"Quality colours" Topic

I'm toying with some ideas where unit quality would be indicated by colour, and the question obviously arises which colours to use.

Current idea is to use black for elites, white for average quality, and green for poor troops.

So I thought I'd ask if people think that's a good convention or if they have better ideas. One advantage to it is that it should be pretty colour-blindness-safe, whereas using say red for elites and green for rabble has obvious issues in that regard.

Thoughts?

I hadn't thought of whole colors of units, but I have used things like helments, epaulets, or facings to distingush unit quality (or other characteristics). I've also used this as surrogate damage markers – when a unit takes damage, it is replaced with the appropriate lower status unit.

There are tons of colorblindness resources on the web to help you:

VisCheck is an online tool you can use to upload a pic (like your test minis) and simulate different types of colorblindness effects.
vischeck.com
link

NVision is an organization, but embedded in this site a little down is the color wheel I use for designing user interfaces. I don't use one any more. If you spend some time doing it, you will just memorize it.
nvision.nz/colour-blindness

Metallics are generally more distinct than flat colors, so following a military-like pattern: (metallic) silver, (metallic) gold, (flat) yellow, (flat) red should meet your need.

Your basic crayon red-green-blue gives a good split, and red-yellow-blue is still funcitonal. Your esthetic appeal with this will vary widely with color-sighted people. Generally, all three colors are easily distinguished from white and black, and the metallic sheen is visually distinguishable, is mixing one or two colors with b&w or metallics will probably give you something that works in both domains.

Depending on how many levels you need, you could use different shades of grey. De Grijze Boom is my favorite painting. i have found in UI design, that five wide-spread shades with white and black bracketing will work.

And I have these, too…
inlgames.com/grey.htm
Shades of grey works.

Thanks for the reply.

I need just the three levels I mentioned (good, average, bad, essentially).

Oh, and this would be colours for markers, not the figures themselves, so "crayon" colours you can easily find plastic markers in would be best.

***Captain Obvious Warning -- apologies if I am reading your question incorrectly, making assumptions you've already resolved…***

Is this a quality every player in the game should be aware of at all times? Do you want your enemy player to know which of your troops are green, veterans, and elite? This will impact how both sides play…

I used colored plastic barrels (Human X-bowmen, flag and barrels are a close match), attached to figure bases, to denote units. At first, I slipped them over small wooden dowels (Orcs, sans barrels), thinking this would allow me to reconfigure them into different Units, as needed, by swapping the colored barrels to different colors. I learned that it was tedious, and a waste of time: the barrels fall off, easily and often, during figure movement, so I began making permanent Units by gluing the barrels to the figure bases.

I play dice-based war games with plastic Army Men, and they all look pretty much identical, on the tabletop. The colored barrels are a lifesaver in these games.

***Captain Obvious, signing out.*** Cheers!

Not sure why it makes a difference, but yes, unit quality would be public information.

I sell 3/4" poker chips in "crayon colors" here:

link

If morale is public I'll be sure to target bad units to get them to break first. Of course so will you so we'll probably both end up putting bad units in reserve etc.

If I know you have a unit of raw recruits, I will attack them with my better units, in order to break their morale, and perhaps drive them running, into stronger units behind them… In most rule sets, this will cause a morale check for the better unit seeing how their comrades are fleeing for their very lives, running right at them -- panic can be contagious!

Can you recognize inexperienced units by their appearance? Maybe, maybe not. Some elite units do not follow orders about cleanliness of themselves, their uniforms, etc. They realize that does not make them better fighters, and they just don't care being somewhat lax on discipline.

Maybe some troops fresh out of boot-camp have crisp uniforms; or maybe they are veterans with a CO who is a hard-ass about their uniforms, so they look like newb's, but they know what they are doing.

To me, veteran units should not be recognizable in the battlefield. It gives the players too much information, which will likely influence how they play. I know such information influences how I play. Cheers!

I confess I sill fail to see the relevance. Do you think that veterans should be blue if quality is hidden from the opponent but red if it's public information?

I don't see the need for color coding my figures other than to demonstrate which figures make up a given Unit. I break up racial types into multiple Units: I might have Orcs made into 4+ separate Units of 8-10 figures each, as Morale Checks are applied to an entire Unit, not individual figures, so I need to know which figures belong to which Unit. That is the only reason I use color coding for my figures. Cheers!

Wouldn't the easy solution be white, gray, black?

Wouldn't the easy solution be white, gray, black?

It'd be one easy solution, certainly. I'd probably assigned black to the best troops, though, on the logic it's the "cool" colour; you seem to prefer it for the rabble?

For games where I need to track this stuff and it isn't immediately obvious, I use red for elite/veteran (dangerous!), green for average (green, good to go) and yellow for conscript/raw, because they run away a lot…

Thanks.

I dunno if I like green = average, though. The association green = raw is pretty strong for me.

I swapped the ryb and rgb in my above post. Ryb is better because red and green are often seen the same by people with different types of colorblindness.