While I could focus on all the bad things that wysiwyg creates I will instead talk about how pointless it is. It really isn't hard to remember what each unit is armed with even if the model isn't completely accurate, as most people don't model every single piece of weargear on their model, like grenades and sometimes even swords are often left behind, and relics and such are usually not modelled, and even if you forget you can just ask your opponent. So really the only question remaining is that why do so many people defend this rule? Certainly from GW's perspective selling people extra models so that their armies comply with this rule makes sense, but why do so many non GW affiliated people defend this rule?

EDIT: I should add that if there is a risk of a mix up, like for example your sergeant has an item which is very positioning dependent, then yes being clear is important, but saying that the helmetles guy is the sarge should be enough.

First lets be clear that this isn't a GW only thing - in fact WYSIWYG is pretty standard in most wargames. The core difference is that with GW games many models have alternative weapon options; whilst in many other model lines the unit has one single weapon option and nothing else.

You see the very same rule in Warmachine, warjacks that have varied builds are what they are on the table as represented on the model. Many infantry have no weapon options so they are simple built as-is.



It makes the record keeping for the game a LOT easier. You don't have to write down and mentally remember which of two otherwise identical marine units is the one with the rocket launcher and which is the one with the close combat weapons only. You can tell at a glance.


You are right that upgrades are often not included, both from the fact that they are often too small to see; can easily be mistaken for other things and because its just not economical unless you build 1 army composition and never change. However ugprades are typically tweaking things that are central to the units primary weapons.


Eg a Tyranid Warrior that takes all close combat weapons can be seen to be a close combat unit on the tabletop. An opponent can easily infer that the unit might have upgrades that benefit those close combat weapons without even asking for confirmation. They can expect that the unit will not have ranged weapon upgrades and if it does it won't have any net gain anyway as its not nothing ranged to use them with.


It means that the Tyranid player knows exactly which warriors have which weapons; there's far less confusion for both players.
Heck a Tyranid player might run some termagaunts near some devilgaunts (devourer armed) if they are all modelled with the same weapon then as the units move near each other the player has a much reduced chance to tell which is from which squad based on weapons.



In the end its something players want because it helps the game along. Yes it means you want to use magnets or buy more models to represent more; however at the core of the game buying, building, painting and fielding models IS part of what players WANT in the game. It's part of the overall experience and why we play a model game over using simple card tokens or a computer game.

GW doesn't enforce wysiwyg outside of their own events,its not part of the rules AFAIK.

Its mostly down to the people you play with. Talk to them if you're having issues.

Generally speaking my experience is that NOBODY ever gave a gak about random pistols or grenades missing, the only thing that ever came up was about the primary weapons of models - eg a boltgun on the model while the list says its got a plasma gun, for example. Not to speak of proxying entire models, of course.

I wouldn't refuse a game just because of those things, but it has to be clear what's what. I want to know which guy has the Lascannon in a tactical squad - it's fine if he's actually carrying eg a flamer instead.

But it's just nicer to play with fully painted and correctly equipped armies.

WYSIWYG is a good rule as others have stated, in casual games I don’t really care as long as at a glance I know what is what weapon and model. In a tournament I will expect a much stricter adherence to what the model is modeled with being what they are equipped with.

In casual games I have been using some proxies for invictor warsuits as they are sold out here in the US with no sign of a restock soon, the only option to get them is to spend $150+ to get one on eBay from Japan right now or that same amount for a “pro-painted” one on eBay in a color scheme that doesn’t match mine.

WYSIWYG enhances the visually immersive gaming experience. If you don't care about that, you can play with bottlecaps and coke cans instead of models.

I will always go as far as I can to provide WYSIWYG, for the benefit of myself, my opponent.
If I mixed up my models, and their loadout, I am cheating. I am not going to do that if I can help it.

GW sells me only the number of models on the table, as I magnetise.
It takes more time to prepare my models, but I am not restricted in how they are used on the table. A model with a sword has a sword, not a mace, or pistol, etc.

WYSIWYG is for my benefit as a player, as much as my opponent's.

I mention GW because this is the 40k board. While people claim that non wysiwyg armies are confusing this is not true, as people are perfectly fine differentiating identical commander models which have different wargear. Lets make a thought experiment, you have two squads of space marines both of which are modelled with a missile launcher, yet one of them is a lascannon wargear wise. Also lets assume that you have two captains, both with a thunder hammer, but that the other one has a relic hammer. In both of these cases you have identical models with different wargear, so what is the difference? Evidently in both cases there is no problem if you play against someone reasonable who you can ask what wargear their units have.

As to immersion, often times non wysiwyg models can be more immersive, see: "Rule of cool".

I'm of two minds on this issue.

On the one hand I have a lot of weapons like Bolt Rifles vs Stalker Bolt Rifles that are indistinguishable at table-top distance and others like the Cyclone Launcher or LasTalon that have wildly different representations on different models.

On the other hand having people deviate from wysiwyg is really confusing if they're not consistent about it. That doesn't even have to be in "this Tac squad with a Heavy Bolter actually has a LasCannon, that Tac squad with a Heavy Bolter actually has a Grav Cannon" territory. The last game I played my opponent had a squad of DE jetbikes with three of them carrying GravTalons and I had the Master Crafted upgrade on an Aggressor Sergeant, and neither of us had them clearly marked. It mattered in game when his bikes charged several units (the Grav Talon procs for every unit the carrying model touches) and I had the opportunity to get my Aggressors out of melee by removing a particular model as a casualty but had no idea if that model was the sergeant or not. Edit: You can't claim wysiwyg is meaningless if it can have an in-game effect.

No, not giving units their full range of options in a box forces more purchases. That is cynical on GW’s part.

WYSIWYG itself is a sensible convention most people follow for a variety of reasons, chiefly avoiding confusion. It’s also not a rule, currently.

The OP’s stance is just so wide of the mark.

As usual, WYSIWYG is used as a proxy for the basic "don't be an Ahole" social contract that some folks violate, and other folks accuse others of violating as a means of discrediting their opinions.

I have been witness to plenty of super obnoxious WYSIWYG situations, where a person was told to remember (for example) that all meltas on the table were flamers, all heavy bolters on the table were autocannons, all Leman Russ Demolishers on the table were Punishers (with invisible triple heavy bolters, except for the ones that were battlecannons) and all Valkyries on the table were Vendettas. This was supremely confusing for the opponent involved, and also VERY PROBABLY included a high degree of list tailoring and points cheating as well as the player didn't have a printout of his list available and a lot of the weapons shifted around to anti-infantry weaponry when he saw his opponent had an infantry based ork list.

I've also been witness to people resorting to complaining about very slight WYSIWYG deviations when angry about a loss as a way to absolve themselves of the feeling that they lost because their opponent was better. The exact situation sticking out in my mind was an opponent getting angry because the player was very careful to take advantage of his frag and krak grenades, and his opponent after the game grumbled that unless a squad had a model throwing a grenade in it, you really shouldn't be using those grenades every time you shoot. The player also used pile-in and Consolidate moves to prevent fall back, used pistols in melee, contested a few Line of Sight and Cover claims, and used several stratagems and psychic buffs at once on one unit, all of which was decried as "Rules Lawyery Powergaming".

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
I mention GW because this is the 40k board. While people claim that non wysiwyg armies are confusing this is not true, as people are perfectly fine differentiating identical commander models which have different wargear. Lets make a thought experiment, you have two squads of space marines both of which are modelled with a missile launcher, yet one of them is a lascannon wargear wise. Also lets assume that you have two captains, both with a thunder hammer, but that the other one has a relic hammer. In both of these cases you have identical models with different wargear, so what is the difference? Evidently in both cases there is no problem if you play against someone reasonable who you can ask what wargear their units have.
As to immersion, often times non wysiwyg models can be more immersive, see: "Rule of cool".

Yeah, and you're just showing cases that support your stance.
If there's a squad of 5 Bolter marines, I'd like to know which one is the sarge and which one has the melta.if there are two such squads and one has a melta and the other has a Lascannon, we're gonna have an issue there.

Its not about one or two HQs looking the same, it's easy to track one model.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
I mention GW because this is the 40k board. While people claim that non wysiwyg armies are confusing this is not true, as people are perfectly fine differentiating identical commander models which have different wargear. Lets make a thought experiment, you have two squads of space marines both of which are modelled with a missile launcher, yet one of them is a lascannon wargear wise. Also lets assume that you have two captains, both with a thunder hammer, but that the other one has a relic hammer. In both of these cases you have identical models with different wargear, so what is the difference? Evidently in both cases there is no problem if you play against someone reasonable who you can ask what wargear their units have.

It becomes an issue when you do it for every unit on the table or a majority of them. Then double it for both you and your opponent. Now you're in a much more confusing situation because there's a lot more for both players to remember and write down. It makes the game less fluid if you've got to pause every few moments and ask which is which and increases the chances of both players making mistakes and mixing up which unit is which.

The unit and the weapon creates a two point reference which makes it much easier to identify the model type and its primary weapons. In addition when checking the army list it creates at least two points of fixed reference. A player might opt for a third such as coloured base rims; insignia etc... which increases the accuracy a lot more.

Even if you've got an army list if you've three or four identical units with different armaments that aren't shown anywhere on the model you are making things harder for all involved.




If WYSIWYG with regard to model type and primary weapons were not such a useful convention it would not be something most players expect t obe the norm when playing against unknown/random/event people. Of course conversions and such come into play, but even there most aim to have a lasgun look like a lasgun or at least have a unified look within their army.

Clearly the problem that the scotsman experienced was that the guy from the story didn't have a list ready and that he likely tailored, not that he proxyed. I find it hard to believe that those proxyes would be difficult to remember, and you can always ask your opponent if you are in doubt of what each unit is armed with. Also not being a dick is important yes, but what I seek to argue in this thread is that proxying is okay if neither player is an donkey-cave, and if either player is a gak, then even a game without proxies is going to be unpleasant, as you will run into the same problems anyways, like which captain has a relic hammer.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
Clearly the problem was that he didn't have a list ready and that he likely tailored, not that he proxyed. I find it hard to believe that those proxyes would be difficult to remember, and you can always ask your opponent if you are in doubt of what each unit is armed with. Also not being a dick is important yes, but what I seek to argue in this thread is that proxying is okay if neither player is an donkey-cave, and if either player is a gak, then even a game without proxies is going to be unpleasant, as you will run into the same problems anyways, like which captain has a relic hammer.

Not being a dick is what is forgotten in so, so many games.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
Clearly the problem was that he didn't have a list ready and that he likely tailored, not that he proxyed. I find it hard to believe that those proxyes would be difficult to remember, and you can always ask your opponent if you are in doubt of what each unit is armed with. Also not being a dick is important yes, but what I seek to argue in this thread is that proxying is okay if neither player is an donkey-cave, and if either player is a gak, then even a game without proxies is going to be unpleasant, as you will run into the same problems anyways, like which captain has a relic hammer.

Absolutely. But its faster and easier to have everything be cleary identifieable, or at least as much as possible.

As I said - I don't see it as a hard rule you have to follow, but it's a better game if you do

 Crimson wrote:
WYSIWYG enhances the visually immersive gaming experience. If you don't care about that, you can play with bottlecaps and coke cans instead of models.

I think that's a step too far.

I know off the top of my head I have six Sgts, 2 with combi plasmas, 2 with combi gravs, and 2 with combi meltas. None of them are wielding a chainsword but it's not outside the realm of reality to say "Hey all my Sgts have chainswords"

Bottle caps and cans though? That's different because I'd then be taking into question about how much this person actually cares about 40k.

 Crimson wrote:
WYSIWYG enhances the visually immersive gaming experience. If you don't care about that, you can play with bottlecaps and coke cans instead of models.

Personally I don't usually care what is used. As long as I can easily distinguish what is what. In big tournaments I'm a bit more strict though.

RE: Alkaline

What you're arguing is an opinion, which is borderline pointless. You're not going to magically change someone else' mind, nor are they likely to change yours. So you're not really arguing, but just shouting your opinion into the void, looking for validation from other people with similar opinions.

The only thing I will agree with you on (as I run all-painted, all-WYSIWYG and will not do otherwise) is that GW is very clever about not putting too much into a kit, and there are numerous cases throughout their range that are definitely designed with it in mind. However, bits sellers and aftermarket companies exist, so it's rarely an issue for me.

 fraser1191 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
WYSIWYG enhances the visually immersive gaming experience. If you don't care about that, you can play with bottlecaps and coke cans instead of models.

I think that's a step too far.

I know off the top of my head I have six Sgts, 2 with combi plasmas, 2 with combi gravs, and 2 with combi meltas. None of them are wielding a chainsword but it's not outside the realm of reality to say "Hey all my Sgts have chainswords"

Bottle caps and cans though? That's different because I'd then be taking into question about how much this person actually cares about 40k.

That's fine with most people, but if you start going "one of them has a power fist, one of them has a power axe, this one has a power mace and that one a power sword, and this guy has a thunder hammer. Oh, and the sixth guy comes with a chainsword. "... Well.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
I mention GW because this is the 40k board. While people claim that non wysiwyg armies are confusing this is not true, as people are perfectly fine differentiating identical commander models which have different wargear. Lets make a thought experiment, you have two squads of space marines both of which are modelled with a missile launcher, yet one of them is a lascannon wargear wise. Also lets assume that you have two captains, both with a thunder hammer, but that the other one has a relic hammer. In both of these cases you have identical models with different wargear, so what is the difference? Evidently in both cases there is no problem if you play against someone reasonable who you can ask what wargear their units have.

As to immersion, often times non wysiwyg models can be more immersive, see: "Rule of cool".

What's the difference? Well, when looking at the battlefield, it's a whole lot easier to remember which of the identical squads has the missile launcher and which has the lascannon if the one that has the lascannon is modelled with a fricking lascannon. That's the difference. It's not complicated. There's enough to keep track of in 40K as it is without having to go down this route.

Let me give you a thought experiment in return. What if, instead of talking about a single special weapon, you're talking about a squad of 10 Death Company? Let's say you have 10 identically modelled guys with bolt pistols and chainswords - but *actually* your list has one guy with a plasma pistol, two guys with thunder hammers, three guys with power axes, etc... Now let's say you declare a charge against multiple units. How do you keep track of which guy with what equipment has ended up in combat with what enemy unit?

Edit - I do however absolutely agree that GW should sell boxes with enough weapons etc to equip a squad however you want. Having to buy multiple boxes, or order spare bitz online, to get a single squad with the loadout you want is a massive pain.

 Overread wrote:

Alkaline_Hound wrote:


If WYSIWYG with regard to model type and primary weapons were not such a useful convention it would not be something most players expect t obe the norm when playing against unknown/random/event people. Of course conversions and such come into play, but even there most aim to have a lasgun look like a lasgun or at least have a unified look within their army.

I have see some guard conversions to make them look more like modern infantry, they replaced las guns with what looked like an m16 or similar rifle and did it for all of their infantry, this worked because Just looking at the table I knew that the infantry guys with m16 were guardsmen with lasguns, I didn’t have to stop over and over again to,ask what models they were or what they were armed with.

If I had to remember the guy with the red had is the Sargent, the guy with the blue hat is the heavy weapon guy with a las cannon, the guy with the orange hat is a mortar, the guy with the purple hat is the special weapons guy, and the guys with the brown hats are normal guys it would be a colossal PiTA.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
While I could focus on all the bad things that wysiwyg creates I will instead talk about how pointless it is. It really isn't hard to remember what each unit is armed with even if the model isn't completely accurate, as most people don't model every single piece of weargear on their model, like grenades and sometimes even swords are often left behind, and relics and such are usually not modelled, and even if you forget you can just ask your opponent. So really the only question remaining is that why do so many people defend this rule? Certainly from GW's perspective selling people extra models so that their armies comply with this rule makes sense, but why do so many non GW affiliated people defend this rule?

The problem isn't with the benign modeling. Warhammer has a lot to keep track of and needing to track what each unit is armed with mentally is far too taxing.

But imagine this scenario. I have a squad that is modeled with melta. I tell you they're plasma and I payed plasma points. This game I use them as plasma, because you're marines. Next game I face an opponent who has a lot of tanks. "Oh yea, those are melta. I just forgot to update my list. Let me remove a model to make the points even."

Are you going to check my list for accuracy? Do you have time? Are you going to bring a TO over? Do you think the TO would ban me for a "minor transgression"?

