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I'm not completely sure if this would fit better in the general discussion, but I thought painting is more fitting. Inspired by the topic about WYSIWYG were the point of identifyability (is that a word? I mean "not being confusing") was repeatedly highlighted I wanted to ask: what ways do you use to differentiate squads/specific units when the models look pretty similar. As an example Guardsmen/Veterans/Special Weapons Squads in a huge guard horde or Space Marine Squad 1, 2 and 3?

I'm mostly interested in the ideas you came up with.

For me: I have basically two regiments I collect, one Arabian themed (looks like Tallarns with Shemags) one tribal african themed. The first distinction are the bases: The Tallarns have desert sand or dry wasteland and yellow rimmed bases, the african themed jungle/swamp bases and green rims.

For the tallarns I have no specific differentiation of Squads, but the color of the shemagh shows what is what. Basic Guardsmen (Infantry Squad and HWS) have beige shemags. SWS have turquois (so that they don't get confused with the normal dudes). Everything with BS 3+ (Veterans, Officers) have purple shemags. Sergants and Officers additionally have a red shoulder plate.

For the african themed each Infantry squad has another specific type of shield (different shapes & colors) that is easily identifyable. Mostly because this regiment is intended to be rather infantry heavy and I thought it might get confusing if 6+ Squads are huddled up. So even if losses are suffered it will be clear who belongs to which squad. The Heavy Weapons Squads have their own type of shield (which is the same as the crews of my heavy mortar).
Edit: those who have no shield are something special (a squad of Combat Engineers/Veterans and the Officer with his Command squad).

Everything that is a Psyker has blueish glowing eyes.

Characters of specific note that are not normal Guard (Techpriest, Servitors, Inquisitor, Astropath...) mostly have other base rim colors, or bases that are very different, so that they can easily be picked out of the mass.



So how do you approach this?

It varies. One of my Marine armies has the squad numbers on their kneepads, another has the numbers on their shoulder pads. The third is a small all-scout army with no squad markings, but the units are differentiated by their weapons. My space wolves have individualised pack markings on the shoulder pads as normal.

My guard army only has a few models painted (after 20 years... doing well!) but uses the old Codex standard of the squad number overlaid on a bistected circle, with the circle halves showing company/platoon.

My old school Dark Eldar are mostly grey, with shoulder pads and weapons in a different colour for each unit.

My 2nd ed metal Necrons are differentiated by using a different pose for each squad. That works so far, as I have 4 squads of warriors, and there were 4 different models... not sure yet what I'll do if the army gets any bigger down the track...

My ork army is made of of a wide mix of different units, so telling them apart is only a problem for the two units of boys - which are differentiated through one unit having shoulder pads, and one not. Boys are on 25mm bases, Nobs are on 30mm.

Likewise, my Chaos marine armies don't have any duplicate units, so I never bothered with squad markings.

My guard army uses head swaps to an ancient Greek theme, so squads are differentiated by helmet types (four types) and have squad markings on shoulder pauldrons.

My marine army has a specific squad icon on shoulder pauldrons. The bike squads are differentiated by both shoulder mark and flag coloring.

For my eldar rangers, it's a lightly different trim color on the cloaks.

My SoB's have different colors on the cloth parts.

Both my eldar and IG armies use movement tray bases by squad so that makes it even easier to tell which models are from which units.

It sounds like you have a good system.

The fluff behind my Marines is that they have no squad markings or icons so they're fully interchangeable, but with my Guard I've just done a small stripe on one of their shoulder pads, each colour correlating to a particular squad.

I paint the rims of my base differently, there'll be a green squad, a blue squad, a yellow squad, etc etc.
It's very easy to see from a distance and my opponent can easily say "I'm shooting the blue squad" or similar.

I do miss the consistency of a universal black base rim though.
With my next army (Star Wars Legion) I'm going to try coloured dots or stripes on a black rim.

My creations of bile army is supposed to be a collection of mercenary warbands so they are all painted differently, but that’s a bit of a cheat

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I paint the rims of my base differently, there'll be a green squad, a blue squad, a yellow squad, etc etc.
It's very easy to see from a distance and my opponent can easily say "I'm shooting the blue squad" or similar.

I do miss the consistency of a universal black base rim though.
With my next army (Star Wars Legion) I'm going to try coloured dots or stripes on a black rim.

Exactly this for mass battle games. Makes your opponents life so much easier as well.

It really is.

I evolved that technique from having started with squad markings painted on the miniatures.
My opponent had no idea what to look for, and on the tabletop minis were too far away that even I (who knew exactly what to look for) couldn't tell unless I leaned in.

So I started painting the rims to match. It really does make things a lot easier. I've had multiple opponents express how much they appreciate the ease of the base rims.

Painted rims work really well.

One problem with things like different heads or insignia markings is that they look great close up. 1ft away from your models on the table and they are not always as clear.


Different colourations on the models can work well so long as they are in clear spots on the model; but sometimes it can break the immersion and idea that they are a single army. It likely works easier with some forces over others and some designs over others.




Rims works pretty much with anything. It's great to be able to at a glance very quickly tell which unit is which, esp if you're running several blobs of the same model close together. Both you and your opponent benefit from the clear information it shows.

I keep my rims the same to unify the armies; using special resin basing for certain unique models such as 'Last Chancers' as they are spread out among my IG regiments, this way they can be plucked and put together as a unit and look the same either way. Using regiment markings helps too, though sometimes that needs to be rearranged as you buy more, then I mark under the base with a sharpie, it can be easily filed away/wiped with alcohol for flexibility. Abbreviation such as IS1-14(Infantry Squad 1), PCS1-5(Platoon Command Squad 1), CCS1-5(Company Command Squad 1), SWS1-5(Special Weapons Squad 1), V1-5(Veterans Squad 1), etc.