Imperial Guard (Pt. 2). Organization

It's becoming really difficult to post anything these days (BTW, merry Christmas everyone there! )

I told you I was going to talk aboul personalizing armies. In this case, my Imperial Guard.

It looks that gaming nowadays has become a challenge to put up together the most uberstrong minis, never mind if they're absolutely unrelated each other or whatever, just to see "who's the best general" or "who plays better than others". I don't get it, but I guess it's fine if you find it fun. But for those of us who come from the old school concept, gaming was just a matter of fun. Our better aim was never winning a game, but playing and enjoying it. So all the point was (an still is) creating. Creating a story, building up an army and giving it its own personality.

So this is what I tried with my minis. Do you remember the old way of identifying Imperial Guard units, with coloured circles?

This image's copyright belongs to Games Workshop, etc.

For my army I decided to go on that concept, but making it a little bit more military, i.e., not sticking all these colours on camouflage fatigues ;). This is what I ended up working with:

Right shoulder pad

On one shoulder, the pad displays the Regimental number (XVII in this case) and the Company number (6)

Left shoulder pad

The other shoulder pad displays the Platoon and Squad numbers, 2 and 4 in this case. So, a Guardsman showing these symbols could be easily identified as belonging to the XVIIth Regiment, 6th Company, 2nd Platoon, 4th Squad.

One thing that everybody seems to avoid in wargames minis is the aspect of making an army look... well, military. And that means details. It's not enough just painting your figures in camo pattern to make it appear like anything else that a bunch of partisans. You need to make it look credible. So you need to make sure that all those tiny details show up to make it real. One aspect is the organic adscription to a determined unit. The other is about ranks. Soldiers need to identify each other with a simple glimpse, and that is provided with current uniforms. In order to bring this down to my minis, I had to design a rank emblems system.

These are my own personal Imperial Guard ranks:

Colonel

Lt. Colonel

Major

Captain

Lieutenant

Second Lieutenant

Sergeant Major

Master Sergeant

Staff Sergeant

Sergeant

Corporal

Guardsman

 So yes, each mini in my army has any of these distinctive emblems:

Guardsman and Corporal. 3rd Platoon, 2nd Squad

Sergeant of that Squad and Lieutenant of the 3rd Platoon. Note that the scheme for the Officer is up and down, instead of left and right.

Captain of the 6th Company. Both shoulder pads are the same

Another final example:

Guardsman, 6th Company...

3rd Platoon, 1st Squad

It's not complicated. As a matter of fact it looks quite intuitive, I hope. It certainly works for me and helps to the general lookings of my Imperial Guard. These small details make the minis unique and are easy to replicate in any uniform pattern with the proper colours.

That's all for today. Merry Christmas again and let me know if you find this useful or if you think I'm going nuts, hehe.

More things in a few days!