Opinions are based on facts, and facts can be argued, so opinions can be argued.

I added a bit into the op.

My motivation for this thread actually comes from seeing people screaming wysiwyg telling people not to do cool conversions like giving a leman russ a neutron blaster and running it as an vanquisher. I don't see however why the same courtesy of ignoring wysiwyg wouldn't apply to less rule of cool proxies, which is why I will defend them too.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
Opinions are based on facts, and facts can be argued, so opinions can be argued.

I added a bit into the op.

My motivation for this thread actually comes from seeing people screaming wysiwyg telling people not to do cool conversions like giving a leman russ a neutron blaster and running it as an vanquisher. I don't see however why the same courtesy of ignoring wysiwyg wouldn't apply to less rule of cool proxies, which is why I will defend them too.

As long as it is consistent then that should really not be a problem And the part doesn’t already represent another legal option most people wouldn’t object but a TO might always say no as they have that authority. In a casual or competitive game as long as I knew what it represented I would be fine with your conversion.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
Opinions are based on facts, and facts can be argued, so opinions can be argued.

I added a bit into the op.

My motivation for this thread actually comes from seeing people screaming wysiwyg telling people not to do cool conversions like giving a leman russ a neutron blaster and running it as an vanquisher. I don't see however why the same courtesy of ignoring wysiwyg wouldn't apply to less rule of cool proxies, which is why I will defend them too.

Opinions can be based on anything. even bad facts and lies.

also a neutron vanquisher tank sounds super cool and that sounds more like a your local group problem then an anywhere else problem.

@ OP:

Wysiwyg exists to sell models?!

Nope, it exists to further the high art of the hobby which is modeling and painting your minis. Otherwise little Timmy & his bozos would play with bottle caps.

I prefer WYSIWYG for immersion purporses, but super happy for friends to proxy to try out things before buying.

WYSIWYG is about more than the game, its about the whole hobby. Building the models, painting them and playing the game are all aspects of the hobby, and WYSIWYG is an encouragement and a reason to pay attention to the modelling aspect of the hobby, in addition to the reasons given above: clarity, fairness, respect for the game and your opponent etc etc.

WYSIWYG doesn't work for every army. Take SW, for example. Grey Hunters have THREE weapons if they take Chainswords. How are you going to model that using the box alone?

 RaptorusRex wrote:
WYSIWYG doesn't work for every army. Take SW, for example. Grey Hunters have THREE weapons if they take Chainswords. How are you going to model that using the box alone?

By saying that the bolt pistol is in one of their tactical fanny packs.

Aash wrote:
WYSIWYG is about more than the game, its about the whole hobby. Building the models, painting them and playing the game are all aspects of the hobby, and WYSIWYG is an encouragement and a reason to pay attention to the modelling aspect of the hobby, in addition to the reasons given above: clarity, fairness, respect for the game and your opponent etc etc.

And a way to milk customers for more money if they want to build for specific loadouts. Great and obvious example being chaos marine chain cannons.

WYSIWYG exists so I, as your opponent, can be visually informed by your army, and plan accordingly.

However, it doesn’t need to extend to Stock Equipment.

For instance, a Tactical Marine comes with Stock Equipment of a Bolter, Bolt Pistol, Frag and Krak. So I don’t need to see all of that modelled.

But, any upgrades, such as Intercessor Bolt Rifle/Auto Bolt Rifle etc should be appropriately modelled. Because that does make a difference. If I see Auto Bolt Rifles 24” away, I know I can pull back to remain out of range in your next turn, for example. But if it’s suddenly revealed they were the Snipey Bolt Rifles? Well, I’m still in range, and your lack of WYSIWYG has granted you an unfair advantage, as it directly changed my tactical decisions.

Likewise Special and Heavy Weapons. Now, here, there is some flexibility. If we’ve pre-arranged a game, perhaps as part of a campaign, I’m ok with consistent substitution. By that, I mean all infantry mounted Las Cannons ‘counting as’ say, Heavy Bolters, and vice versa. That’s easy to remember, and potentially desirable as it lets opponents try before they buy.

But if Lascannon A is a Multi-Melta, B is a Missile Launcher etc? I’m afraid I’d have to decline, as it’s putting too much onus on me as your opponent.

Yes, GW could do a much better job of making stuff available. For instance, that snacky Chaos Rotor Cannon thing. That’s a highly desirable weapon - and of exceptionally limited availability. For such, I wouldn’t object to an upgrade sprue being released. But equally, I’ve no objection whatsoever to someone using FW’s Heresy Rotor Cannon, because I cannot mistake them for anything else.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
While I could focus on all the bad things that wysiwyg creates I will instead talk about how pointless it is. It really isn't hard to remember what each unit is armed with even if the model isn't completely accurate, as most people don't model every single piece of weargear on their model, like grenades and sometimes even swords are often left behind, and relics and such are usually not modelled, and even if you forget you can just ask your opponent. So really the only question remaining is that why do so many people defend this rule? Certainly from GW's perspective selling people extra models so that their armies comply with this rule makes sense, but why do so many non GW affiliated people defend this rule?

EDIT: I should add that if there is a risk of a mix up, like for example your sergeant has an item which is very positioning dependent, then yes being clear is important, but saying that the helmetles guy is the sarge should be enough.

A little bit isn't bad, like a "hey, this unit has chainswords, they've got a variety of stuff modeled on them but we're just going to say they all have chainswords." Easy to remember, short and sweet. It's very different to say "this unit of chainswords actually has a hammer, two fists, a power axe, a power sword, and a couple meltas" with a long list of tiny differences the models have to tell them apart. That's incredibly annoying and easy to forget, especially in big games.

It's also one thing to do one unit as a proxy, and another to be a whole army. It's not hard to remember a single unit is weird, but when your whole army is blatantly just being run as something that's flavor of the month and you're too lazy to model it, I'm going to have issues. Not that op is doing it, but every group has a guy like this. WYSIWYG is critical for tournament play, and honestly pretty important for casual play too. I don't need to see every single grenade modeled on every single guy, but I do like to see that if you have a plasma, it's actually a plasma. That, or an honest attempt at something standing in as a plasma and uniform across the army, like say volkites, and not a single actual volkite is actually in the army.

I'll defend it for the most part. I think it's critical, after all, this is a modeling game first and foremost. What's the point in models if they're not what they're actually supposed to represent, aside from cool conversions and the like? I also think it helps slow down Flavor of the Month chasing and keeps cheese down a bit, but then again a player with a massive collection can do still do it with little issue. I dunno, that's my stance on it.

WYSIWYG isn't a problem and I think is a good thing i.e. this unit has Helblasters and is armed as such.

The problem however is GWs fething idiotic box contents e.g. all your Chaos termies can take chainaxes...tough, you only get one in the box. Your havocs can take four rotary cannons...ha, fool...you only get one in the kit.

GW need to align core/special weapon choices in the codex with the contents of the kit.

To address OPs posit...you would have to have way more money than sense to buy four boxes of havocs to make one WYSIWYG squad. Most people kit bash / third party or fly the Jolly Roger and sail the pirate seas (I don't condone the latter).

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
WYSIWYG exists so I, as your opponent, can be visually informed by your army, and plan accordingly.

However, it doesn’t need to extend to Stock Equipment.

For instance, a Tactical Marine comes with Stock Equipment of a Bolter, Bolt Pistol, Frag and Krak. So I don’t need to see all of that modelled.

But, any upgrades, such as Intercessor Bolt Rifle/Auto Bolt Rifle etc should be appropriately modelled. Because that does make a difference. If I see Auto Bolt Rifles 24” away, I know I can pull back to remain out of range in your next turn, for example. But if it’s suddenly revealed they were the Snipey Bolt Rifles? Well, I’m still in range, and your lack of WYSIWYG has granted you an unfair advantage, as it directly changed my tactical decisions.

Likewise Special and Heavy Weapons. Now, here, there is some flexibility. If we’ve pre-arranged a game, perhaps as part of a campaign, I’m ok with consistent substitution. By that, I mean all infantry mounted Las Cannons ‘counting as’ say, Heavy Bolters, and vice versa. That’s easy to remember, and potentially desirable as it lets opponents try before they buy.

But if Lascannon A is a Multi-Melta, B is a Missile Launcher etc? I’m afraid I’d have to decline, as it’s putting too much onus on me as your opponent.

Yes, GW could do a much better job of making stuff available. For instance, that snacky Chaos Rotor Cannon thing. That’s a highly desirable weapon - and of exceptionally limited availability. For such, I wouldn’t object to an upgrade sprue being released. But equally, I’ve no objection whatsoever to someone using FW’s Heresy Rotor Cannon, because I cannot mistake them for anything else.

Not starting an argument here, but you can actually tell the difference from a standing tabletop perspective? That's impressive. I 100% can't tell without getting close and by that point I'm leaning over a table, nudging models and wishing I had just asked lol. All my intercessors are from the time of the standard bolt rifle being the only valid option so when I use them I give every single one the same weapon. "Every single intercessor is using a stalker bolt rifle" has never caused issues.

As many times as I have had trouble with a player proxying models, I have had 3x as many times had players flip flop between wounds on and wounds remaining on a model.

I really only care about consistency. All your Melta Guns are Plasma because GW screwed the pooch on Melta Gun rules for 8th Edition? Sure I don't really care. I also don't care about reasonable substitutions. Your Rad Grenade Launchers are Frag Launchers for your Deathwatch? That's rad because those look much better. Likewise I've had no issues using Volkite Calvs as Grav Cannons on my Sternguard, because what else are they really gonna be?

It seems like a big part of this wysiwyg discussion relies on not being able to ask your opponent what unit X has.

How do people deal with things in transports?

DE for example have a lot if not all their units in transports. I know I almost always have to ask what's in what when I get to my shooting phase. How is that any different than double checking what a unit has? Sure there's onus on you to know what a unit has but there is a social contract to 40k like all other games (maybe except competitive, but if they refuse to tell you then call over a judge I guess)

carldooley wrote:As many times as I have had trouble with a player proxying models, I have had 3x as many times had players flip flop between wounds on and wounds remaining on a model.

Amen. I have never understood counting how many wounds a model has taken when not everyone knows how many wounds every model starts with. I always count "wounds remaining" so it's clear what's almost dead.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:WYSIWYG exists so I, as your opponent, can be visually informed by your army, and plan accordingly.

However, it doesn’t need to extend to Stock Equipment.

For instance, a Tactical Marine comes with Stock Equipment of a Bolter, Bolt Pistol, Frag and Krak. So I don’t need to see all of that modelled.

^ This.

I can assure you it is not fun losing track of all the stuff my opponent is proxying (which can sometimes mysteriously change during the course of a game) and deepstriking a unit of Deathwing terminators next to a squad whose bolters are actually plasmas.

It seems like a big part of this wysiwyg discussion relies on not being able to ask your opponent what unit X has.

People at my GW would have these mishmash armies of broken, half completed models painted an array of different colors and they'd do this "10mansquadwithamissileandflamernowaitit'saplasma and PredatorwithduallascannonsbuIdon'thavethesprueyetohheyhowyadoinandit'sgotanautocannonthat'sjustrestingthere and thisflamerisactuallyamissile and thisguywithnoarmshasamelta" quickly talking me through their proxied army that I have to memorize. It got really annoying. I watched a guy playing another game turn his armless marines from plasmas to meltas when they got close to a vehicle. I would say he did it intentionally but then again this guy seemed so unorganized he probably lost track of which unit was proxying his meltas because nothing was WYSIWYG.

In a squad with multiple weapon options I make sure everything is WYSIWYG even if that means strapping weapons to their backs and not necessarily in their hands. If a pistol isn't basic equipment but an option I make sure the majority of the squad at least has holsters on their hips and at least a few are holding their pistols out so they're seen. I make sure my plasmas glow one color and meltas glow another but that's just me, I don't expect that.

Personal opinion: WYSIWYG is good form in wargaming for both you and your opponent, just like showering and wearing deodorant. You don't technically have to take a shower or completely wipe yourself before leaving the house to play a game at your local GW, that's not just soap and deodorant companies trying to sell you unnecessary products. I stopped going to my local GW for a couple of years until a few guys cycled out who couldn't handle basic male hygiene (not joking about the wiping oneself either).

Things like WYSIWYG or bringing your rulebook and codex instead of relying on the ol' cerebral army list just makes the game more enjoyable, especially among strangers. While you might be able to remember all of your army's special rules it's nice to have something on hand when someone has a question. Over the last few years GW has gotten rid of almost every option that doesn't come in a box (which is incredibly aggravating to people who like converting like I do) so there's almost no reason for anyone's recent army not to be WYSIWYG at this point.

WYSIWYG is simply courteous gameplay. It makes life easier for your opponent.

Cool conversions can be WYSIWYG but need to be reasonably obvious. A converted battle cannon should look like a cannon, a converted heavy bolter should look like a high-volume, large caliber slugthrower. The key here is to keep the volume of things the opponent needs to remember to a minimum. If every squad has different weapons and they're all distinctly different conversions - even between weapons that are the same - you're creating problems for your opponent. If all your tactical squads have the same weapons and the same conversions, it's a lot easier for everyone.

And yes, it does sell more miniatures, but only if you decide that you need to constantly be changing the load-out of your miniatures. You can always put in the extra effort to magnetize things to save money.

I personally don't adhere to strict WYSIWYG but I only play garage hammer and it's not my fault GW deems it unnecessary to include all options in a kit. Having said that I do keep my proxies/stand ins simple so as to not burden my opponent, eg. all my Killa Kans have rokkits despite what they are modeled as. If I were to use a second unit of them I'd gave all of them rokkits too just so it would always be clear what they have. Because I do agree mix and matching between identical looking squads is just asking for errors later in the game and/or cheating.

Here's the thing: everything exists to force people to buy extra models.

Wysiwyg exists to sell models? No, it exists to sell magnets!

Well, for me it's all about the immersion. 40K is a reenactment/ roleplay of Fantasybattles with tiny plastic miniatures. Yes, you can proxy, or don't use WYSIWYG and play on the kitchen table with books as hills, but to really get the feeling of the game, take painted minis with the right equipment. And if you don't have the equipment ready - well, don't play it then, there's no 40K mini that is unplayable. If I only have 4 flamers I can't play 6, so what? (I don't enforce that view on my opponent's, it's just my personal approach.)

WYSIWYG is pretty rare in my experience.

I don't think I care all that much either because GW hardly makes any effort to encourage an accurate representation of their own models. WYSIWYG is understandable for narrative style games, but taking issue with random pick-ups at a store for saying all their Havocs have weapon X gives off some real That Guy vibes

If GW could do two things, it should be 1) Be less stingy with a kits weapon options and 2) Find a way to decouple the game rules from the paint jobs

No one likes painting up chapter, legion or craftworld X and finding out they're crap on the table because their sub-faction rules are weak. People could freely paint what they want without worrying about the in-game repercussions for having Biel-tan paintjob as opposed to Alaitoc for instance.

WYSIWYG is massively important for competitive play. It prevents cheating both intentional and unintentional and helps facilitate good decision making by informing your opponent what a uniit does at a glance.

Also, it's just really helpful for keeping your rules straight. I've been playtesting my Sisters of Battle lately, which means proxying just about everything and it SUCKS. I get characters confised, lose track of units, relics, weapons, etc all the time because I can't just look at a unit and go 'ah yes, that is clearly a dialogus, not a missionary.'


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dumb Smart Guy wrote:
WYSIWYG is pretty rare in my experience.

I don't think I care all that much either because GW hardly makes any effort to encourage an accurate representation of their own models. WYSIWYG is understandable for narrative style games, but taking issue with random pick-ups at a store for saying all their Havocs have weapon X gives off some real That Guy vibes

If GW could do two things, it should be 1) Be less stingy with a kits weapon options and 2) Find a way to decouple the game rules from the paint jobs

No one likes painting up chapter, legion or craftworld X and finding out they're crap on the table because their sub-faction rules are weak. People could freely paint what they want without worrying about the in-game repercussions for having Biel-tan paintjob as opposed to Alaitoc for instance.

No one DOES paint their army according to rules. People use blue Blood Angels and Green Ironhands all the time. No one worries about the game ramifications of their paontjobs unless they're a narrative player. And even then only a little bit because power isn't the most important thing to them.

The only time paintjob matters is when you have 2+ CTs in the same army. And even then base markers can do the same job.

 Fajita Fan wrote:

carldooley wrote:As many times as I have had trouble with a player proxying models, I have had 3x as many times had players flip flop between wounds on and wounds remaining on a model.

