"Basing in 6mm. Unit identification." Topic

I'm currently painting Piedmontese in 6mm for Risorgimento and I was wondering how others marked their units for easy ID purposes so you can keep battalions and brigades together and recognize them quickly and easily?
Do you for instance use a simple number of letter of the alphabet on a sticker on each base and then have a sheet of A4 to refer to, eg Unit no.A5 = Gen Casanova's 11 Division Brigade Modena 1st Battalion. Or do you put this info on a piece of laminated card glued under the base with a lip showing at the rear with this info on, possibly abbreviated? Or do you put the same but in abbreviated form on the top of the base itself?
As I plan on having an entire Corps, possibly two, with at least 4 divisions each that's 100 bases not including the command per Corps so I don't want to get that lot muddled up.

Looks like you've been subjected to a "Bug Volley". I'll hold comments till you repost--other than to say these look fantastic!

A bug? ooh what do I do? post the whole thing again?

Thank you for the compliment btw, I've been meaning to put pics up for ages and only just got around to it.

Yes,I'd repost under a slightly differently-worded title (otherwise you might get a "title already posted" error message--even though it never appeared!). As it is, your post is listed on the front page as "Khadrin's Miniatures" on the 15mm Fantasy board. Which I doubt is what you had in mind. . .

If you don't want to retype the whole thing,you could try hitting the complaint button on your OP,and asking Bill to fix it. That works sometimes.

When I first dud my 6mm ACW army, I used a system of three coloured dits to identify units, cross-referenced to a list. First dit was for corps, second for division and third for brigade. Could have had a fourth to identify regiment, but I just wrote names under each base. Made it easy to lay out the army and keep track of brigade cohesion. Now I play Fire and Fury, I just have the brigade command stand labelled, with brigade name, divisional and corps commanders.

OK,well,if this thread isn't moving, I'll just say that I try to avoid labels and markers as much as possible--they spoil the visual effect for me. Unless individual unit identification has some bearing on the game--differing capabilities, say--how important is it? If you just want to keep brigades separate,how about using slightly different terrain? You just need enough difference to be able to spot it easily. I've done it (admittedly in 25mm) with different numbers and colors of small pebbles.

Of course, this is a little late,as I see you've done nice work on your terrain already!

Aha! Dave--this is off topic,so apologies to Volleyfire--but will we get to see some pics of your 10mm WSS,as requested here?

TMP link

I finally bit the bullet,and put up a couple of mine:

TMP link

so it would be nice to see some GOOD ones! And seriously, I, and I know Vic (and others) would like to see your basing method.

Ah so that is what you meant by re-post Vincent, sorry I didn't grasp what you were getting at. Oh well anyone expecting 15mm fantasy is going to be a bit disappointed.
I did think about painting the base edges different colours for different brigades, but that spoils the uniformity for me. Must be OCD kicking in. I'm not keen on bases at this scale humping rocks bushes or small trees around on them either, especially if they are in terrain that didn't feature much of any such items, so I ruled that out as well.It can look like a lot of troops walking around permanently in rough terrain or a small wood if you aren't careful.
I did think of using green or brown coloured paper to put info on so it didn't stand out like white, and maybe reduce the info to something like 1st/Pisa/29th/2nd. Which basically is shorthand for 1st Division,Pisa Brigade, 29th Regt, 2nd Battalion.Or even 1-Pisa-29-2.

I've put in a complaint to Bill as suggested so we will have to see what transpires.

Yes,it would be a shame for your thread to get lost that way--I'm sure there are a lot of people how could make better suggestions than mine. I agree that in 6mm,pebbles would look more like boulders!

The toned-downed label colors sound like a good compromise.

I game in 6mm the bases are 1"x1" and are battalions, squadrons or battery. The tags are .25"x1" magnetic strips that attach to the base across the back.

The tags are read left to right, national flag, colored symbol, letter(morale) and miscellaneous indicator.

1. National flag, small icon
2. Colored Symbol, square, triangle, circle etc the color indicate corps and the symbol indicates division.
3. Morale letter or number.
4. Misc icon, to indicate lancer, skirmish horse artillery etc.

With a fifty or so bases I can set up several different units.

Shame your picture hasn't come out Terry.

You could take a liberty with history and paint canteens (or mess kits or blanket rolls or whatever or some combination thereof) different colors.

