOS. Models are stuck in one pose, but if they were actually running around they would do a much better job of using the terrain to provide cover and concealment.

Add to this that our terrain is already designed around being able to move models around without having them fall over. Realistically modeled forests would often be so dense we wouldn't be able to fit models in them, and the majority of tables don't incorporate significant slopes because many of the models would tip over and roll off them.

I think it's worth remembering the "style" of the early days of 40K art. It's dropped off a bit, but this was how things were pictured.

I used to dislike the back banners and thought they were too silly. I felt that way about a lot of the RT/2nd Ed stuff when I started playing in the beginning of 3rd. Now as the years go buy I like the older stuff more and more.

I really dig them, I just don't have the patience or skill to do them

Don't like them usually, kept the ones of my Kriegsmen because Krieg is all about bad ideas, but I am never building a Scion carrying a better for a Valk drop...

I always cut the banners off my troops. The only one(s) that had them were the actual army standard bearers (which is apparently a thing of the past)

Only my fantasy army had a banner for each unit and special characters, because that's just the way fantasy armies roll.

The Newman wrote:

 NH Gunsmith wrote:

The Newman wrote:
True LoS and shooting from and to any part of the models are incredibly dumb and counter-intuitive rules. Always have been.

Agreed, I find it silly that I can shoot at the tip of a Custodes jet biker lance tip and kill models, or that the model can somehow see through the top of their lance/banner to fire their weapons at my models.

Hitting a power weapon and killing the bearer kind of makes sense, who knows what happens when one of those power fields collapses. Killing a guy by shooting the banner he's carrying though, that makes zero sense.

Except a) hitting such a small target as a blade is bloody hard especially with all the smoke and debris in battlefield b) just because model is posed with blade UP doesn't mean soldier will be actually walking in battlefield in stiff blade up position. Well except in mind of GW designer.

I like them. My Astral Claws army (painted for 6th / 7th edition) has them on the Tactical Squad sergeants - I mean, the parts are on the sprue, it'd be rude not to. My 1st / 2nd edition Space Wolves army was festooned with them - two per Grey Hunter or Blood Claw squad, one on the Long Fang squad, the Wolf Guard standard bearer (for a while the only Chapter with a standard bearer, but also the only Chapter with no rules for one) and culminating in Ragnar Blackmane having two.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

The Newman wrote:
True LoS is and always has been an incredibly dumb rule.

I've never seen anyone enforce this rule at all.

Why not?

TLoS means that they can shoot THE BANNER!
Ridiculous to think that seeing the banner equals mortal wounds all around.

banners and spear tips and so on are not targets,
they are distractions.

Sure, shoot the banner.
Wound the banner.
Demand that the model get removed,
or worse yet that the rest of the unit might equally be targeted,
I pack up and go home.
Have better things to do than quibble over sheets with bullet holes in them.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
I used to dislike the back banners and thought they were too silly. I felt that way about a lot of the RT/2nd Ed stuff when I started playing in the beginning of 3rd. Now as the years go buy I like the older stuff more and more.

Me too but I always liked banners.
I made mine out of canvas or cloth cut and stuck with superglue,
then soaked in super glue and white paint to hold shape,
then painted for details,
burned up in patches
and holes and threadbare raggedness...
Oh, the glory!
Miss them as newer painting styles seem not to embrace the battle worn iconography so much.

I love banners on my marines.
Something I have started doing to avoid the whole snapping off thing is to magnetize them. This works for aerials and other snappy stuff just as well. I use two 1mm by 2mm magnets.