Amen. I have never understood counting how many wounds a model has taken when not everyone knows how many wounds every model starts with. I always count "wounds remaining" so it's clear what's almost dead.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:WYSIWYG exists so I, as your opponent, can be visually informed by your army, and plan accordingly.

However, it doesn’t need to extend to Stock Equipment.

For instance, a Tactical Marine comes with Stock Equipment of a Bolter, Bolt Pistol, Frag and Krak. So I don’t need to see all of that modelled.

^ This.

I can assure you it is not fun losing track of all the stuff my opponent is proxying (which can sometimes mysteriously change during the course of a game) and deepstriking a unit of Deathwing terminators next to a squad whose bolters are actually plasmas.

It seems like a big part of this wysiwyg discussion relies on not being able to ask your opponent what unit X has.

People at my GW would have these mishmash armies of broken, half completed models painted an array of different colors and they'd do this "10mansquadwithamissileandflamernowaitit'saplasma and PredatorwithduallascannonsbuIdon'thavethesprueyetohheyhowyadoinandit'sgotanautocannonthat'sjustrestingthere and thisflamerisactuallyamissile and thisguywithnoarmshasamelta" quickly talking me through their proxied army that I have to memorize. It got really annoying. I watched a guy playing another game turn his armless marines from plasmas to meltas when they got close to a vehicle. I would say he did it intentionally but then again this guy seemed so unorganized he probably lost track of which unit was proxying his meltas because nothing was WYSIWYG.

In a squad with multiple weapon options I make sure everything is WYSIWYG even if that means strapping weapons to their backs and not necessarily in their hands. If a pistol isn't basic equipment but an option I make sure the majority of the squad at least has holsters on their hips and at least a few are holding their pistols out so they're seen. I make sure my plasmas glow one color and meltas glow another but that's just me, I don't expect that.

Personal opinion: WYSIWYG is good form in wargaming for both you and your opponent, just like showering and wearing deodorant. You don't technically have to take a shower or completely wipe yourself before leaving the house to play a game at your local GW, that's not just soap and deodorant companies trying to sell you unnecessary products. I stopped going to my local GW for a couple of years until a few guys cycled out who couldn't handle basic male hygiene (not joking about the wiping oneself either).

Things like WYSIWYG or bringing your rulebook and codex instead of relying on the ol' cerebral army list just makes the game more enjoyable, especially among strangers. While you might be able to remember all of your army's special rules it's nice to have something on hand when someone has a question. Over the last few years GW has gotten rid of almost every option that doesn't come in a box (which is incredibly aggravating to people who like converting like I do) so there's almost no reason for anyone's recent army not to be WYSIWYG at this point.

To counter one of your points of something just being "good form"..., I'm pretty sure Konami made it an official rule in Yugioh to take a fething shower because basic hygiene apparently needs to be enforced.

 fraser1191 wrote:
It seems like a big part of this wysiwyg discussion relies on not being able to ask your opponent what unit X has.

How do people deal with things in transports?

DE for example have a lot if not all their units in transports. I know I almost always have to ask what's in what when I get to my shooting phase. How is that any different than double checking what a unit has? Sure there's onus on you to know what a unit has but there is a social contract to 40k like all other games (maybe except competitive, but if they refuse to tell you then call over a judge I guess)

Because it's WAY easier to remember what units are in X number of transports(especially when the WYSIWYG unit is in plain sight) than it is to remember what every unit on the table does.

Also, asking what every single unit does takes time. Games are already pushing 3 hours, like I need an extra hour of 'what is that unit equipped with again?'

Finally, cheating. Intentional or not, it's entirely possible, even incredibly easy, to have a non-WYSIWYG unit have multiple different equipment loadouts over the course of the game. I've had more than one pickup game where proxies were used and neither player realized until after the game ended that a unit that had started with meltas, ended with Lascannons.

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:

Aash wrote:
WYSIWYG is about more than the game, its about the whole hobby. Building the models, painting them and playing the game are all aspects of the hobby, and WYSIWYG is an encouragement and a reason to pay attention to the modelling aspect of the hobby, in addition to the reasons given above: clarity, fairness, respect for the game and your opponent etc etc.

And a way to milk customers for more money if they want to build for specific loadouts. Great and obvious example being chaos marine chain cannons.

That's more a consequence of GW's box design than a problem with the idea of WISYWIG. Most games I've played either give units a small number of options and ship every option in the box (ex. Bolt Action, Star Wars Legion, Warmachine), or have a different mechanism of representing options in play than bits on the model (X-wing, Armada), or have explicitly clarified that WISYWIG shouldn't be enforced in tournaments (Infinity).

ERJAK wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
It seems like a big part of this wysiwyg discussion relies on not being able to ask your opponent what unit X has.

How do people deal with things in transports?

DE for example have a lot if not all their units in transports. I know I almost always have to ask what's in what when I get to my shooting phase. How is that any different than double checking what a unit has? Sure there's onus on you to know what a unit has but there is a social contract to 40k like all other games (maybe except competitive, but if they refuse to tell you then call over a judge I guess)

Because it's WAY easier to remember what units are in X number of transports(especially when the WYSIWYG unit is in plain sight) than it is to remember what every unit on the table does.

Also, asking what every single unit does takes time. Games are already pushing 3 hours, like I need an extra hour of 'what is that unit equipped with again?'

Finally, cheating. Intentional or not, it's entirely possible, even incredibly easy, to have a non-WYSIWYG unit have multiple different equipment loadouts over the course of the game. I've had more than one pickup game where proxies were used and neither player realized until after the game ended that a unit that had started with meltas, ended with Lascannons.

Then write everything down. This isn't that difficult. I mean, I always carry sticky notes on my person because I get work calls randomly in an IKEA when I'm trying to grab something off the shelf and it falls on me, but I'd figure at minimum most people would bring that to a game to make note of stuff.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Then write everything down. This isn't that difficult. I mean, I always carry sticky notes on my person because I get work calls randomly in an IKEA when I'm trying to grab something off the shelf and it falls on me, but I'd figure at minimum most people would bring that to a game to make note of stuff.

I've never seen people with proxy armies where "these two flamers are plasma guns and these two flamers are meltaguns" bring post it notes to make anyone else's life easy.

I think people at my store have gotten much better over the years as the player base has gotten older and bigger. There's far less Proxyhammer and I think that's a good thing. Heck over in the Aeronautica forum people were thinking of how to equip their tiny missiles on Thunderbolts and how we don't get enough missiles on Marauders. In that game having missile tokens would make far more sense than equipping the models all WYSIWYG since we're talking 1mm tubes. Seeing a pair of half assembled Predators on the table representing different weapon loadouts and needing to remember what is equipped with what when someone does't even have a written list is sorta different.

My $.02 and I rather enjoy seeing all of my guys equipped the right way. I really respect cool conversions that represent the equipment options.

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:

Not starting an argument here, but you can actually tell the difference from a standing tabletop perspective? That's impressive. I 100% can't tell without getting close and by that point I'm leaning over a table, nudging models and wishing I had just asked lol. All my intercessors are from the time of the standard bolt rifle being the only valid option so when I use them I give every single one the same weapon. "Every single intercessor is using a stalker bolt rifle" has never caused issues.

I'm the same. I can rarely ever tell what a small infantry model on my opponent's side of the table is holding.

Moreover, unless it's an army I'm familiar with, I'll often have no clue what it's supposed to be anyway.

e.g. if I'm playing against Knights or Primaris or Admech or Tau etc., then my opponent saying 'everything in my army is WYSIWYG' is of absolutely no use to me because I have no idea whatsoever what the different weapons in those armies look like.

And as has been pointed out at least once there are cases where you can't even wing it since some weapons have wildly different sculpts from one kit to another.

 fraser1191 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
WYSIWYG enhances the visually immersive gaming experience. If you don't care about that, you can play with bottlecaps and coke cans instead of models.

I think that's a step too far.

I know off the top of my head I have six Sgts, 2 with combi plasmas, 2 with combi gravs, and 2 with combi meltas. None of them are wielding a chainsword but it's not outside the realm of reality to say "Hey all my Sgts have chainswords"

Yeah, but I'm not worried a mere chainsword. It's the much more deadly combi-weapons I expect to see modeled. Because if all the models are wielding standard looking bolt pistols, WE don't know wich ones are wich combi-weapon wise. Applies to special & heavy weapons as well.
Where certain weapons are can affect how I'd move, target selection, what I charge etc. And in too many cases over the years I've seen these non-WYSIWYG weapons magically shift around - often to whatever position is most advantageous atm - as the owner "makes a mistake" or "gets confused".

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
It seems like a big part of this wysiwyg discussion relies on not being able to ask your opponent what unit X has.

How do people deal with things in transports?

DE for example have a lot if not all their units in transports. I know I almost always have to ask what's in what when I get to my shooting phase. How is that any different than double checking what a unit has? Sure there's onus on you to know what a unit has but there is a social contract to 40k like all other games (maybe except competitive, but if they refuse to tell you then call over a judge I guess)

Because it's WAY easier to remember what units are in X number of transports(especially when the WYSIWYG unit is in plain sight) than it is to remember what every unit on the table does.

Also, asking what every single unit does takes time. Games are already pushing 3 hours, like I need an extra hour of 'what is that unit equipped with again?'

Finally, cheating. Intentional or not, it's entirely possible, even incredibly easy, to have a non-WYSIWYG unit have multiple different equipment loadouts over the course of the game. I've had more than one pickup game where proxies were used and neither player realized until after the game ended that a unit that had started with meltas, ended with Lascannons.

Then write everything down. This isn't that difficult. I mean, I always carry sticky notes on my person because I get work calls randomly in an IKEA when I'm trying to grab something off the shelf and it falls on me, but I'd figure at minimum most people would bring that to a game to make note of stuff.

Yes exactly. Building a list is pretty fundamental to the game so you have a list somewhere unless it's in your brain in which case I'd call you out for not being prepared for game. Be it battlescribe, a print out or written down you have a reference and so should your opponent

WYSIWYG I always look at as a gaming aid and makes the game look good.
Does the model look like what it represents?
Should it do otherwise?
Every time I get into this conversation I keep thinking of this:


Plus I find it easier on me as the model owner and a courtesy to my opponent to be able to know the model for what it is.
Gives a whole new meaning of modelling for advantage / obfuscation.

It COULD exist as a factor to get people to buy models, it "forced" me to get good modeling with magnets.
I would argue that WYSIWYG exists primarily as the main principle of tabletop war gaming that makes it the spectacle it is.

What is all the "negative waves" with WYSIWYG?

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
While I could focus on all the bad things that wysiwyg creates I will instead talk about how pointless it is. It really isn't hard to remember what each unit is armed with even if the model isn't completely accurate, as most people don't model every single piece of weargear on their model, like grenades and sometimes even swords are often left behind, and relics and such are usually not modelled, and even if you forget you can just ask your opponent. So really the only question remaining is that why do so many people defend this rule? Certainly from GW's perspective selling people extra models so that their armies comply with this rule makes sense, but why do so many non GW affiliated people defend this rule?

EDIT: I should add that if there is a risk of a mix up, like for example your sergeant has an item which is very positioning dependent, then yes being clear is important, but saying that the helmetles guy is the sarge should be enough.

Seeing how often I have had to go "now which one of these squads has melta gun and which has the flamer?" when opponent hasn't been wysiwyg...

ugh no. If you don't have models howabout less waac attitude then? Or if you want to maximize power at least make it easier for opponent to quickly know the crucial information. Otherwise you are either gaining advantage by confusing opponent and hoping he makes mistake because he lost track of what weapon it has or make game slower(rather rude of you) when every detail needs to be double checked regularly.

 Castozor wrote:
I personally don't adhere to strict WYSIWYG but I only play garage hammer and it's not my fault GW deems it unnecessary to include all options in a kit. Having said that I do keep my proxies/stand ins simple so as to not burden my opponent, eg. all my Killa Kans have rokkits despite what they are modeled as. If I were to use a second unit of them I'd gave all of them rokkits too just so it would always be clear what they have. Because I do agree mix and matching between identical looking squads is just asking for errors later in the game and/or cheating.

So you're just lazy. I mean, there's enough rockets out there (Gw or from anything else) that you could easily arm your Kans.
You want cheap rockets? Take a stroll through a toy aisle in your local WalMart. Or take 5 minutes & scratch build yourself some.

It irks me a bit to have a regular character model only being given one option. For example, a Chaos Lord model gives you a thunderhammer and plasma pistol and that's it. No options for a bolt pistol, power sword. Squads/units on the other hand, have plently of options and should be able to change them out fairly simply. I get your point though.

 Talizvar wrote:

What is all the "negative waves" with WYSIWYG?

It's what you get from the cheaters, the cheap, & the lazy.

ccs wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:

What is all the "negative waves" with WYSIWYG?

It's what you get from the cheaters, the cheap, & the lazy.

that's hardly fair, if I don't magnatyize my minis and an edition changes and now the melta guns I sued are now simply a bad choice and I declare them all plasma guns, is that really a big deal?

I agree it can get a bit nuts but it's a matter of balance. 40k is expensive eneugh that a little bit of flex isn't a bad thing

ccs wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:

What is all the "negative waves" with WYSIWYG?

It's what you get from the cheaters, the cheap, & the lazy.

And on the other hand the stick-up-ass twits who think things have to be done 'correctly' or they aren't fun.

As with most things the truth lies somewhere in between the extreme strawmen we construct to insult people we disagree with.

 Talizvar wrote:
WYSIWYG I always look at as a gaming aid and makes the game look good.
Does the model look like what it represents?
Should it do otherwise?
Every time I get into this conversation I keep thinking of this:


Plus I find it easier on me as the model owner and a courtesy to my opponent to be able to know the model for what it is.
Gives a whole new meaning of modelling for advantage / obfuscation.

It COULD exist as a factor to get people to buy models, it "forced" me to get good modeling with magnets.
I would argue that WYSIWYG exists primarily as the main principle of tabletop war gaming that makes it the spectacle it is.

What is all the "negative waves" with WYSIWYG?

Because it's only enforced when you decide something is too powerful and say "tough luck to ya that GW made all of your Melta Guns useless".

I paint my power weapons and plasma in blue not because I actually like the look of it but to make it easy to see for my opponent so he doesnt charge in to a unit with a Thunderhammer wielding squad leader who 2 min later smashes his character out of no where.

Some things will take an artistic back seat just to make the game more practical. Me having a smooth game is more important than having more discrete weapons that I think might look a bit better.

My worst 8th edition game were against a necron army that was all made out of non GW parts and I just had to ask him all the time what each model were representing. My first completed 40k army was a Necron one so I got way more confused than if I had never seen a necron before. They werent too bad if seen on a shelf but they were in a very dark scheme on a dark industry table playing the last round of a RTT(so a bit tired already) so i couldnt distinguish anything. I dont want my opponents to feel the same as I did in that game. If i were to play a pick up game I would decline if against that army. Really nice player but I prefer something that if it isnt GW it is still very close to the design style for a good game.

Klickor wrote:I paint my power weapons and plasma in blue not because I actually like the look of it but to make it easy to see for my opponent so he doesnt charge in to a unit with a Thunderhammer wielding squad leader who 2 min later smashes his character out of no where.

Some things will take an artistic back seat just to make the game more practical. Me having a smooth game is more important than having more discrete weapons that I think might look a bit better.

Props to you.

Psionara wrote:It irks me a bit to have a regular character model only being given one option. For example, a Chaos Lord model gives you a thunderhammer and plasma pistol and that's it. No options for a bolt pistol, power sword. Squads/units on the other hand, have plently of options and should be able to change them out fairly simply. I get your point though.

Well if you've started an army in the years since the Chapterhouse lawsuit it's very hard to find any weapon options or special characters that are not physically in a box anymore. They took out a lot of opportunity for conversions and scratchbuilds to reduce the market for 3rd party conversions but all I see is a gazillion 3rd party conversion bits all over the place. Heck they took away the Black Orcs' 'Uge Array of Choppas rule where they counted as being armed with great weapons, hand weapon/shield, and dual hand weapons - now every Black Orc counts as being armed with what he's physically modeled with. I have models I've spent hours working on that are no longer usable. My converted Belial is now just a Deathwing Terminator with lightning claws who stands ornately above everyone else because they started selling an official resin sword/stormbolter model.

