Tracy George: Model Update - Team Yankee: Unit Identification

Have you ever been in a game and seen this situation?

You are getting ready to attack and you can't figure out which vehicles belong in the same unit. So, you ask your opponent which vehicles belong in the same unit. They look a little confused at first when they start looking at the mass of vehicles all huddled together. Then, the opponent gives the "Oh" and points to which tanks belong together in a unit and which tanks belong in a different unit.

I have ran into this problem in many games with my Team Yankee models. I really don't have any identification on my models to help tell which T-72s belong to the same unit. If I am going to have problems I know my opponent will have even more difficulty telling which tanks belong together. I wanted a simple solution so my opponent wouldn't have to ask me. Also, I wanted to be able to have them be placed in different units between games if I ever change how my forces are organized. Maybe one game I run nine tanks. Three tanks in a unit for three units total. Or I might change it up and run eight tanks. However, in this case I run four tanks in two separate units. Is there a way that I can identify these tanks for both my opponent and myself that is not permanent. I think I figured one way to do it.

My previous blog entry I added antennas to my Team Yankee vehicles. They look like this.

With these antennas attached to the each of my vehicles my thought came to adding unit identification flags to the antennas. I started in Word and used Shapes to make rectangles. You can use whatever shape you would like but I thought rectangles would be easy to cut. The rectangle were 1/2" x 1/4". Then I filled each rectangle with a color or pattern. When printed out mine looked like this.

Now I cut out one strip of flags for the unit I wanted. If I wanted this unit to have blue flags I cut out how many I needed. For example, if there were four tanks I cut out only four flags.

Then, I folded the flags in half. This made the flags 1/4" x 1/4".

Next, I used my PVA glue and put glue on the back of the flag and folded it around the top part of the antenna of the vehicle. When completed it looks like this.

Each unit will have its own color or pattern.

What's nice is that if I want to change a vehicle from one unit to another I can glue their new flag on or I might be able to pull off the old one and put the new unit flag on the antenna. Now for the test. Can you tell which vehicles belong together in this photo? The idea is that you will be able to tell without me telling you. This is what I want to happen in a real game. Good luck.