Skwad Tags

I play Orks. They were my first army when I was a young teenager and my dad gave me my Christmas money and took me to Games Workshop on Oxford Street. I got a box of 30 plastic Orks, some bikes, a battlewagon and a shokk attack gun (the proper one which came with a base of snotlings to shoot across the battlefield).

The thing about playing Orks is that you tend to play with a lot of models. They're traditionally a horde army and in a game of Warhammer 40,000 it would not be unusual to field an army of over one hundred models.

Orks look great on the tabletop but the sight of a horde of Orks can be confusing. Which unit is which?

When you have that many models on the tabletop and you have two or more units that look similar it can be hard to distinguish them. That is why I started thinking about a solution and came up with Skwad Tags.

I needed some way to identify my miniatures that was easily seen from 3 or more feet but isn't too obtrusive. I wanted something that was easily removable but also wouldn't fall off mid game. And I wanted something that wouldn't be too expensive as I would probably need a few.

The solution came quite quickly - using Fusion 360 I was able to design and 3D print a prototype which seemed to tick all the boxes. The beveled edges of Citadel bases meant that the tags would grip firmly and the natural flex of thinly printed PLA meant that they would be easily removed.

Two units of Kommandos attack the Space Marines… which even in the confusion of close combat can still be identified.

It also turned out that you could stack more than one tag onto a model… which suddenly makes them even more useful. In Warhammer you can tag a unit with one coloured tag and then stack another tag to denote the unit leader or a heavy gunner.

In Blood Bowl you can use the tags to denote skills. Blue for Dodge, green for Block, red for Sidestep? And with them being stackable it's no problem having more than one tag per model.

I can’t wait to see what other uses people will come up for them.