In fairness when the Chapterhouse bubble burst GW was getting a bit silly with things in the codex that weren't sold by them as a model. Tyranids were running around with hero units not represented; multiple weapons etc.... Conversions are not a skill every gamer should need to develop to play and often many aren't happy to convert until they've got more experience so it locks out newer players.

Plus you'd end up with many who wouldn't convert as they'd be waiting for the model from GW.

 Talizvar wrote:

What is all the "negative waves" with WYSIWYG?

People are just seeking more and more cynical means to accuse GW of doing the wrong thing.

Luckily second hand parts, conversions and magnets all exist.

So even if this was an intent directly stated in the preamble, they could hardly stop you using such methods.

I think it's fine as long as you inform your opponent ahead of time

Sure, and if you inform your opponent and they aren't interested in the game at that point - they're also not a dill weed. They just have different priorities than you. There's plenty of room at the table for everyone and how they enjoy the game.

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
I think it's fine as long as you inform your opponent ahead of time

Depending on what/how many of you're proxying maybe. Also people shouldn't roll their eyes when asked multiple times over the course of a few hours what things are - this is especially true when people are spamming MSU units in multiple detachments to maximize CP.

Let me say first I'm ok with wysiwyg, I think it mostly is there to handle ol cheaty face players who would otherwise play musical war gear/ weapons.

I think some intensely anal players do try to use it as a tool to bludgeon other players for not making their models far too busy just to live and die by it. I.E the ones who complained if you didn't model each marine with both frag, and krak but also the bolt pistol, CCW/chainsword and Boltgun. As well the ones who wanted every tiny wargear option to be seen even if they were relics and not there every battle.

I've been lucky enough to not have to deal with those types but, I know they are out there, lurking in the darkness.

It should be a tool to keep cheating from happening, make it easy to keep track of who does what and has what. Which is all good, just don't use it to be a grade A grief peddler.

If a model counts as being armed with an item as basic wargear it's never been required to be represented on the model as far as I know. I can't imagine someone who actually expects people to model grenades and pistols if a model has them as basic wargear. Yikes!

I decided to run a little experiment today and see how well I would remember proxy wargear. I didn't pay attention to which guard proxy was which, yet I only got the flamer and melta mixed up as which represented which. So since a game is a lot shorter than the time since I read the post, I'd say that remembering that army composition wasn't hard.

Also there is this notion that wysiwyg is needed for clarity, but this isn't true. One could easily paint the lips of each special weapon differently, and have a handy guide in the army list, so for example all red lips are plasmas.

Furthermore the magnets argument doesn't really cover the issue, as often they limit how one can pose the model, and wilder conversions often don't have any 1:1 weapons to match them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
PS, playing cheaters is unpleasant with or without wysiwyg. I would personally just not play with them.

the_scotsman wrote:

 RaptorusRex wrote:
WYSIWYG doesn't work for every army. Take SW, for example. Grey Hunters have THREE weapons if they take Chainswords. How are you going to model that using the box alone?

By saying that the bolt pistol is in one of their tactical fanny packs.

Don’t they come with Pistol holsters? Now I’m going to spend time wondering where I picked mine up.
Mk3 Heresy Armour makes brilliant Grey Hunters, both hands on the Boltgun with the Bolt Pistol and Chainsword holstered in easy reach.

Are you for real ? Like really real ? Have you played a game trying to check out the lips color of hundreds of guards ? I don't care what kind of chart you make up, that game would be a pain in the butt. Not only because that is confusing but also because lips are small, on small faces scattered all over the board do you play floating eye level with each unit on the board ? I don't nor do I savor the idea of looking at each tiny pair of painted lips.

WYSIWYG is indeed a good tool for clarity, if you have issues with it fine but you could always just settle on a unit load out and use it good or bad without the need for painful WYSIWYG work arounds.

I would say, or request if someone wants to twink me with the most OP combo they can imagine, they better put the money in the models and the time in the making them. If its just a one off or two off game to proxy to see what they may want to use or pick up in the future that's all good but every game is a yikes, I'd rather not no matter how lovely their lips are looking today.

And, there are some who did expect all basic war gear to be seen and yes they were unpleasant to say the least.

 Fajita Fan wrote:

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
I think it's fine as long as you inform your opponent ahead of time

Depending on what/how many of you're proxying maybe. Also people shouldn't roll their eyes when asked multiple times over the course of a few hours what things are - this is especially true when people are spamming MSU units in multiple detachments to maximize CP.

Ive been stuck proxying 3 of the invictor warsuits because they have been sold out for quite a while now on the GW US site, when they are back in stock I plan to purchase them right away, but that may be a while. My normal gaming group has been pretty understanding about it.

Proxying because you can't get the model is a different kettle of fish.

I've generally taken one of two approaches to the issue:

1) Play completely wysiwyg. If I don't own it, I don't play it.
2) Proxy with absolute consistency. If I want a Tac squad carrying Chainsword/Stormbolter on the Sergeant and a Lascannon and I don't have that unit then every Tac squad in the army is armed that way. If my opponent has to remember something, at least it's only one thing.

WYSIWYG is vital to knowing how to commit your forces. The whole Mutable Genus concept threw that out the window to the point that nowadays you literally cannot tell what you're facing past faction. Subfaction? GONE. Wargear? Good luck. You should be able to look across the board, see a unit, and have no misgivings about its capabilities. The second you can't, the system fails. WYSIWYG is what keeps the system from failing.

BrianDavion wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:

What is all the "negative waves" with WYSIWYG?

It's what you get from the cheaters, the cheap, & the lazy.

that's hardly fair, if I don't magnatyize my minis and an edition changes and now the melta guns I sued are now simply a bad choice and I declare them all plasma guns, is that really a big deal?

Yes, it is.
When playing against me, please use what you've brought, not what you wish you had. If you're not capable of that then I'm fine not playing with you.

It seems to me like there's no real one-size-fits-all answer to this stuff?

It varies a lot by context.

If it's a casual game with a friend, and the point is having fun rather than competition, that's not as big a deal as doing it at an actual tournament.

If it's just a question of weapons loadout on a character model that's in the rules, but not the kit, and you didn't have the parts or skills for kitbashing it, that's less of a big deal than saying that an otherwise indistinguishable tactical marine is actually a sergeant with a chain axe and a plasma pistol and the indistinguishable tactical marine next to him is actually a gunner with a Lascanon.

If it's just a matter of specifying what your third-party or converted miniature actually is, that's not as big a deal as saying a hardback copy of The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde is actually a Baneblade.

If it's just one or two little things you want to make clear before the game, like saying your captain's plasma pistol is an inferno pistol and that all your reivers are actually wearing grav chutes but you dropped some of the little fins behind the couch, that's not as big a deal as half your dang army being proxies for something else.

It all depends, you know?

Going non-WYSIWYG is modelling for advantage.

Catulle wrote:
Going non-WYSIWYG is modelling for advantage.

Wouldn't it be not-modelling for advantage?

nataliereed1984 wrote:

Catulle wrote:
Going non-WYSIWYG is modelling for advantage.

Wouldn't it be not-modelling for advantage?

Touche!

saw on facebook figured post needed here to..

first off I will not origionally when playing I would heavily magnitize everything. a few neodynium magnets meant I could have nobz with a big choppa or power claw with just a arm swap. ditto heavy wepons for rokkits of big shootas. even my lootas and burnas for the first few sets were magnetized to full swap. you don't need to buy models to add all the bit in the box if you model well... that said...

WYSIWYG exists to somebody is not shooting a multimelta one turn, then a plasma cannon the next. It also exists to not confuse other players in tournaments. casual pickup and narrative games proxy away. tournaments.. your models best be correct, clearly labeled/market, or uniform. an example "every heavy weapon squad is a mortar for guard" ok cool no issue if it doesn't match models as no heavy weapon squad should be shooting anything but a mortar. "ok these 3 las cannons are las cannons but those 2 las cannons are mortars and those 2 las cannons are autocannons" nope... not ok.

I dont refuse games against Proxys or counts as, or whatever, but secretly I think it looks like gak.

Cant afford new models? Ok, I can understand it.

Trying to be a WAAC net list copy cat following the flavor of the month? Prolly never playing you again.

ccs wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:

What is all the "negative waves" with WYSIWYG?

It's what you get from the cheaters, the cheap, & the lazy.

And on the other hand the stick-up-ass twits who think things have to be done 'correctly' or they aren't fun.

As with most things the truth lies somewhere in between the extreme strawmen we construct to insult people we disagree with.

Ooh. Sounds like I struck a nerve here. Anyone want to take bets on wich category AnomanderRake is in?

I try to live somewhere between the extremes of most arguments; your hyperbolic description of anti-WYSIWYG people was so eloquent I didn't feel I needed to add to it.

Aash wrote:
WYSIWYG is about more than the game, its about the whole hobby. Building the models, painting them and playing the game are all aspects of the hobby, and WYSIWYG is an encouragement and a reason to pay attention to the modelling aspect of the hobby, in addition to the reasons given above: clarity, fairness, respect for the game and your opponent etc etc.

This.

ccs wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:

What is all the "negative waves" with WYSIWYG?

It's what you get from the cheaters, the cheap, & the lazy.

Or conversely people who insist on everything always being wysiwyg have lots of both money and free time and can't understand how anyone else doesn't.

I try and be as WYSIWYG as possible but also enioy conversions and proxy armies (going so far as to add 3D printed nameplates)

Having said that 40k has bloated to such a large scale conflict that skirmish level minutia is rather silly. I'd prefer the Apocalypse approach at this point.

Gadzilla666 wrote:
Or conversely people who insist on everything always being wysiwyg have lots of both money and free time and can't understand how anyone else doesn't.

I SAVE money by forcing myself to use WYSIWYG.
A pack of magnets might cost £2, and save me from buying another £20 box of models just to get the extra weapons.
The time, yes. It takes more time to magnetise. But, while filing down the lumps of sprue and mold lines, it is a bit more to drill and glue in a magnet. Again, it is a lot less time spent than doing another box of models.

I don't insist my opponent does, but I insist I do.

 Skinnereal wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:
Or conversely people who insist on everything always being wysiwyg have lots of both money and free time and can't understand how anyone else doesn't.

I SAVE money by forcing myself to use WYSIWYG.
A pack of magnets might cost £2, and save me from buying another £20 box of models just to get the extra weapons.
The time, yes. It takes more time to magnetise. But, while filing down the lumps of sprue and mold lines, it is a bit more to drill and glue in a magnet. Again, it is a lot less time spent than doing another box of models.

I don't insist my opponent does, but I insist I do.

Depending on the model you might even save time in the painting stage if you use magnets. Makes it so much easier and quicker painting some models when you dont have to work around annoying arms and weapons.

And it isnt only money you save by using magnets you also only have to paint some extra spare weapons instead of complete models if you want to change the load out. Huge time saver over all. You dont have to use magnets on every model but only on those you are quite sure you will want to use different load outs and its a hassle to buy and paint a second version of. Like sponsons on predators, weapons on elite units, characters and squad leaders. Can save a ton of time too. Not only on the tabletop when playing but also when building ypur army.

As a BA player I use magnets on most backpacks/jumppacks to make it easier to paint and if the rules changes I can just remove the JP, put on a normal backpack and put my unit in a transport. Im also a bit lazy so have only 15 or so jumppacks painted that I share between characters, Vanguard vets or death company depending on what list I run instead of painting 30 of them. Gonna paint the rest some day.

WYSIWYG is a good thing for 40K imho.

In friendly games I don't care much, it's all about throwing some dice and have fun.
In a tournament that asks for WYSIWYG (either complete or partial) I'm definitely more strict. Having to remember what's what in a single friendly game is manageable, doing it in a 3-4-5 games tournament while also having to remember tons of rules is a different thing.

I always play with WYSIWYG (thanks to magnets) and possibly fully painted models whenever I can. It adds a lot to the immersion and makes the game more fun and less confusing.

 Skinnereal wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:
Or conversely people who insist on everything always being wysiwyg have lots of both money and free time and can't understand how anyone else doesn't.

I SAVE money by forcing myself to use WYSIWYG.
A pack of magnets might cost £2, and save me from buying another £20 box of models just to get the extra weapons.
The time, yes. It takes more time to magnetise. But, while filing down the lumps of sprue and mold lines, it is a bit more to drill and glue in a magnet. Again, it is a lot less time spent than doing another box of models.

I don't insist my opponent does, but I insist I do.

That is my view as well. I keep my army wysiwyg but understand that sometimes my opponents don't have the models or modeling skills to keep their army 100% wysiwyg.

Of course I don't play tournaments. I can definitely understand why a tournament army should be wysiwyg.

ccs wrote:

 Castozor wrote:
I personally don't adhere to strict WYSIWYG but I only play garage hammer and it's not my fault GW deems it unnecessary to include all options in a kit. Having said that I do keep my proxies/stand ins simple so as to not burden my opponent, eg. all my Killa Kans have rokkits despite what they are modeled as. If I were to use a second unit of them I'd gave all of them rokkits too just so it would always be clear what they have. Because I do agree mix and matching between identical looking squads is just asking for errors later in the game and/or cheating.

So you're just lazy. I mean, there's enough rockets out there (Gw or from anything else) that you could easily arm your Kans.
You want cheap rockets? Take a stroll through a toy aisle in your local WalMart. Or take 5 minutes & scratch build yourself some.

Yes you got me sir, pure laziness. Nothing to do with the fact newer players like me don´t have 10 bitz boxes laying around or don´t want to spend more money on a hobby that´s already expensive just because GW can´t be arsed to put all the proper equipment in a kit. Not too mention that the Killa Kan models actually look great and me trying to tinker with them would just leave them ugly. But go ahead and not play me, I´m sure your toxic attitude carries over in the actual game too so it´s a win for both of us.

 Castozor wrote:

Yes you got me sir, pure laziness. Nothing to do with the fact newer players like me don´t have 10 bitz boxes laying around or don´t want to spend more money on a hobby that´s already expensive just because GW can´t be arsed to put all the proper equipment in a kit. Not too mention that the Killa Kan models actually look great and me trying to tinker with them would just leave them ugly. But go ahead and not play me, I´m sure your toxic attitude carries over in the actual game too so it´s a win for both of us.

I don't have 10 bitz boxes lying around right now, either. There's no way I can with the new CSM kits. It's something developed over time.

But you know what...I'm patient. I'm not going to suddenly lose all my games, because I don't have that extra plasma gun. Maybe next year i'll get another box, or source bits on ebay, or buy something else. The idea that we should have it all with no consequence is a bit disturbing - I'll take the new kits with fewer options over the old kits with gormy chainswords that STILL didn't have everything to equip them as I wished.

 Castozor wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Castozor wrote:
I personally don't adhere to strict WYSIWYG but I only play garage hammer and it's not my fault GW deems it unnecessary to include all options in a kit. Having said that I do keep my proxies/stand ins simple so as to not burden my opponent, eg. all my Killa Kans have rokkits despite what they are modeled as. If I were to use a second unit of them I'd gave all of them rokkits too just so it would always be clear what they have. Because I do agree mix and matching between identical looking squads is just asking for errors later in the game and/or cheating.

So you're just lazy. I mean, there's enough rockets out there (Gw or from anything else) that you could easily arm your Kans.
You want cheap rockets? Take a stroll through a toy aisle in your local WalMart. Or take 5 minutes & scratch build yourself some.

Yes you got me sir, pure laziness. Nothing to do with the fact newer players like me don´t have 10 bitz boxes laying around or don´t want to spend more money on a hobby that´s already expensive just because GW can´t be arsed to put all the proper equipment in a kit. Not too mention that the Killa Kan models actually look great and me trying to tinker with them would just leave them ugly. But go ahead and not play me, I´m sure your toxic attitude carries over in the actual game too so it´s a win for both of us.

Wait you're getting defensive about not being able to do WYSIWYG on Orks? The 40k army who steals and cobbles together everything not nailed down and removes everything actually nailed down? You can make rokkit launchers out of plastic tubing, they're called bazookas. Orks are the flat out easiest army in miniature wargaming to make WYSIWYG and their models have nothing but straight perpendicular sides to glue cheap magnet to.

While I don't know your situation in life I'm almost positive you can get bits from almost every player in your gaming group if you're nice, when I started Orks I'd get spare guns, ammo boxes, unused armor panels, flags, helmets, etc from other players so I could kitbash my boyz into bigger, badder models for them to shoot. The more junky, cobbled together, and ramshackle your Orks are the better they look! There's all kinds of pieces on random toys or hardware stores that would make appropriate Ork weapons, not just GW bits. If that's what holding you back you back then, no offense, you need to get more creative and get lootin'!!

