"Don't mark the figures.....mark the cards" Topic

In my search for a suitable way to match up the relevant leader cards to their respective figure while playing card driven activation games using Sharp Practice I've always tried to identify the figure with the card. Quite how it took me so long to arrive at an alternative solution – match the card to the figure – I don't really understand, but I got there in the end. A full blog post on the process of creating the cards is here: link

Great to see you found the solution and lovely to see our figures so nicely presented.
Thank you
Nic Eureka Miniatures

I did something vaguely similar with my fantasy figures. The rules I play employ a business card sized roster sheet with multiple unit-specific stats necessary for play. Players always put the business cards with the units, on the table -- ACK!

I started by attaching small wooden dowels to the figure bases, then I slipped over them, a colored plastic beads. Every stand of the same colored bead, was a Unit -- no more guessing which stand belonged to which Unit. A colored bead was taped to the Unit Roster Card as written colors were too vague.

I later realized that the beads fall off easily while moving stands on the table, but I also realized that I really would not be changing the Units around so much that I needed the beads to be removable. I began permanently attaching them to the figure stands: example #1 and example #2.

It worked: Players could easily follow their Units, knowing which stand was what Unit, without having their business card Roster sitting next to them!

I also play war games with plastic Army Men figures (dice, not tennis balls, for combat resolution). Army Men figures only have a small number of poses, and millions of copies of each pose, circulating in the world… I employed the same scheme with my Army Men units, and it worked superbly!

I will likely use this Unit Marking System with all of my miniatures games, going forward. The hollow beads are sold inexpensively, in bulk, at Wal-Mart. The beads are unobtrusive, with low visual impact and detraction from the figures, IMO. Cheers!

Players could easily follow their Units

And give up the fog of war?

Tactical Painter – Very cool, I may have to eventually borrow your idea.

Sgt Slag – I have never thought about beads but do/did paint the base edge of each member in the squad the same color.

For my Sudan games, in which units were initially deployed as half-units split between two terrain features for fog of war about actual location, I marked one stand in each half-unit with a small rock, clump of bushes, etc. Unit A had a rock, Unit B a bush, Unit C two rocks, Unit D a rock and a bush, etc. Unobtrusive and marked which unit was which. Marking only two stands per unit made the majority of my stands unit agnostic so I was not limited to teh same unit compositions every game.

I like the idea of using photos of the miniatures on cards to easily tell which card goes with which figure. Consider it stolen.

When playing Napoleon's battles I was mixing up units with different commands.

By using the unit label and a magic markers I could see from a distance what corp and divisions units were. A two color system worked best.

My kids markers came in very handy!

Nice to see the AMR figures. The idea of picture leader cards was first introduced to me in the Studio Tomahawk game, Congo in 2017. They also had picture cards for the units, as well. Not only a picture but unit capability, shooting, melee and morale. I did my own for a East Africa, great war game. Example,sorry about the bigness.

Here is the game
link