"Marking bases to differentiate units, at a glance!" Topic

I'm a huge fan of the fantasy miniatures game, 2nd Ed. BattleSystem, based on the 2e AD&D RPG rules. For this game, the rules suggest a business card-sized roster sheet. I began using blank business card sheets from the local business supply stores, around 20 years ago.

This leads to a problem: once you place the Units on the game table, there is no visual means to tell them apart! Normally, we place the roster sheets (business cards) with the units, to keep track of them. For example, you may have two, separate, units of Orcs, moving side by side. They may get mushed together, once battle engages, and then it becomes impossible to tell them apart!

I finally came up with a solution to remedy this, and to allow me to remove the business card roster from the tabletop! I use plastic, hollow Perler beads, from the craft store: I cut, and glue, a small wooden dowel (found in the crafting section of Wal-Mart stores; cut to around 6mm length) onto the figure base, then I apply my basing cover (Wood Glue and colored sands), over the base, covering just the bottom of the dowel. When I organize the unit's figures, off table, I place a colored plastic bead onto the dowel. All of the figures in that unit are equipped with the same color plastic bead. It is small enough that it does not detract from the figure stand, but it is visible enough to quickly identify the figure stand, solely by color!

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I used Hot Glue to attach the dowel pieces, but any strong adhesive will work. It is important to glue the dowel pieces onto the base, before texturing the bases… I tried Hot Glue'ing the dowels onto my sand-textured bases, and it falls off with a light touch -- the Hot Glue will not bond with the sand, except superficially. The texturing materials and glue, over the top of the dowel and its glue bond to the base, will help bond the dowel to the base.

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As you can see, above, the Perler beads are highly visible, without detracting from the base and the figure, in this 54mm Army Men example. With Army Men figures, units all look alike! With the Perler beads, telling different units apart, is quick and easy!

I recommend choosing a rear corner on your bases, and use that same corner, on every stand of figures. This will help train your brain to look in the same location, automatically, to identify which unit a stand belongs to.

When organizing your units, select one color of Perler bead for that unit, and then stick that color bead on every stand's dowel. Make certain that they do not get knocked off, during movement; if they do, be sure to put them back in place, immediately.

I keep the unit roster cards on a clipboard, with its color of bead taped to the card. I can glance at the clipboard, and instantly know the color which indicates the units on the tabletop!

This technique works for close formation troop stands, as well as skirmish units of figures.

It also does not matter the size of the units, or the figures -- as long as they are not too small. I play using 20mm-60mm figures. For smaller scales, the Perler beads may prove too large. Let me know your thoughts. Cheers!

The links will not show me the pics but I get what you mean.

My bad: I was logged in when I created the link addresses… Here are the public links:

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Buy the pre-sorted packs… I bought the bucket of 11,000 pieces, all intermixed. I spent too many hours sorting them by color, while watching TV. I got greedy, I thought I would enjoy the extra varieties of colors of beads. But there were too many different colors, many of them were very close in shade.

This is a far better deal: sorted color packs, 4,000 beads in 32 colors, yielding 125 beads of each color, so you can have up to 125 figure stands in each color… Chances are, you can divide the package amongst a few fellow gamers, and everyone will have more than enough beads for all of their units and figure stands.

Need to rearrange your units, swap figures in, or out, of a particular unit? No problem: swap the colored beads as needed, and your units are ready to fight. You will never lose track of which unit a figure belongs to, unless the colored bead falls off… Cheers!

My bases are labelled or have colour coded dots on the rear edge. That works for me because they are produced in units from the start, I don't make up units differently for each game (except by varying the no. of bases).

Most of my games use bolt action rules so I use individual basing with washers and then place them in horde trays with an earth magnets below. I use a three dice cradle placed behind the unit where I place different color dice to show morale, casualties and in the case of bolt action, pin markers. In more regimented armies I place the square or rectangular bases on a movement tray and use the dice behind in a cradle to id what info I want. An expensive procedure and it does affect the eye appeal but its the sacrifice I make.

My WW1 and WW2 units for Command Decision have bases with colored dots on the back side. (Each base represents one platoon.) The dots tell me at a glance which company and battalion each platoon belongs to. A battalion command stand and support weapons stands have one colored dot for each of the subordinate companies.

So, for example, a three-company battalion may have a company with red dots, another with blue and a third with green dots. The battalion command stand has one dot each of red, blue and green, as does the battalion mortar platoon, the engineer platoon, the antitank platoon, etc.

The number of dots of the same color on the back of a platoon stand indicates the platoon's position within the company. The command platoon (the one that issues orders within the company) has one dot, the subordinate platoons have two dots, three dots, etc.

Stands for gun crews are made of thinner material -- so that the gun doesn't hang off the edge of the stand. Not having a back side to the stand because it is so thin, these stands receive a colored sequin on the top of the stand to identify their place within the command structure.

If you have individual units of the same color code, then you might find these colored numbered beads useful. Affix with Museum Wax or something. Unfortunately, you will want two sets, since my one-set order was missing beads for some color-coded sequences. ):

You can, of course, also use tiny stickers.

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Not a bad idea, ced1106. Thank you. Cheers!