Edit: A rather famous case in point:

It is about visual immersion. If in a film Arnold Schwarzenegger is holding what clearly looks like a grenade launcher and then it suddenly starts to spew fire like it was a flame thrower then that is immersion-breaking. It's the same thing. This is also why conversions and proxies that look different than the official weapon but still look like they could function similarly are more acceptable.

Also, you don't always need to field the most optimal thing. If a plasma plasma gun is better than a greanade launcher but you only have a greanade launchers then just field the greanade launcher! It's not a big deal.

 Crimson wrote:
It is about visual immersion. If in a film Arnold Schwarzenegger is holding what clearly looks like a grenade launcher and then it suddenly starts to spew fire like it was a flame thrower then that is immersion-breaking. It's the same thing. This is also why conversions and proxies that look different than the official weapon but still look like they could function similarly are more acceptable.

Also, you don't always need to field the most optimal thing. If a plasma plasma gun is better than a greanade launcher but you only have a greanade launchers then just field the greanade launcher! It's not a big deal.

Okay but even then you cut the circular edges off the grenade launcher's magazine, paint a blue or green glow like the rest of your plasma guns, and you've got a MK324 "Crimson pattern" plasmagun by making it yours. You know the flying Primaris guys in the previous box set? They come with the bolters but the plasmas are clearly superior so I cut off the shields, trimmed the magazines down, and painted glowing coils in there so they very clearly look like plasmas across the table. It's a 6 minute conversion that makes it clear to my opponent that these bolters are actually plasmas.

I didn't have enough heavy bolters and missiles for my 13th Company Long Fangs so I used plastic tubing to make very obvious bazookas and cut down vehicle heavy bolters to be hand held. I'd never field a Devastator box as-is and just tell my opponent what they're all supposed to be while making them remember who has meltas or lascannons when they start deepstriking near me.

Out of curiosity for the non WYSIWYG crowd: if an opponent is deep striking near one of your squads with proxied weapons that will cause serious harm do you remind them, "Hey just remember this command squad you're landing near has 4 plasma guns in it, they're all grenade launcher models but I told you two hours ago they're plasmas and just wanted to make sure you remember before you park your Terminators right next to them."

Are some people seriously telling me that they can tell apart tiny model guns from accross the table but color coded lips are too much? How is this even possible since lips have massively bigger surface area? Also I would ask ccs to be less impertient.

About immersion, there is nothing stopping someone from fluffing their grenade launcher to fire plasma grenades, and voila you have an immersive plasma gun proxy. You can do that to other weapon types too if you're creative.

No one is saying that conversion are a problem.

Even if said conversion isn't completely wysiwyg, eg. the model has an autocannon instead of a phosphor blaster? While that standard is nice it feels wholly arbitrary.

I think many people have already said it, but for the sake of beating a dead horse, it needs to be said again.

The "Don't be a jerk" social contract is the simplest and easiest way to avoid problems, and that includes WYSIWYG.

Don't bring an entirely similar looking, but vastly different, tailor list, and try to cheap out an advantage in a friendly game, by making 17 varying changes to your proxies. General rule is anything more than 3 broad changes (All blue SMs are not Black Templars), and/or no more than 1 specific change (Despite how I modeled this character, here is is actual loadout).

Also, Friendly games are just that, and I will gladly take lumps trying to help a new player out, by proxying or playing open, just to help them get the experience. That being said, if you are a 15 year vet and you are trying to play 12 proxies and this is that, and that is this, then I will kindly refrain from playing with you.

If you prefer a previous codex (like the changes from 5th-> 6/7th) do you say “I’m not using the new codex because that’s just GW wanting more money from me,” and continue to use the old list? Is using old force orgs a problem?

I ask this specifically because somewhere along the line my 3000pts of Deathwing were taken out of the DA codex as troops. I have Cyclones mounted on top of TH/SS models that can’t be taken like that anymore. I have a Belial conversion with lightning claws that can’t be taken anymore. I built two venerable dreads and actually bought two Aegis Defense Lines just for their dual autocannons to put on them and that can’t be taken anymore. With on new codex an entire army I paid hundreds of dollars for at my local GW then assembled and painted entirely WYSIWYG now sits in a box because it’s just a vanguard formation.

If I want a Venerable Dreadnought with a missile launcher, I need to buy an additional Dread box. FETH YOU GW.

 _SeeD_ wrote:
If I want a Venerable Dreadnought with a missile launcher, I need to buy an additional Dread box. FETH YOU GW.

Or you glue some extra bling on your regular dread and say it is venerable.

 Crimson wrote:

 _SeeD_ wrote:
If I want a Venerable Dreadnought with a missile launcher, I need to buy an additional Dread box. FETH YOU GW.

Or you glue some extra bling on your regular dread and say it is venerable.

It’s kind of what I did for my chaplain venerable dread, it’s one of the old pewter dreads, like look at this guy he’s so venerable he doesn’t even have a modern model.

 Crimson wrote:

 _SeeD_ wrote:
If I want a Venerable Dreadnought with a missile launcher, I need to buy an additional Dread box. FETH YOU GW.

Or you glue some extra bling on your regular dread and say it is venerable.

Seriously. If someone were to tell me their Dread was venerable because it had a spot of gold paint on it's hull, I'd be like, yeah that's right. There is no major difference between a venerable and non that I can see, other than a little bling. But even this is entirely optional. Just like the Landraider. A Venerable landraider has gold paint. Done.

Ppl are funny. All for proxy and counts as but still hate Power level games.

That was the whole point! You can just pick whatever unit options you want!

 _SeeD_ wrote:
If I want a Venerable Dreadnought with a missile launcher, I need to buy an additional Dread box. FETH YOU GW.

You buy the regular dreadnought with a missile launcher and call it venerable, the actual game effect of the venerable rule doesn't really have to be modeled in the spirit of the game. The game effect of different guns is far more important to be modeled. You can buy a Landraider and buy the Crusader weapon sprue separately but you can't buy a Crusader and get the lascannon turrets separately. This was kinda dumb on their part - if GW wanted to make more money they could just charge us more for a LR with both sets of sprues in the box.

I ran into this with Adeptus Titanicus - at release the weapon options for the titans weren't even available for purchase. Forget WYSIWYG - you couldn't even go WYS GW's lack of model support for AT wasn't them using WYSIWYG to get us to buy more models, it actually incentivized 3d printing which is exactly what I did. I began 3d printing my own laser blasters, quake cannons, megabolters, etc.

Seriously though, which codex army entries out there can't be modeled by what's in the box anymore? WYSIWYG as a business model is probably going more towards WYGIWYS (the same idea in reverse) as the box contents dictate the army list entries is it not?

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Ppl are funny. All for proxy and counts as but still hate Power level games.

That was the whole point! You can just pick whatever unit options you want!

PL was a neat idea but since they don’t update that when they do points PL games can be super unbalanced and unfun. I tried some games with PL, the problem we ran into is that we sometimes were basically playing with a 300 to 400 point difference so one side had a massive advantage.

On the one hand, it would be perfectly fine (mechanically) to be playing this game using colored blocks of wood or plastic with words or pictures on them to indicate what's what. Go out, buy a bucket of your favorite plastic blocks, and everyone's happy.

On the other hand, if you've gotten as far as choosing pieces of plastic or metal that are supposed to look like the unit you're using today, being inconsistent about it defeats the whole purpose. If you're going to say 'I know I assembled these models using missile launchers, but this missile launcher is a las cannon; that missile launcher is a flame thrower', it would have been less confusing to just leave the missile launcher off the model and put a sign there.

Disclaimer: What we're doing is generally considered a game, not some elaborate ritual involving dice to determine the course of a poorly animated stop motion film. I mean, most people don't even have all of the pose variants for their hero figures.

 Fajita Fan wrote:
If you prefer a previous codex (like the changes from 5th-& i; 6/7th) do you say “I’m not using the new codex because that’s just GW wanting more money from me,” and continue to use the old list? Is using old force orgs a problem?

I ask this specifically because somewhere along the line my 3000pts of Deathwing were taken out of the DA codex as troops. I have Cyclones mounted on top of TH/SS models that can’t be taken like that anymore. I have a Belial conversion with lightning claws that can’t be taken anymore. I built two venerable dreads and actually bought two Aegis Defense Lines just for their dual autocannons to put on them and that can’t be taken anymore. With on new codex an entire army I paid hundreds of dollars for at my local GW then assembled and painted entirely WYSIWYG now sits in a box because it’s just a vanguard formation.

Pretty sure this is just another social contract thing. If your opponent is fine with you using an old formation, then… it's fine. Whatever the most recent rules document GW put out is NOT the final arbiter of the "rules" of the game. You and your friends are.

Rules are fake! Topple the man! Smash the state! Do crimes!

 Crimson wrote:
It is about visual immersion. If in a film Arnold Schwarzenegger is holding what clearly looks like a grenade launcher and then it suddenly starts to spew fire like it was a flame thrower then that is immersion-breaking. It's the same thing. This is also why conversions and proxies that look different than the official weapon but still look like they could function similarly are more acceptable.

Also, you don't always need to field the most optimal thing. If a plasma plasma gun is better than a greanade launcher but you only have a greanade launchers then just field the greanade launcher! It's not a big deal.

Yes it IS a big deal because Grenade Launchers are super bad and you pay for them. It isn't a free upgrade. So basically you give the pass to GW for the inability to balance anything and say to your opponent "tough luck your squads aren't good but muh immersion", even though any immersion is gone the moment you actually play the game because IGOUGO is more unrealistic than a Plasma Gun looking like a Grenade Launcher.

That's dumb, sorry.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Castozor wrote:

Yes you got me sir, pure laziness. Nothing to do with the fact newer players like me don´t have 10 bitz boxes laying around or don´t want to spend more money on a hobby that´s already expensive just because GW can´t be arsed to put all the proper equipment in a kit. Not too mention that the Killa Kan models actually look great and me trying to tinker with them would just leave them ugly. But go ahead and not play me, I´m sure your toxic attitude carries over in the actual game too so it´s a win for both of us.

I don't have 10 bitz boxes lying around right now, either. There's no way I can with the new CSM kits. It's something developed over time.

But you know what...I'm patient. I'm not going to suddenly lose all my games, because I don't have that extra plasma gun. Maybe next year i'll get another box, or source bits on ebay, or buy something else. The idea that we should have it all with no consequence is a bit disturbing - I'll take the new kits with fewer options over the old kits with gormy chainswords that STILL didn't have everything to equip them as I wished.

And your attitude is why the Chaos Terminator box is the way it is.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

And your attitude is why the Chaos Terminator box is the way it is.

I'm pretty sure the engineering practicalities of how much you can fit on a sprue and the market conditions of how much the box can be expected to sell for are why the terminator box is the way it is, but hey…

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Yes it IS a big deal because Grenade Launchers are super bad and you pay for them. It isn't a free upgrade. So basically you give the pass to GW for the inability to balance anything and say to your opponent "tough luck your squads aren't good but muh immersion", even though any immersion is gone the moment you actually play the game because IGOUGO is more unrealistic than a Plasma Gun looking like a Grenade Launcher.

That's dumb, sorry.

Sorry, taking such a WAAC tryhard attitude in an unbalanced beer and pretzels game is dumb.

Would it be nice if grenade launchers were not crap? Sure. But I really don't have a pressing need to optimise every unit, so I take some anyway as I like the variety and how they look. And if this causes me to lose some games (unlikely but theoretically possible) it is not a big deal as my self worth is not tied to winning a game of toy soldiers.

Slayer keeps finding new ways to make every thread about IGOUGO. That is one mighty obsession.

TheAvengingKnee wrote:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Ppl are funny. All for proxy and counts as but still hate Power level games.

That was the whole point! You can just pick whatever unit options you want!

PL was a neat idea but since they don’t update that when they do points PL games can be super unbalanced and unfun. I tried some games with PL, the problem we ran into is that we sometimes were basically playing with a 300 to 400 point difference so one side had a massive advantage.

Be fair; as bad as GW is at balancing units sometimes you need a 300-400 point handicap to avoid one side having a massive advantage.

The Newman wrote:

TheAvengingKnee wrote:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Ppl are funny. All for proxy and counts as but still hate Power level games.

That was the whole point! You can just pick whatever unit options you want!

PL was a neat idea but since they don’t update that when they do points PL games can be super unbalanced and unfun. I tried some games with PL, the problem we ran into is that we sometimes were basically playing with a 300 to 400 point difference so one side had a massive advantage.

Be fair; as bad as GW is at balancing units sometimes you need a 300-400 point handicap to avoid one side having a massive advantage.

But in this case I would rather just run my guys wysiwyg and with points and give a point bonus to one side on purpose than leave it up to PL hopefully giving a point advantage in the correct way.

Like the castalan when it got its points bump went up 100 points, but it PL stayed the same,so what would have been the equivalent to a 2k v 2k match was now 2k vs 2.1k in the castalan’s favor.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


I don't have 10 bitz boxes lying around right now, either. There's no way I can with the new CSM kits. It's something developed over time.

But you know what...I'm patient. I'm not going to suddenly lose all my games, because I don't have that extra plasma gun. Maybe next year i'll get another box, or source bits on ebay, or buy something else. The idea that we should have it all with no consequence is a bit disturbing - I'll take the new kits with fewer options over the old kits with gormy chainswords that STILL didn't have everything to equip them as I wished.

Why should I not have it all? The rules say I can give them all rokkits, I buy an expensive box but hey, there's only one rokkit sprue. I'm not good at kitbashing and I personally prefer the immersion of having good looking models over scrapbuilt junk just to make them WYSIWYG. In this case I prefer to proxy especially since "all kans have rokkits" is not hard to remember for anyone. Now people saying "this flamer is a melta, and the flamer from this squad is a plasma" yes I can see how people would not want to play against that because it is needlessly confusing and probably leads to cheating.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

And your attitude is why the Chaos Terminator box is the way it is.

Is it?

Or is the community making a post-hoc rationalization, because they have now decided they like super cheap terminators better than previous versions?

GW designs the models before the rules. We all know this. No one sat down at GW and said, "hey chain axes are going to 1 point and it should be the 'default loadout' -- let's go change the sprue entirely".

Let's take a stroll down memory lane from the last CT box and see that this one actually has more in it :

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/325031.page

Personal Opinion Rant Warning:

I've never really understood players who worry overmuch about balance or realism in a game like 40k. It's a silly, over-the-top, maximalist, tongue-in-cheek, what-if-the-future-was-like-Iron-Maiden-album-covers, ultra violence game where even the generic newbie-friendly faction is comprised of 8-foot tall genetically engineered fascist theocrat supersoldiers in power armour who's side arms fire armour-piercing, exploding rounds.

It's the same as the endless arguments and tier lists in the Fighting Game community… it's impossible to maintain both balance and variety in a game. So long as there's differences between characters, weapons, units, playstyles, factions, etc, there will be some that are "better" than others- and definitely some that are situationally better.. If you want a truly balanced game, everyone would have to have the exact same list to draw on. It would have to be Horus Heresy for all eternity, but with no non-cosmetic differences between legions, no Primarchs or unique characters, no Solar Auxilia, no Mechanicum, no Custodes, no Sisters of Silence.

To me, 40k is inherently a friendly, more casual sort of game, with at least a little bit of narrative thinking woven into games. That's what it's best at being, what the whole mentality of it is "optimized" for, so to speak. As a game that's all about getting to choose from a wide variety of colourful, cool-looking models, in a somewhat silly and unrealistic and over-the-top setting with an "anything-goes" anachronistic quality to it, that has a ton of chance built into the rules, and that's rules are inherently structured around "telling a story" of a battle. It's when one tries to treat it as a precise, technical game of strategy that problems like stuff with WYSIWYG (both of people feeling they need a plasma gun instead of the grenade launcher their model is built with, and of people being extremely uptight about relatively minor things like saying a Canoness has an inferno pistol but it's just holstered in her boot or whatever), and problems with worrying about a mythical "balance" that has never been achieved in the entire history of the game and never will be.

Like, at that point, why aren't you just playing chess? Or diceless boardgames? Or CCGs? Or at least something like Adeptus Titanicus, where everyone has the same options?