I have done just that actually in a small way. The blanket rolls on one division are light brown whereas the other division are the correct light grey. I figured that the Italians had so many supply problems they'd be hard pressed to have everything all the same colour anyway. I may do the bread bags a different shade of blue as well since they are blue grey at the moment, striped bags being just a tad too difficult!

In 6mm? Yow! How close do you have to be to distinguish bread bag colors?

I was just kidding Vincent. ;-)
Perhaps if I painted the Regt numbers on their shakos instead?
:-o

Now where did I put the magnifying glass and that brush with only one bristle left?? :-)))

Reminds me of the flea circus I once saw.

Hello Volleyfire!

Most games like yours (Polemos etc.) require a written order of battle that clearly shows the chain of command, number of units/bases etc. So all you really need to see on the table is the name of the commander and perhaps his rating. The o/b tells you the rest of the information. The commander and his units normally operate together. So knowing which base is which is pretty easy.

We play with hundreds of these bases on the table and none of them have any labels or marks, etc. By using just the commanders name on his base I can find any unit on the table.

Avoid the big sign circus on every unit as it just destroys the beautiful look that you have created with the detailed terrain on every base. Other than the period your collection looks very similar to mine.

All of my commanders have a magnetic strip on the back. I've produced a number of different coloured magnets to represent the various commander ratings. I simply produce an extra copy of the o/b cut out the names and hold them in place with the magnets. Clean, easy and interchangeable for different battles.

Best regards,

Glenn

All of my commanders have a magnetic strip on the back. I've produced a number of different coloured magnets to represent the various commander ratings. I simply produce an extra copy of the o/b cut out the names and hold them in place with the magnets. Clean, easy and interchangeable for different battles.

I'd like to see an example of this please?

Me too.

Most games like yours (Polemos etc.) require a written order of battle that clearly shows the chain of command, number of units/bases etc. So all you really need to see on the table is the name of the commander and perhaps his rating. The o/b tells you the rest of the information. The commander and his units normally operate together. So knowing which base is which is pretty easy.

Except that we don't use an OOB, we dislike loads of paperwork cluttering up the table and slowing things down by having to constantly refer back to them. We find that having OOBs with special leadership or unit traits and units of differing morale or standards of training usually get forgotten or ignored because we suffer from a fair amount of senior moments, so we like to keep things simple.
It might not be as realistic for playing that particular period as it could be, but because we tend to play very big games which can last up to 3 evenings over the course of a month we find that making things complicated just slows things down to the point where the game would take 4 or even 5 evenings to reach a conclusion, and by that time virtually everyone has lost interest.

Hello Barcephus!

Sorry I lost sight of your request and I don't manage photos very well.

In Polemos all the commanders are on a 30mm x 30mm base which gives you lots of room for an info strip. I had mine custom made in metal by a firm in the US and they were roughly 5mm x 30mm. So I simply glue them to the rear of the base and paint them black so the white paper labels pop out a little more. Put a dull coat finish on them to help the wear factor and your done.

You can buy small magnets or sheets almost anywhere. I managed to buy a roll about 30 years ago and simply cut off small ones about 5mm x 5mm. In the Polemos rules that I use there are only four levels of commanders Superior/Senior commanders whos magnets are painted white, Decisive commanders are red painted magnets, Capable commanders are yellow painted magnets and Plodding commanders are green painted magnets.

Today you could probably just use black magnetic paper for both the strip and the commanders magnets.

So from there I just cut up an extra copy of the O/B, put the commanders name and magnet on a base and it's done!

Hope this explains it better, if not just ask.

Best regards,

Glenn

Hello Volleyfire!

In order to sort out your figures for a game you need some sort of system. So producing an O/B does more then just serve as a reference for the game. Our version of Polemos has been streamlined so we rarely need to refer to the O/B and its generally kept off the table. Almost everything we need to know besides a QRS is shown by the colour of the commanders magnet. We could even remove those if we wanted and just use a single letter after the commanders name.

So we actually have no paperwork, just a reference, no clutter and zero time lost.

Most of our games are big 5,000 to 10,000+ figures and rarely exceed 6 hours. Finishing in 4 hours is not unusual including a number seniors moments. So your games could be finished in even one night or two!

In developing our rules (Ruse de Guerre – Polemos sold by Baccus) our only motto was "KEEP IT SIMPLE". Although designed for the North American Wars 1754 – 1815 we use them for all of our Horse & Musket periods.

Best regards,

Glenn