"Organising your troops." Topic

Some modern armies have task oriented organizations down to APC/IFV level. How do you store the troops? Store all the troops in a "platoon bin" so you can just select what you want each time, OR store the individual elements by type/weapon and pick and mix for a particular vehicle/task?

Me I can see advantages in both and disadvantages for both so remain in analysis paralysis on this issue and keep swapping.

By weapon / type – do this for both 6mm and 20mm stuff

I started out gluing a small, wooden dowel to each figure's base. I bought colored, plastic tubules, which slip over them with minimal resistance (hopefully, or they fall off when I tilt the figure!). I thought I would change the figures' tubules to create different Units, keeping the figures versatile, never locked into a particular Unit group.

However… I have around 20 different (fantasy) armies, and each army is broken down into different Units (Archers, Slingers, Spearmen, Light Infantry, Med./Heavy Infantry, and Cavalry). I need to keep Unit sizes between 8-20 figures, typically, for rules-based purposes to make game play less of an all-or-nothing affair (Units make Morale Checks for the entire Unit, so larger Units which fail, can really impede game play for the owning player if his armies consist of only a few, very large Units, and they Route…).

For my Army Men games, the Units are not all the same type of Infantry figures: some Units are solely Combat Engineers, but most Units are comprised of diverse figure types, including various Machine Gun types (Light/Medium/Heavy), and some Units have Forward Observers/Recon figures attached to them. At the table, I need to know which figures belong to which Units, so players do not lose track of their Units' figures as they move across the table, likely intermixing with their team members' figures. The figures used are the same castings, and they are on the same team/side, but everyone needs to know which figures belong to them, and which do not.

As I stated, I started out using wooden dowels attached to the figure bases (note the two colors of tubules on the dowel of the far right Stone Giant -- the underlying White tubule indicates he is a Unit Leader figure; all tubules are located in the same rear corner, for instant recognition of the figure's facing), allowing me to re-assign figures from one Unit, to another. This proved to be far too tedious, and excessive overkill, in real life.

I now glue the Unit marking tubules directly to the figure bases, permanently assigning the figures to pre-made Units. The 2nd and 3rd Stone Giants, from the right, in the photo linked to, above, have had their purple tubules glued directly to their bases, without any dowel, so these two are permanently attached to the Purple Stone Giant Unit. [Sigh of relief -- I never have to figure out their Unit, its size, composition, etc., again…]

I realized that I was very unlikely to truly need that level of organizational variability at the tabletop! It makes it sooo much easier to create static Units of figures: in this way, I can build armies using whole Units, without having to rebuild each Unit, for every single game I put together… It vastly streamlines Army composition, making game setup easier, more efficient, and faster. YMMV. Cheers!

For O Group I store my battalions together with some of their support options, and a separated tray of heavier weapons and vehicles. I've a separate box of transport vehicles that often don't make it onto the able.
My 17th Century troops are separated by horse and foot and nationality.

For my 20mm WWII I store them by company (Rapid Fire) in separate transparent drawers in a toolbox – the vehicles are all in large containers by nationality

I store my stuff by unit (typically battalions for 15mm and divisions for 6mm), plus a bunch of 'other stuff' to make up extras or let me go up and down unit representation scales. I use the same elements to represent anything from a fireteam to a brigade., so need a lot of 'other stuff' if going up or down levels.

My WW1 stuff is stored by type, which Tbh, is a pain to sort out each and every time. One day I'll reorganise it.

Right now, I have everything in one box. I might rethink it if I had a lot of stuff.