The Commander Series Forum

Now that my red army rifleman are no longer generic (conscript, regular or Guard; at rifle or not) what techniques are folks using to keep track of who is whom on the table top?

Not played yet but I imgaine I will only take one kind at a time.

That's the general idea, or you could take one formation of conscripts and one of regulars, for example. I wouldn't mix more than one type in the same formation.

Cheat!

I put coloured spots on the bases, which assigns units directly. However I also cheat, I use my Battlaion level stuff for BKC these days, so no need to duplicate.

IanS

On a similar theme, I know that a lot of players have panzershrek and panzerfaust-armed troops mixed into their normal stands. I presume the best way of showing shrek/faust/piat/bazooka upgrades is to use the stands with AT weapons on them as upgraded units?

I use different coloured grass flocks on different edges to determine base types and formations.

"use the stands with AT weapons"

Of course, that could lead to a game of "hunt the bazooka" instead of "hunt the tank"

I game in 6mm and use card bases so this means I can clip the corners off for special purpose units (ie Units with AT upgrades)

I have also taken to running a heavy black texta along the front edge of infantry units, which creates a obvious but not too obvious black line on the base, so I can be sure of getting them facing the right way on the table. I'm sure you could use different texta's for different units.

Depending on your basing style you could also use the way individual infantry figures are deployed on the base to distinguish between Elite and Line units- maybe deploy the figures in a lozenge shape for lites and a square shape for line.

What i did with my FOW infantry stands is paint a different colour on the sides of the bases maybe you could do that.

I'm planning to use magnets that stick to my steel-based stands. One side will have a coloured dot if the stand has the AT or flamethrower upgrade. I'll flip the magnet over when the unit uses its upgrade. The stands without an upgrade will have blank magnets.

I take advantage of this need to differentiate unit types in a number of ways. With my Germans I use this as an excuse to collect different kinds of infantry (regs, regs in greatcoats, camo smocks, SS, Luftwaffe, FJs, mountain). The quality of the unit is usually fairly self-evident.

For Russians, I had to be a bit more creative and painted the blanket roll different colours for each unit.

For Brits I have painted some in the more Canadian green shade of khaki and otherwise differentiate units by figure manufacturer (a bit too subtle for some people, I will admit).

If all that fails, differences in basing can be used.

I would strongly encourage these modeling approaches than labels or dots etc. This is an aesthetic hobby and I work hard to keep it 'pure'.

Regarding IATW stands, I have dedicated stands for these. Recognizing that they will be artificially 'hunted' I never let them die. If their stand is killed, the AT attribute is transfered to the next nearest non-AT stand and the stands exchanged to make that clear. I see these IATW stands as a Formation's overall AT ability and a limitation on where that ability is located. I suspect that they were quite mobile (as opposed to a heavy weapon) and even if killed the weapons might be as easily picked up by some other grunt.

Chris

My 10mm WW2 has no markings whatsoever. I'm ignoring the AT upgrades entirely and all units have them anyway so that's 1 thing that doesn't need marking.

For my 6mm Naps I've left a small strip across the base bare which eventually will have the unit name and formation printed out and stuck on. I agree with Chris, it's a visual hobby and odd coloured blobs will look strange. In the smaller scales I can accept mentally the labeling of units, not so much in larger 10mm+

different coloured back edges works for me also.

You can buy little self adhesive paper markers about 3mm in diameter from most craft shops which I've found useful. They usually come in bags of a few hundred for a couple of bucks and they're great for placing on the back of stands to determine what platoon each stand is from and color code the troops according to weapon. For a few bucks you could have green represent conscripts, brown regulars and red your guards and add a little black one for AT upgrades. At game's end remove and stick back in the pack and they're all grunts again!
S.

We've also recently played a game of SYW where numbers were written on the dots to further distinguish each base. That may be a bit much for BKC's level of playing but it's a possibility if you need to record AT rifle use or CMD values etc..