Not that I'm saying that points values should be thrown out the window like the original Age of Sigmar rules or whatever, but just… that one should have a sense of perspective on it. That it's nice to have a benchmark by which you can say your armies are fairly COMPARABLE in terms of their strength, but… actually being evenly matched is just plain never gonna happen.

 Castozor wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


I don't have 10 bitz boxes lying around right now, either. There's no way I can with the new CSM kits. It's something developed over time.

But you know what...I'm patient. I'm not going to suddenly lose all my games, because I don't have that extra plasma gun. Maybe next year i'll get another box, or source bits on ebay, or buy something else. The idea that we should have it all with no consequence is a bit disturbing - I'll take the new kits with fewer options over the old kits with gormy chainswords that STILL didn't have everything to equip them as I wished.

Why should I not have it all? The rules say I can give them all rokkits, I buy an expensive box but hey, there's only one rokkit sprue. I'm not good at kitbashing and I personally prefer the immersion of having good looking models over scrapbuilt junk just to make them WYSIWYG. In this case I prefer to proxy especially since "all kans have rokkits" is not hard to remember for anyone. Now people saying "this flamer is a melta, and the flamer from this squad is a plasma" yes I can see how people would not want to play against that because it is needlessly confusing and probably leads to cheating.

If you were playing Eldar with lots of curves and needed green stuff to make wraithbone for conversions I’d kinda sympathize. But if you’re telling me that you can’t be bothered to cut some 5mm tubing - or at the very least cut apart a plastic mechanical pencil - to make bazooka tubes because you’re afraid of ruining the beautiful aesthetics of Ork Killa I’m going to giggle. Should they come with enough rokkits? Sure. But if you can handle cutting GW models off a sprue and assembling them with plastic glue I’m going to assure you that scratchbuilding your own launchers isn’t beyond your hobby skills. I chose to build an Ork army precisely because I got scratchbuild ramshackle pieces. Now I kinda miss my Ork army...

 Crimson wrote:
WYSIWYG enhances the visually immersive gaming experience. If you don't care about that, you can play with bottlecaps and coke cans instead of models.

Yep, it's this.

You may as well argue that "models exist to force people to buy models", but it would be equally daft as nobody's actually forcing anyone to do anything at all.

nataliereed1984 wrote:
Personal Opinion Rant Warning:

I've never really understood players who worry overmuch about balance or realism in a game like 40k. It's a silly, over-the-top, maximalist, tongue-in-cheek, what-if-the-future-was-like-Iron-Maiden-album-covers, ultra violence game where even the generic newbie-friendly faction is comprised of 8-foot tall genetically engineered fascist theocrat supersoldiers in power armour who's side arms fire armour-piercing, exploding rounds.

It's the same as the endless arguments and tier lists in the Fighting Game community… it's impossible to maintain both balance and variety in a game. So long as there's differences between characters, weapons, units, playstyles, factions, etc, there will be some that are "better" than others- and definitely some that are situationally better.. If you want a truly balanced game, everyone would have to have the exact same list to draw on. It would have to be Horus Heresy for all eternity, but with no non-cosmetic differences between legions, no Primarchs or unique characters, no Solar Auxilia, no Mechanicum, no Custodes, no Sisters of Silence.

To me, 40k is inherently a friendly, more casual sort of game, with at least a little bit of narrative thinking woven into games. That's what it's best at being, what the whole mentality of it is "optimized" for, so to speak. As a game that's all about getting to choose from a wide variety of colourful, cool-looking models, in a somewhat silly and unrealistic and over-the-top setting with an "anything-goes" anachronistic quality to it, that has a ton of chance built into the rules, and that's rules are inherently structured around "telling a story" of a battle. It's when one tries to treat it as a precise, technical game of strategy that problems like stuff with WYSIWYG (both of people feeling they need a plasma gun instead of the grenade launcher their model is built with, and of people being extremely uptight about relatively minor things like saying a Canoness has an inferno pistol but it's just holstered in her boot or whatever), and problems with worrying about a mythical "balance" that has never been achieved in the entire history of the game and never will be.

Like, at that point, why aren't you just playing chess? Or diceless boardgames? Or CCGs? Or at least something like Adeptus Titanicus, where everyone has the same options?

Not that I'm saying that points values should be thrown out the window like the original Age of Sigmar rules or whatever, but just… that one should have a sense of perspective on it. That it's nice to have a benchmark by which you can say your armies are fairly COMPARABLE in terms of their strength, but… actually being evenly matched is just plain never gonna happen.

You must really not enjoy playing 40k, because the majority of people play that way. WYSIWYG isn't "you can't have fun", it's please don't make the game harder for me than it already has to be. I have to memorize all of my units capabilities, stats, etc, and have a healthy understanding of yours as well, if I want to have a good time and not get crushed. I can't make split second decisions and come up with a coherent strategy for my side, if your side is a mashup of rules and "personal flair" that I can't make heads or tails of. Those Ultramarines with Bolters are Salamanders with Meltas because you say so. Those Rhinos are Executioners, and that Furby is Gullyman. STAAHP. It's already difficult to not waste time, now every turn I have to second guess myself because I can't remember what your stupid homebrewed force of misfit bits is this week.

It already takes about 2-3 hours to play a full 4-6 turn game with someone who has no clue how to play. Now factor that up to 11 because this week you have a different set of rules to play with from last week.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nazrak wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
WYSIWYG enhances the visually immersive gaming experience. If you don't care about that, you can play with bottlecaps and coke cans instead of models.

Yep, it's this.

You may as well argue that "models exist to force people to buy models", but it would be equally daft as nobody's actually forcing anyone to do anything at all.

THANK YOU. Seriously. People act all entitled because they spent money. Well I spent money as well, and I spent way more in time making my models the best I could, and by the rules. I expect reasonably the same from any experienced opponent.

If GW included four of each gun in a box of Devastators so that all four models in the squad could be equipped the same way then the cost of the box would go up. They’d probably love that, I’m still stunned they haven’t made one Landraider box to gouge every LR sold. Not all of their modeling decisions are designed around maximizing sales (just about, say, 94% of them ) but WYSIWYG is about improving the gameplay experience for everyone involved.

You guys can save an awful lot of money by buying Guardsmen and using them to count as Marines. Technically speaking their power armor is base equipment so you could say all of your Marines are out of their armor but they count as having it.

I can totally understand someone not being able to convert or scratchbuild an Eldar bright lance but not being able to convert missile launcher tubes for beautiful Killa Kan models (either through not being able to afford it or having the requisite hobby skills) reeks of being actively UNWILLING to follow WYSIWYG conventions, not being unable to. There’s a difference between being unable to get a spare, heavily detailed, one-off gun model and being unwilling to glue a tube to an intentionally crappy-looking robot so it’s clear they have rokkits.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

nataliereed1984 wrote:
Personal Opinion Rant Warning:

I've never really understood players who worry overmuch about balance or realism in a game like 40k. It's a silly, over-the-top, maximalist, tongue-in-cheek, what-if-the-future-was-like-Iron-Maiden-album-covers, ultra violence game where even the generic newbie-friendly faction is comprised of 8-foot tall genetically engineered fascist theocrat supersoldiers in power armour who's side arms fire armour-piercing, exploding rounds.

It's the same as the endless arguments and tier lists in the Fighting Game community… it's impossible to maintain both balance and variety in a game. So long as there's differences between characters, weapons, units, playstyles, factions, etc, there will be some that are "better" than others- and definitely some that are situationally better.. If you want a truly balanced game, everyone would have to have the exact same list to draw on. It would have to be Horus Heresy for all eternity, but with no non-cosmetic differences between legions, no Primarchs or unique characters, no Solar Auxilia, no Mechanicum, no Custodes, no Sisters of Silence.

To me, 40k is inherently a friendly, more casual sort of game, with at least a little bit of narrative thinking woven into games. That's what it's best at being, what the whole mentality of it is "optimized" for, so to speak. As a game that's all about getting to choose from a wide variety of colourful, cool-looking models, in a somewhat silly and unrealistic and over-the-top setting with an "anything-goes" anachronistic quality to it, that has a ton of chance built into the rules, and that's rules are inherently structured around "telling a story" of a battle. It's when one tries to treat it as a precise, technical game of strategy that problems like stuff with WYSIWYG (both of people feeling they need a plasma gun instead of the grenade launcher their model is built with, and of people being extremely uptight about relatively minor things like saying a Canoness has an inferno pistol but it's just holstered in her boot or whatever), and problems with worrying about a mythical "balance" that has never been achieved in the entire history of the game and never will be.

Like, at that point, why aren't you just playing chess? Or diceless boardgames? Or CCGs? Or at least something like Adeptus Titanicus, where everyone has the same options?

Not that I'm saying that points values should be thrown out the window like the original Age of Sigmar rules or whatever, but just… that one should have a sense of perspective on it. That it's nice to have a benchmark by which you can say your armies are fairly COMPARABLE in terms of their strength, but… actually being evenly matched is just plain never gonna happen.

You must really not enjoy playing 40k, because the majority of people play that way. WYSIWYG isn't "you can't have fun", it's please don't make the game harder for me than it already has to be. I have to memorize all of my units capabilities, stats, etc, and have a healthy understanding of yours as well, if I want to have a good time and not get crushed. I can't make split second decisions and come up with a coherent strategy for my side, if your side is a mashup of rules and "personal flair" that I can't make heads or tails of. Those Ultramarines with Bolters are Salamanders with Meltas because you say so. Those Rhinos are Executioners, and that Furby is Gullyman. STAAHP. It's already difficult to not waste time, now every turn I have to second guess myself because I can't remember what your stupid homebrewed force of misfit bits is this week.

It already takes about 2-3 hours to play a full 4-6 turn game with someone who has no clue how to play. Now factor that up to 11 because this week you have a different set of rules to play with from last week.

I wasn't making an anti-WYSISWYG or pro-proxy / anything-goes argument? I even explicitly said that people thinking they "need" the weapon they haven't modelled is itself a byproduct of overly competitive mentalities? I was just responding to the side-discussion about balance and expressing my confusion at people who spend excessive energy worrying about that.

I'm fully WYSIWYG on both my armies but sometimes play people who aren't. I've never experienced an opponent with so many proxies I can't remember what's what, but it's certainly nicer to play WYSIWYG so when you look at the models on the table what you see matches the rules your playing.

 Fajita Fan wrote:

 Castozor wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


I don't have 10 bitz boxes lying around right now, either. There's no way I can with the new CSM kits. It's something developed over time.

But you know what...I'm patient. I'm not going to suddenly lose all my games, because I don't have that extra plasma gun. Maybe next year i'll get another box, or source bits on ebay, or buy something else. The idea that we should have it all with no consequence is a bit disturbing - I'll take the new kits with fewer options over the old kits with gormy chainswords that STILL didn't have everything to equip them as I wished.

Why should I not have it all? The rules say I can give them all rokkits, I buy an expensive box but hey, there's only one rokkit sprue. I'm not good at kitbashing and I personally prefer the immersion of having good looking models over scrapbuilt junk just to make them WYSIWYG. In this case I prefer to proxy especially since "all kans have rokkits" is not hard to remember for anyone. Now people saying "this flamer is a melta, and the flamer from this squad is a plasma" yes I can see how people would not want to play against that because it is needlessly confusing and probably leads to cheating.

If you were playing Eldar with lots of curves and needed green stuff to make wraithbone for conversions I’d kinda sympathize. But if you’re telling me that you can’t be bothered to cut some 5mm tubing - or at the very least cut apart a plastic mechanical pencil - to make bazooka tubes because you’re afraid of ruining the beautiful aesthetics of Ork Killa I’m going to giggle. Should they come with enough rokkits? Sure. But if you can handle cutting GW models off a sprue and assembling them with plastic glue I’m going to assure you that scratchbuilding your own launchers isn’t beyond your hobby skills. I chose to build an Ork army precisely because I got scratchbuild ramshackle pieces. Now I kinda miss my Ork army...

"Blue Stuff" can be a little tricky, but I've resorted to it in the past for casting bits.

I can understand not wanting to kitbash with random junk. When I put together the 3 5-man TAC squads for my battalion detachment I wanted them WYSIWYG with loadouts that you couldn't build even with 2 complete TAC squad boxes. The solution I came up with was to buy some individual weapons from ebay and then sell the other half of the 2nd TAC squad box that I didn't use. So in the end, I got the 15 marines with the loadouts I wanted without kitbashing and without breaking the bank.

 Nazrak wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
WYSIWYG enhances the visually immersive gaming experience. If you don't care about that, you can play with bottlecaps and coke cans instead of models.

Yep, it's this.

You may as well argue that "models exist to force people to buy models", but it would be equally daft as nobody's actually forcing anyone to do anything at all.

I was going to respond that generally...40K exists to make you buy extra models. Everything GW does has an aim of pushing more plastic. It's a luxury hobby based on enticing consumers to part with substantial amounts of money.

Unpopular opinion: WYSIWYG is a tool for elitists to look down on people with less money, less time, less painting talent, less resources in general. It forces adherence to an arbitrary, unnecessary standard, so privileged individuals can whinge about immersion and realism. Play with bottle caps and sticks for all I care, as long as it's fun.

 Octopoid wrote:
Unpopular opinion: WYSIWYG is a tool for elitists to look down on people with less money, less time, less painting talent, less resources in general. It forces adherence to an arbitrary, unnecessary standard, so privileged individuals can whinge about immersion and realism. Play with bottle caps and sticks for all I care, as long as it's fun.

I am indeed a horrible elitist who insists to play the game with models instead of bottlecaps and thus supports GW's nefarious secret agenda to make money by selling models to people.

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Yes it IS a big deal because Grenade Launchers are super bad and you pay for them. It isn't a free upgrade. So basically you give the pass to GW for the inability to balance anything and say to your opponent "tough luck your squads aren't good but muh immersion", even though any immersion is gone the moment you actually play the game because IGOUGO is more unrealistic than a Plasma Gun looking like a Grenade Launcher.

That's dumb, sorry.

Sorry, taking such a WAAC tryhard attitude in an unbalanced beer and pretzels game is dumb.

Would it be nice if grenade launchers were not crap? Sure. But I really don't have a pressing need to optimise every unit, so I take some anyway as I like the variety and how they look. And if this causes me to lose some games (unlikely but theoretically possible) it is not a big deal as my self worth is not tied to winning a game of toy soldiers.

Now we have the CAAC attitude creeping in. "Sorry GW made it so you built your models wrong so they can't do anything, but you shouldn't care because toy soldiers".

Do you honesty hear yourself? This is the kind of crap people defend when all of this bad balancing happens. We're fething paying for rules, almost as much as we are for the damn models. If you want suggestions on how to do stuff, there's plenty of PDFs you can find online ready to rock. You're defending what is, for all intents and purposes, non-professionalism for game design. Because toy soldiers.


Removed - BrookM

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Now we have the CAAC attitude creeping in. "Sorry GW made it so you built your models wrong so they can't do anything, but you shouldn't care because toy soldiers".

This is very simple. If you want plasmaguns, buy plasmaguns. Or spend effort to convert them. If you want to have them, that's your choice, no one is forcing you to take plasmaguns. And this has nothing to do with the quality of the rules.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

And your attitude is why the Chaos Terminator box is the way it is.

Is it?

Or is the community making a post-hoc rationalization, because they have now decided they like super cheap terminators better than previous versions?

GW designs the models before the rules. We all know this. No one sat down at GW and said, "hey chain axes are going to 1 point and it should be the 'default loadout' -- let's go change the sprue entirely".

Let's take a stroll down memory lane from the last CT box and see that this one actually has more in it :

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/325031.page

Said box was also made at a time when all Power Axes, Swords, Mauls, and Spears acted exactly the same: generic power weapons.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Now we have the CAAC attitude creeping in. "Sorry GW made it so you built your models wrong so they can't do anything, but you shouldn't care because toy soldiers".

This is very simple. If you want plasmaguns, buy plasmaguns. Or spend effort to convert them. If you want to have them, that's your choice, no one is forcing you to take plasmaguns. And this has nothing to do with the quality of the rules.

It does become related to rules quality though. Scions carrying Melta Guns are literally the best example of this. From 6-7, Melta Guns made sense, and the options weren't exactly clearly superior over another (outside Grenade Launchers being bad of course). In 8th, it is one of the single worst weapons you can buy for a Scion. It simply doesn't mesh with base deployment and becomes too expensive to make work for the job they used to do, which other weapons are doing instead. Essentially GW is saying "too bad buy more models" and you buy right into it like a good Loyal customer they LOVED to talk about under Kirby.

