I like a tabletop battlefield uncluttered by intrusive markers, so like to take any opportunity to replace a marker with something that looks more in keeping with the surrounding.

A good example of this is “Bailed Out” markers for tanks: especially useful when playing early war WW2, when you can expect far more bailed out than destroyed tanks.

I have the TFL marker pack that has some transparent oval disks with “Bailed Out” on them. I have some FoW markers: circular pieces of plastic in a variety of nice colours with little logos on them. But what I really like is a small group of painted crew figures that can be placed next to the bailed out vehicle in question.

I have these for my Germans, Soviets and British, but am mostly playing games set in the September War (Poland 1939) at the moment. Now the Poles don’t have a lot of tanks, but we’re just coming up to the period when those tanks were being used (and lost!) in almost every encounter. Time for me to paint up some Polish tank crews.

Battlefront used to be excellent for this. Every tank came with one or two standing crew figures that were designed specifically to represent bailed out and then fleeing crews. As far as I can tell, they don’t do this any more, which is a colossal shame, but I carefully kept all the ones I didn’t use just for a time like this when I needed some.

Somewhat ironically considering Poland’s fate in 1939, the above are a combination of Soviet and German tank crewmen painted up to resemble Poles. They are not perfect: the commander’s beret is a bit the wrong shape, and the crewmen should be wearing dark green mini-helmets rather than the padded version worn by the Soviets, but at a range of three feet (and just for a marker!) no-one is going to notice.

Sorted.