The art of building objective markers

[jus]

Little wooden circles, five yen coins, smarties, poker chips. Nothing takes you out of the game like boring souless objective markers. As such, ive taken it upon myself to cook up some radical awesome characterful objectives, the likes of which you will all have probably seen before because im not very imaginative.

A prime example of would be prims most endearing creation, the crimson fist marine, glued to a base missing an arm and a leg( named pedro cantor's son by me)

What other ideas do you have for building interesting objectives? How would you do it, what bits etc Let me know, comment below!

[Primarch]

I would suggest that they are put on small or medium sized round bases and that they fit the theme of the terrain you are using or your own army.

E.g. I plan to do an allied Dark Angel and Space Wolf force at some point. As an objective marker I plan to do a Wolf and an Angel conducting an honour duel as is mentioned in the fluff for both armies.

[me_in_japan]

The wolf/angel duel would be a nice dio, for sure, but it doesn't scream "objective" at me. Why would they be having a duel out in te middle of a battlefield, anyway? That said, it's your marker, of course - by all means build it if you want

For me, I always fancied stuff like webway portals, Titan heads (ok, not so readily available, but since I have one...), or things which look like the 40k equivalent of Warmachine wreck markers. You could do nasty chaosy stuff like crucified IG/marines/eldar, or daemon gates or suchlike, too.

For regular marines, a battle standard wedged against a rock, with the fallen bearer slumped on the ground would be nice and characterful

[Primarch]

The wolf/angel duel would be a nice dio, for sure, but it doesn't scream "objective" at me. Why would they be having a duel out in te middle of a battlefield, anyway?

Because it's tradition?
Whenever the Wolves and Angels are fighting alongside each other they nominate a champion from each force to fight an honour duel. Not every opponent will be willing to wait for them to finish before launching a pre-emptive strike.

Titan heads make for very cool, very expensive and very big objective markers. Objective markers shouldn't be blocking LoS IMHO. A 40mm base should be enough for an objective in a standard game. In apoc, a Titan head would be perfect.

[me_in_japan]

An eldar Titan head fits on a 40mm base, no problem. The revenant comes with 2 heads, so one of em is getting objectified...

[The Other Dave]

Objectification of titan heads, what's the world coming to...

[ashmie]

I put together this objective marker for FoW as posted on the other thread. It's a load of Brits having tea around a jeep wondering what to do next. I need to go back and paint int he detail as it's 15mm. I liked the idea of adding a bit of narrative to the objectives.

[jus]

Great ideas, i like the honor duel! Very cool. Look forward to seeing it on the table.

Would that i had an objectafiable titan head. Titan head would be an awesome objective marker

hmm commisar having tea eh, that would be laugh. Brilliant. But there isnt a plastic commissar is there?

So far ive got a dead space marines remains (had to put the aobr sergearnt to some use!) and a chapter banner.

An empire flaggelant with the flaming torch head with a las pistol to be some imperial priestly nutter. Dont know why anyone would want to save him though.

Thinking about doing a sword in the stone type marker a la excalibur or some other priceless chapter relic, like..sanguinous' left paldron or something. But i havent found a decent sword yet.Then maybe a blood angels holy grail filled with blood.

Then eventually, some sort of technical appAratus, like a comm tower or orbitalal relay cobbled together with an amalgam of vechicle bits and what have you.

Trying to find a better use of my fantasy bits, so i have lots of skulls, rusty blades, skeletal limbs etc from collecting vampire counts, lots of assorted bannery type bits, musician bits, fluffy empire bits. Though i dont think puff and slashed tunics really match 40k well. Maybe a rather dandy looking planetary governor.

I shall need to look for some imperial guard bits. But looking through gw site, there doesnt seem to be many plastic sprues for ig hmm

[job]

@ Ashmie, nice work on the objective marker! I like the conference with the Maj. Laycock- Battalion Commander of then 6th Parachute Division. My G.I. Joes will be squared away with coffee, though, but tea will surely taste as good behind enemy lines.

I'll see if I can get a bunch of pics of objective markers at my old store. There are some really imaginative ones, of course mostly 15mm FOW stuff.

[pdfitzg]

Good topic choice as it's often overlooked even thought our games often focus around objectives. Even with all of my heavy terrain building I've done over the years, I've not really messed with objective markers beyond the GF9 counters. The counters are great, but agree that modelled markers would be better. Only thing is the new random objectives that you "discover" during the course of the game might not match well with modelled markers so I guess they'd have to remain someone generic.

That said, I love the Titan head objective idea. I've often considered putting my Armor Cast Reaver Titan to that use, especially since the movers crushed him (his legs were sheared off and were warped).

Anyhow, going to have to add this to my "to do" list. Dang it, already 0715. Off to work...
Later