 Fajita Fan wrote:
If GW included four of each gun in a box of Devastators so that all four models in the squad could be equipped the same way then the cost of the box would go up. They’d probably love that, I’m still stunned they haven’t made one Landraider box to gouge every LR sold. Not all of their modeling decisions are designed around maximizing sales (just about, say, 94% of them ) but WYSIWYG is about improving the gameplay experience for everyone involved.

You guys can save an awful lot of money by buying Guardsmen and using them to count as Marines. Technically speaking their power armor is base equipment so you could say all of your Marines are out of their armor but they count as having it.

I can totally understand someone not being able to convert or scratchbuild an Eldar bright lance but not being able to convert missile launcher tubes for beautiful Killa Kan models (either through not being able to afford it or having the requisite hobby skills) reeks of being actively UNWILLING to follow WYSIWYG conventions, not being unable to. There’s a difference between being unable to get a spare, heavily detailed, one-off gun model and being unwilling to glue a tube to an intentionally crappy-looking robot so it’s clear they have rokkits.

Yes man I'll just mutilate my models because people like you think it fits the aesthetic hue hue hue. If remembering "all kans have rokkits" is too hard for you maybe you should play a different game. Your point about guardsman is a huge strawman since they have neither the correct size nor bases compared to marines. I do not expect people to accept proxies that are nowhere close to the original model. But accepting all models of X are equipped with Y is not hard. But yes blame laziness on my part and not the mega-million corporation to inept to include all the relevant options in the box.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

It does become related to rules quality though. Scions carrying Melta Guns are literally the best example of this. From 6-7, Melta Guns made sense, and the options weren't exactly clearly superior over another (outside Grenade Launchers being bad of course). In 8th, it is one of the single worst weapons you can buy for a Scion. It simply doesn't mesh with base deployment and becomes too expensive to make work for the job they used to do, which other weapons are doing instead. Essentially GW is saying "too bad buy more models" and you buy right into it like a good Loyal customer they LOVED to talk about under Kirby.

Balanced rules would be nice. But that's not gonna happen. Stop chasing the meta and do not build all your squads identically to conform what happens to be the currently accidentally OP option at the moment. Build squads with varied equipment, and as rules fluctuate sometimes some of them will be better and sometimes others. And all of them will be perfectly usable.

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

It does become related to rules quality though. Scions carrying Melta Guns are literally the best example of this. From 6-7, Melta Guns made sense, and the options weren't exactly clearly superior over another (outside Grenade Launchers being bad of course). In 8th, it is one of the single worst weapons you can buy for a Scion. It simply doesn't mesh with base deployment and becomes too expensive to make work for the job they used to do, which other weapons are doing instead. Essentially GW is saying "too bad buy more models" and you buy right into it like a good Loyal customer they LOVED to talk about under Kirby.

Balanced rules would be nice. But that's not gonna happen. Stop chasing the meta and do not build all your squads identically to conform what happens to be the currently accidentally OP option at the moment. Build squads with varied equipment, and as rules fluctuate sometimes some of them will be better and sometimes others. And all of them will be perfectly usable.

If somebody only ever purchased Scions for their Guard to deliver Melta because that was their job, then too bad?

No that's not how it works. You don't get to say that's okay because it really isn't. Balanced rules won't happen so who cares? I'm betting you haven't sent GW an email ONCE about certain rules being non functional and maybe even believe GW actually listens to playtesters LOL

If you are playing outside of a GW environment, ala a store, most places will let you use any 3rd party bits. I can go online right now and buy 20 plasma rifle bits that look great on my guardsmen. For under 20$.

The only excuse for the argument that WYSIWYG is elitest, is that the person saying that is over-entitled and likely shouldn't be in the hobby.

I make less than 30k a year, and I still have enough after bills and a kid, to buy a box of models a month. After 4 years, I have about 3 armies. It's not hard if you don't suck with money.

Over entitled for expecting GW to just ship boxes with all the proper parts? You white knights are amusing, this hobby is expensive enough as it is. Expecting me to buy extra 3rd party bits on top of that is ridiculous.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

If somebody only ever purchased Scions for their Guard to deliver Melta because that was their job, then too bad?

They can still do that, there just might be more optimal choices. If being optimal is what you care about the most, then you need to buy more stuff. It is always so with the meta-chasing. It is not limited to gear choices, it affects whole units. And my choce is to not do that. I buy models which I want to build and paint, and then sometimes they get bad rules and sometimes they get better rules. It would be nice if all units and options were always balanced, but I've played this game for a long time, it has never happened, and it will never happen. Like it or not, it is simply a fact.

No that's not how it works. You don't get to say that's okay because it really isn't. Balanced rules won't happen so who cares?

What's the point of raging about it? Does it make you happy? Do you think it changes anything?

I'm betting you haven't sent GW an email ONCE about certain rules being non functional and maybe even believe GW actually listens to playtesters LOL

I have send them emails numerous times, and whilst effectiveness of that is questionable, it is indubitably much better method to affect the quality of the rules than annoying your opponents by proxying meltaguns as plasmaguns would be. As for playtesters, it would probably improve things if half of the playtesters were not heouseruling the game beyond recognition instead of playing using the rules they were supposed to be testing.

I really am under no illusions that the game is perfect, far from it. I just do not have such expectations for it like you seem to have. It is not a finely balanced competitive game, never has and never will be. It is what it is, take it or leave it.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
It's not hard if you don't suck with money.

Typical elitist lack of respect for those of us who suck with money.

 Castozor wrote:
Over entitled for expecting GW to just ship boxes with all the proper parts?

It would be nice. If you think this not being the case is a big enough of a problem, then don't buy the kit.

Expecting me to buy extra 3rd party bits on top of that is ridiculous.

Then don't. And then you don't have plasmaguns. That's fine. Most of my Guard units don't have them*, they're doing OK.

(*Not because I don't have the bits. I have plenty, but plasma gun is supposed to be a rare weapon in the fluff, so I don't want to have a lot of them in my Guard force.)

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
While I could focus on all the bad things that wysiwyg creates I will instead talk about how pointless it is.

A game where your opponent's units' armament has a distinctive impact on how I play may own- and this is "pointless". Oh, boy- we're in for a real treat.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
It really isn't hard to remember what each unit is armed with even if the model isn't completely accurate

Found the guy that never played Deathwatch.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
as most people don't model every single piece of weargear on their model, like grenades and sometimes even swords are often left behind

If all of them have a sword or grenade by default, then that's not really anything to worry about.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
and relics and such are usually not modelled

Why would you model a relic?

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
and even if you forget you can just ask your opponent.

Oppenent forgot. Opponent is a WAAC player. What now?

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
So really the only question remaining is that why do so many people defend this rule? Certainly from GW's perspective selling people extra models so that their armies comply with this rule makes sense, but why do so many non GW affiliated people defend this rule?

Because I play an army with more than one weapon option, and every single guy in a squad can have a completely different weapon loadout (Deathwatch).

 Octopoid wrote:
Unpopular opinion: WYSIWYG is a tool for elitists to look down on people with less money, less time, less painting talent, less resources in general. It forces adherence to an arbitrary, unnecessary standard, so privileged individuals can whinge about immersion and realism. Play with bottle caps and sticks for all I care, as long as it's fun.

A page back or so there were like 3 different guys were piling on someone who just plays garage hammer and uses proxies.

It's obvious this has always been about snobbery rather than any good sportsmanship or cultivation of the hobby.

 Octopoid wrote:
Unpopular opinion: WYSIWYG is a tool for elitists to look down on people with less money, less time, less painting talent, less resources in general. It forces adherence to an arbitrary, unnecessary standard, so privileged individuals can whinge about immersion and realism. Play with bottle caps and sticks for all I care, as long as it's fun.

Even more unpopular opinion: Anyone who uses the word 'privileged' as a default explanation for someone who owns more Warhammer Toys, should never be invited to a table with employed adults.


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Dumb Smart Guy wrote:
It's obvious this has always been about snobbery rather than any good sportsmanship or cultivation of the hobby.

Sorry, I worked hard to get my army to accurately reflect their (main) weapons. I did that for my own enjoyment, and so my opponent could see what I am using. I have an army that can, quite literally, arm every member of the squad with a completely different weapon.

This cost me quite a bit of time and money, but I enjoyed collecting and building them- so it wasn't a burden. However, I do expect someone to at least mostly have WYSIWYG at the table so that I can play the game. I shouldn't have to make a note on every single squad. One or two proxies is fine, but at the point where your army appears to be "I just put whatever together but I get to decide what it is on the table", then you're not respecting your opponent.

Call it snobbery if you like, but I have every right to refuse a game with someone like that. I'm not asking too much, I don't ask it out of brand new players, but recognizing my opponent's weapons system (and not having to ask every turn, and hoping he's honest) shouldn't be a thing.

I'm pro WYSIWYG. At some point, playing with counts as or "they're almost what the models show" is saying that you don't care enough about the game to model your army properly. That's fine, man, you do you. It's your hobby. But I feel okay feeling elitist about it, you know?

 Castozor wrote:

 Fajita Fan wrote:

Yes man I'll just mutilate my models because people like you think it fits the aesthetic hue hue hue. If remembering "all kans have rokkits" is too hard for you maybe you should play a different game. Your point about guardsman is a huge strawman since they have neither the correct size nor bases compared to marines. I do not expect people to accept proxies that are nowhere close to the original model. But accepting all models of X are equipped with Y is not hard. But yes blame laziness on my part and not the mega-million corporation to inept to include all the relevant options in the box.

LOL @ “mutilate”
Now I’m really curious if we can get a pic of these Killa Kans? Those models were designed before GW shifted to not allowing war gear not included in the box. There’s an assumption and tradition that Ork players convert quite a bit of stuff. The original looted wagon rules said to just go buy another army’s tank.

The WYSIWYG standard has been around for a long time, even when conversions for models to be used in stores or events only had to be 50% GW bits. Calling converting missile launchers “mutilating” just means you don’t want your models to be represented accurately and that’s certainly an option for you.

 Polonius wrote:
I'm pro WYSIWYG. At some point, playing with counts as or "they're almost what the models show" is saying that you don't care enough about the game to model your army properly. That's fine, man, you do you. It's your hobby. But I feel okay feeling elitist about it, you know?

I don't think this is a problem at all. You invested a certain amount into your army and the game. And you expect something similar to that when you play. You are 100% free to play or not play against someone for any reason you like, and that's your own prerogative. I never could fathom why people see this as a major issue.

No one is entitled to play against anyone else, just because they bought some models.

Somebody start a non-WYSIWYG, full-on proxies allowed, etc.. tournament.

If it catches on, you'll be proven right.

Dumb Smart Guy wrote:

 Octopoid wrote:
Unpopular opinion: WYSIWYG is a tool for elitists to look down on people with less money, less time, less painting talent, less resources in general. It forces adherence to an arbitrary, unnecessary standard, so privileged individuals can whinge about immersion and realism. Play with bottle caps and sticks for all I care, as long as it's fun.

A page back or so there were like 3 different guys were piling on someone who just plays garage hammer and uses proxies.

It's obvious this has always been about snobbery rather than any good sportsmanship or cultivation of the hobby.

If you’re playing Proxyhammer in your basement with your friends by all means enjoy the game for what it is. Showing up at a game store or event with a half cobbled together army meant to proxy the Netlist of the Month doesn’t make others snobs or elitists for not liking that. I’m converting as much 30k stuff as I can from plastics to avoid FW prices but everything will be made clear and look like what it’s supposed to look like. If the time and pride I spend doing that counts as snobbery then I can live with that. If I can’t afford or convert a Sicaran to the proper dimensions I’m not just dropping a spare Landraider on a table in a game with strangers.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

nataliereed1984 wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
It's not hard if you don't suck with money.

Typical elitist lack of respect for those of us who suck with money.

If you are looking to get better, let me tell you, a degree from Trump university will have you buying pallets of Minis in NO TIME. Just give me your credit card number and I'll sign you up today.

SWEET! How do you do DMs on this thing… oh to heck with it, I'll just post it here in the thread… just gimme a sec to get my wallet…



On a serious note, though: I disagree with the really really hardline stances on WYSIWYG… I think a little bit of proxying, within reason, like if it's just one or two models in your army, and with stuff like "you can't see her pistol because it's under her cloak", is fine, but… hoo boy… an ork player, of all things, saying rokkits on his killa kans are so super duper ultra important he absolutely cannot go without them, but ALSO aren't important enough to bother with converting, ordering bits, ordering third party bits, or buying an extra kit, is just absolutely BAFFLING to me. I just bought a whole extra box of wracks just so I could model the coven detachment's' venom to look like wracks are flying it.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Yes it IS a big deal because Grenade Launchers are super bad and you pay for them. It isn't a free upgrade. So basically you give the pass to GW for the inability to balance anything and say to your opponent "tough luck your squads aren't good but muh immersion", even though any immersion is gone the moment you actually play the game because IGOUGO is more unrealistic than a Plasma Gun looking like a Grenade Launcher.

That's dumb, sorry.

Sorry, taking such a WAAC tryhard attitude in an unbalanced beer and pretzels game is dumb.

Would it be nice if grenade launchers were not crap? Sure. But I really don't have a pressing need to optimise every unit, so I take some anyway as I like the variety and how they look. And if this causes me to lose some games (unlikely but theoretically possible) it is not a big deal as my self worth is not tied to winning a game of toy soldiers.

Now we have the CAAC attitude creeping in. "Sorry GW made it so you built your models wrong so they can't do anything, but you shouldn't care because toy soldiers".

Do you honesty hear yourself? This is the kind of crap people defend when all of this bad balancing happens. We're fething paying for rules, almost as much as we are for the damn models. If you want suggestions on how to do stuff, there's plenty of PDFs you can find online ready to rock. You're defending what is, for all intents and purposes, non-professionalism for game design. Because toy soldiers.


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 JohnnyHell wrote:
Slayer keeps finding new ways to make every thread about IGOUGO. That is one mighty obsession.

Sorry, you can't claim there is a problem with immersion when you blindly accept a system that is basically not immersive in the first place. It's just hypocrisy from the CAAC and white knights in the thread.

Some options are good. Some options are bad. Some options that were good become bad, some options that were bad become good.

Welcome to EVERY GAME that gets updated EVER MADE. If you're that mad about grenade launchers being bad, let me tell you about a little game called Hearthstone. Your head will explode!

No competitive player worth their salt expects anything less than to wholesale replace AT LEAST 75% of everything that's in their current list every year or so. Space marine players should expect to completely redo their army every 3 months.

And that's if you don't just straight up swap factions.

It's the same as with every competitive game ever. You want to play at the high levels? Than you gotta pay. You want better than you got right now, you gotta pay. If you get this mad about needing to update your gak, then don't update it. It's not like that's why you're losing games anyway.

Does it suck that there are imbalanced rules and useless options? Yes, obviously. I would LOVE for flamers to not be totally worthless accross the board. But there's useless crap in EVERY game. CCGs call it 'pack-filler'.

"Okay, this Primaris Captain is supposed to have a power sword- just to even out our points, but I didn't model him with one"

"I can't find one of the guys that's supposed to have a plasma cannon like the other guys in this Devastator Squad, so I'm just gonna drop in this dude with a multi-melta as a proxy for now"

"This Leman Russ doesn't have sponson guns, so just ignore those"

Stuff like that is fine. Things happen. But don't ask people to just accept that random things in your army are differently armed. It makes you a pain in the ass to play against, and you can say what you want about me- but it's easier for me to not play against that and find a game with someone else.

On a serious note, though: I disagree with the really really hardline stances on WYSIWYG… I think a little bit of proxying, within reason, like if it's just one or two models in your army, and with stuff like "you can't see her pistol because it's under her cloak", is fine, but… hoo boy… an ork player, of all things, saying rokkits on his killa kans are so super duper ultra important he absolutely cannot go without them, but ALSO aren't important enough to bother with converting, ordering bits, ordering third party bits, or buying an extra kit, is just absolutely BAFFLING to me. I just bought a whole extra box of wracks just so I could model the coven detachment's' venom to look like wracks are flying it.

Can we all take a time out for one second and have a laugh at the idea of relying on anything in the Ork army list doing anything meaningful in the shooting phase?

