Binary markings


It is important to be able to distinguish between squads in different platoons when playing Crossfire. One way to do this is to add labels to the bases (with something like "3-2" to indicate 3rd platoon, 2nd company). It seems a bit of a shame to do this after you have spent a lot of time flocking and basing the figures to make them realistic.

Lloyd Nikolas uses bushes and rocks to indicate this information (see this page of his excellent website).
I have decided to use a varient of his method by adding in a bit of binary arithmetic. (I also have an alternate method for people averse to binary arithmetic - see Magnetic markings)

Binary

In binary you represent one by the digit 1, two by 10, three by 11, four by 100, and so on.
So I would represent 3rd platoon, 2nd company by the numbers 11 and 10.
I represent the digits by the presence or absence of bushes or rocks.


Infantry





GHQ German infantry squad, 2nd platoon, 1st company.


GHQ German infantry squad, 3rd platoon, 1st company.


 In the case of infantry the back two corners represent the company number and the front two the platoon number. The photos of the German infantry on the left should make it clear what I'm talking about.

2nd platoon, 1st company has a rock in B, and a rock in C.
3rd platoon, 1st company has rocks in B and A, and a rock in C.
If the base belongs to the HQ platoon I leave B and A blank (i.e. it is platoon 0).
If I have four platoon company I have a problem as I have run out of digits. So I change and rather than using rocks in A and/or B, I use a bush.

I give artillery observers etc. a company number, and number them sequentially 1..3 using the A and B quadrants.

Armour




GHQ Churchill number 3.


I handle armour slightly differently, mainly beacuse there are fewer tanks present on a Crossfire battlefield than infantry squads. I just give each tank in a squadron a number, with binary digits BADC (as indicated in the diagram above).

Gosh, I hope that makes sense. I'll probably be the only person to ever use this system, but it would be nice if I could easily explain what it was!