 Fajita Fan wrote:

On a serious note, though: I disagree with the really really hardline stances on WYSIWYG… I think a little bit of proxying, within reason, like if it's just one or two models in your army, and with stuff like "you can't see her pistol because it's under her cloak", is fine, but… hoo boy… an ork player, of all things, saying rokkits on his killa kans are so super duper ultra important he absolutely cannot go without them, but ALSO aren't important enough to bother with converting, ordering bits, ordering third party bits, or buying an extra kit, is just absolutely BAFFLING to me. I just bought a whole extra box of wracks just so I could model the coven detachment's' venom to look like wracks are flying it.

Can we all take a time out for one second and have a laugh at the idea of relying on anything in the Ork army list doing anything meaningful in the shooting phase?

Yes. Yes we may.

I'm generally for wysiwyg, but I've been known on occasion to run my kustom shoota big meks and big shoota kans as kustom megablasters. I just lazily explain to my opponent they are trying out some new 'plasma rounds'.

Oh, and before legends i ran my old buggies as biker mobs.

Shame on me!

 Fajita Fan wrote:

LOL @ “mutilate”
Now I’m really curious if we can get a pic of these Killa Kans? Those models were designed before GW shifted to not allowing war gear not included in the box. There’s an assumption and tradition that Ork players convert quite a bit of stuff. The original looted wagon rules said to just go buy another army’s tank.

The WYSIWYG standard has been around for a long time, even when conversions for models to be used in stores or events only had to be 50% GW bits. Calling converting missile launchers “mutilating” just means you don’t want your models to be represented accurately and that’s certainly an option for you.

I could take a pic but they are just killa kans assembled out of the box. The issue I have here with people like you is that you'd rather see a badly kitbashed model that's properly equipped than just accepting that a much better looking model with the proxied non-proper load out out is somehow more immersive. And going by your "orks are allowed to kitbash" were's my rokkits on Trukks and Battlewagons? Where's my Boss on bike? Oh right GW killed them because kit bashing is haram now for some reason. And I call it mutilating because I'm very bad at kitbashing, my reluctance to properly model them has nothing to do with laziness but rather my lacking modeling skills

nataliereed1984 wrote:

 Fajita Fan wrote:

On a serious note, though: I disagree with the really really hardline stances on WYSIWYG… I think a little bit of proxying, within reason, like if it's just one or two models in your army, and with stuff like "you can't see her pistol because it's under her cloak", is fine, but… hoo boy… an ork player, of all things, saying rokkits on his killa kans are so super duper ultra important he absolutely cannot go without them, but ALSO aren't important enough to bother with converting, ordering bits, ordering third party bits, or buying an extra kit, is just absolutely BAFFLING to me. I just bought a whole extra box of wracks just so I could model the coven detachment's' venom to look like wracks are flying it.

Can we all take a time out for one second and have a laugh at the idea of relying on anything in the Ork army list doing anything meaningful in the shooting phase?

Yes. Yes we may.

nareik wrote:I'm generally for wysiwyg, but I've been known on occasion to run my kustom shoota big meks and big shoota kans as kustom megablasters. I just lazily explain to my opponent they are trying out some new 'plasma rounds'.

Oh, and before legends i ran my old buggies as biker mobs.

Shame on me!

The Ork shooting phase is like a scratch off lotto ticket at the gas station. You know you won’t win...but...maybe...

Heck we should probably be encouraging all Ork players to spend points on their shooty models so they’re spending points on proppa choppy bits.

Buy a dread. It has plenty of weapon options that fit kans, deffo a rokkit launcher or two. Loads of viable builds for dredds even without the launchers.

I'm always gonna support Lootas, though. Yes, you need at least a dozen or so to spam enough dakka to get anything done, but dang it, DEATHSKULLS IS DA BEST ORKZ.


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 Castozor wrote:

 Fajita Fan wrote:

LOL @ “mutilate”
Now I’m really curious if we can get a pic of these Killa Kans? Those models were designed before GW shifted to not allowing war gear not included in the box. There’s an assumption and tradition that Ork players convert quite a bit of stuff. The original looted wagon rules said to just go buy another army’s tank.

The WYSIWYG standard has been around for a long time, even when conversions for models to be used in stores or events only had to be 50% GW bits. Calling converting missile launchers “mutilating” just means you don’t want your models to be represented accurately and that’s certainly an option for you.

I could take a pic but they are just killa kans assembled out of the box. The issue I have here with people like you is that you'd rather see a badly kitbashed model that's properly equipped than just accepting that a much better looking model with the proxied non-proper load out out is somehow more immersive. And going by your "orks are allowed to kitbash" were's my rokkits on Trukks and Battlewagons? Where's my Boss on bike? Oh right GW killed them because kit bashing is haram now for some reason. And I call it mutilating because I'm very bad at kitbashing, my reluctance to properly model them has nothing to do with laziness but rather my lacking modeling skills

There is no such thing as a badly kitbashed ork.

Are you sure you've chosen the right army for you? That you wouldn't be happier with, say, Ultramarines or Red Scorpions?

 Castozor wrote:

I could take a pic but they are just killa kans assembled out of the box. The issue I have here with people like you is that you'd rather see a badly kitbashed model that's properly equipped than just accepting that a much better looking model with the proxied non-proper load out out is somehow more immersive. And going by your "orks are allowed to kitbash" were's my rokkits on Trukks and Battlewagons? Where's my Boss on bike? Oh right GW killed them because kit bashing is haram now for some reason. And I call it mutilating because I'm very bad at kitbashing, my reluctance to properly model them has nothing to do with laziness but rather my lacking modeling skills

The Internet doesn’t convey tone or subtlety. I can promise you as one former Mek Boss to a future one whatever effort or materials you put into converting your Ork models for WYSIWYG would only be appreciated and you’ll find your skills will grow. No other Ork player will look down on you for some kustomizin’.

And if you’re ever in the DC area PM me and you can have my FW biker warboss. Not a joke.

 Fajita Fan wrote:

The Internet doesn’t convey tone or subtlety. I can promise you as one former Mek Boss to a future one whatever effort or materials you put into converting your Ork models for WYSIWYG would only be appreciated and you’ll find your skills will grow. No other Ork player will look down on you for some kustomizin’.

And if you’re ever in the DC area PM me and you can have my FW biker warboss. Not a joke.

You having said that I do apologize for my tone. But no i'm bad at converting and very cross the box doesn't have all the proper options. I do see your point though, but I'm agin not very comfortable with kitbashing and I'd rather not ruin my expensive models.

Edit @Natalie: yes I'm sure I picked the right army but I'm in this hobby for the game. As mentioned upthread I'd totally play with beer caps and lego models if I could get away with it. Orks for me are fluff wise just so great and have so many ways to build an army I fell in love with them, I want to improve my kitbashing eventually but my skills just aren't up to snuff just yet.

Teasing aside, I know kitbashing is scary given how much money the models cost, but

1) You are literally playing THE most kitbash/conversion-friendly faction in 40k. The only guys who come close are, like, Death Guard. Even your *mistakes* will be in character and look fun.

2) Remember the first time you painted a model? And how terrifying it was, given the risk of ruining all the lovely details of the sculpt and making this somewhat-cool gray thing look like colourful piece of crap? But you only ever got better and gained the skills by doing it, right? Kitbashing and converting is EXACTLY like that. You just gotta take the plunge and start learning. And it's SO rewarding when your army has little special unique details and quirks that are yours and yours alone.

Here's a thing that's happening in a different game system:

Corvus Belli doesn't actually produce all of the unit and weapon combinations that their game specifies. So they have an official policy that if a model-combination doesn't exist, you're allowed to proxy. In order to make that proxying feasible, there are various people who have taken to 3D-printing little signs to indicate things likes 'Heavy machine gun', or 'Profile X'.

Granted, it's an actual skirmish game, so normally only ten to twenty models on each side.

This post brought to you by original Chaos Demons codex and the questions "Which banner does that unit have, again?" and "Which unit has the Banner of ______?"

nataliereed1984 wrote:
Teasing aside, I know kitbashing is scary given how much money the models cost, but

1) You are literally playing THE most kitbash/conversion-friendly faction in 40k. The only guys who come close are, like, Death Guard. Even your *mistakes* will be in character and look fun.

2) Remember the first time you painted a model? And how terrifying it was, given the risk of ruining all the lovely details of the sculpt and making this somewhat-cool gray thing look like colourful piece of crap? But you only ever got better and gained the skills by doing it, right? Kitbashing and converting is EXACTLY like that. You just gotta take the plunge and start learning. And it's SO rewarding when your army has little special unique details and quirks that are yours and yours alone.

THIS THIS THIS

No Mek boss fired up his first konversion on the first try (or likely his 50th either) so get kuttin’, get lootin’, and get scrapin’!

Behold the last remaining models of a once mighty WAAAGGHH,14 shoota boyz, 2 kommandoz, and 3 nobz converted from fantasy Black Orcs because they were the biggest orc models available in 2006 or 2007. The shootaz all had suppresaz (tubes welded to their guns that don’t suppress any actual sound, tubes that looked like scopes, and goggles that don’t amplify any light at night whatsoever. But they were so impressed by Cadian Kasrkin and their fancy gear they just had to form an elite group of SEALZ for proppa infiltrating. I’d love to think that if they hadn’t strapped red flashlights to their faces they might have actually been better than BS2.

 Fajita Fan wrote:


Behold the last remaining models of a once mighty WAAAGGHH,14 shoota boyz, 2 kommandoz, and 3 nobz converted from fantasy Black Orcs because they were the biggest orc models available in 2006 or 2007. The shootaz all had suppresaz (tubes welded to their guns that don’t suppress any actual sound, tubes that looked like scopes, and goggles that don’t amplify any light at night whatsoever. But they were so impressed by Cadian Kasrkin and their fancy gear they just had to form an elite group of SEALZ for proppa infiltrating. I’d love to think that if they hadn’t strapped red flashlights to their faces they might have actually been better than BS2.

LOL I love it! Pure orky approach.And, given that they're orks, it probably worked, too!

For me WYSIWYG is almost entirely about being courteous to my opponent. I don't want them to have to remember a whole bunch of random stuff in the middle of a game and I don't want to potentially spoil their immersion if that's something that's important to them. There's leeway though, of course. Things like "all my Death Company have bolters instead of bolt pistols" is fine, as is "all melta guns are plasma guns". But if it's "this Leman Russ doesn't have sponsons, but this one does, but not the heavy bolters that are modelled, and these flamers are actually plasma guns, but these flamers are flamers..." etc then no, that's not OK.

You can complain about options being bad and changes between editions, and yes, that's annoying and I'm sure we all wish GW would do a better job of balancing all the options but the reality of any evolving game system is change will happen and if you're interested in chasing the meta you'll need to update things. That's just how the game is. The best way around it is to collect and play what you like rather than trying to constantly chase the new meta hotness. That way, when changes happen you'll likely already have the models you need already in your collection.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 Octopoid wrote:
Unpopular opinion: WYSIWYG is a tool for elitists to look down on people with less money, less time, less painting talent, less resources in general. It forces adherence to an arbitrary, unnecessary standard, so privileged individuals can whinge about immersion and realism. Play with bottle caps and sticks for all I care, as long as it's fun.

Even more unpopular opinion: Anyone who uses the word 'privileged' as a default explanation for someone who owns more Warhammer Toys, should never be invited to a table with employed adults.

Just because you're not willing to acknowledge the there's privlige in being able to work, doesn't mean it's not there.

I'm an adult, I manage my money to the fething penny on a weekly basis. I never assume I even have enough for a trip to the dollar store. I'm disabled and can't work. In the past, when I was in my early twenties, was living with family and had cash, I started my Necrons. In the last two years since I've started playing again, all I've managed to save was ~$26 to spend on proxy Sentry Pylons from TTCombat.

I'm doing the best I can to slowly build my collection and play the game. People who are able to work enough that spending $40 a month on 40k isn't a worry ARE privileged. We all have some form of privilege. Willfully dismissing it is the problem, ackowlwding that you're benefiting from some form of privlige isn't bad.

Acknowledge that some people are in a worse position than you, through no fault of thier own, and they deserve to play this game as much as you do.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Said box was also made at a time when all Power Axes, Swords, Mauls, and Spears acted exactly the same: generic power weapons.

Sure, and it still didn't carry a fully loaded sprue for whatever loadout you wanted.

What about the player that wants all LC? Or 3 chainfists? Or all combi-flamers?

Should you, or anyone else, be forced to pay more for a product just so they can be satisfied? What makes people think their preferences take precedence over everyone else?

It doesn't matter if these loads outs are not optimal. The kits are not made exclusively for hyper cutting edge competitive players.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Said box was also made at a time when all Power Axes, Swords, Mauls, and Spears acted exactly the same: generic power weapons.

Sure, and it still didn't carry a fully loaded sprue for whatever loadout you wanted.

What about the player that wants all LC? Or 3 chainfists? Or all combi-flamers?

Should you, or anyone else, be forced to pay more for a product just so they can be satisfied? What makes people think their preferences take precedence over everyone else?

It doesn't matter if these loads outs are not optimal. The kits are not made exclusively for hyper cutting edge competitive players.

I would still complain about that (and I have in the past if you recall), but at least the melee weapons available are less offensive than the current ones.

It doesn't even matter if it's more competitive to take all LCs or not. The current organization of the sprues is disgusting. There's a whole fething section dedicated to trophy racks for crying out loud. I find it hard to believe the current way is anyone's preference, because said preference doesn't actually make a good kit whatsoever.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

I would still complain about that (and I have in the past if you recall), but at least the melee weapons available are less offensive than the current ones.

It doesn't even matter if it's more competitive to take all LCs or not. The current organization of the sprues is disgusting. There's a whole fething section dedicated to trophy racks for crying out loud. I find it hard to believe the current way is anyone's preference, because said preference doesn't actually make a good kit whatsoever.

Well, I mean trophy racks are kind of their thing...

It isn't anyone's preference, because it straddles the line on everything, essentially. Does the kit need 9 heads? Or a heavy flamer? Probably not, but I'd wager there's a subsection of people that would get pissed at removing head options.

To be honest I believe this is one of those internet discussions that only exist here because people can throw extreme examples at each other that in reality just don't happen outside anecdotical situations that one hobbyst will encounter maybe twice or trice in all of his or her life.

Nearly nobody plays with an army full of proxies unless hes a kid/very new player and nearly nobody will insult and be an ass about somebody for proxing one model before buying it or having two tactical squads with plasma guns instead of meltaguns in a 2k point ramy.

One thing that people need to realise, is that playing tactical marines as devastators with bolters is proxying, as devastators have different legs. The usual reply to this is to say that this obviously is fine, but why is it obviously fine to run tacticals as devastators, and not fine to run guardsmen as space marines, if one for example wants to represent a regiment of elite guard. This to me seems like a matter of taste, and forcing your taste on others is not nice.

Also, if keeping track of units like deathwatch is difficult, then an easy solution is to color code each squad and give each individual member a number on their shoulderpad so that they can be identified.

I've played many games with and many games without WYSIWYG and for me it comes down to being a memory aid. I don't like to proxy more than a couple of models because I forget myself what I have. It's worse when it's your opponent's army. It's worse when there are many proxies. When I played as a kid, both armies were entitle made up of proxies. I do not want to return to that.

Honestly, it could be a matched play or competitive play rule at this point to better differentiate between open and matched. But as others have already pointed out, GW doesn't mention WYSIWYG at all in the current rules. So I don't see how you can call it a way to force people to buy more models.

 Galas wrote:
To be honest I believe this is one of those internet discussions that only exist here because people can throw extreme examples at each other that in reality just don't happen outside anecdotical situations that one hobbyst will encounter maybe twice or trice in all of his or her life.

Nearly nobody plays with an army full of proxies unless hes a kid/very new player and nearly nobody will insult and be an ass about somebody for proxing one model before buying it or having two tactical squads with plasma guns instead of meltaguns in a 2k point ramy.

Quite true...

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
One thing that people need to realise, is that playing tactical marines as devastators with bolters is proxying, as devastators have different legs. The usual reply to this is to say that this obviously is fine, but why is it obviously fine to run tacticals as devastators, and not fine to run guardsmen as space marines, if one for example wants to represent a regiment of elite guard. This to me seems like a matter of taste, and forcing your taste on others is not nice.

Also, if keeping track of units like deathwatch is difficult, then an easy solution is to color code each squad and give each individual member a number on their shoulderpad so that they can be identified.

Speaking of absurd examples that do not happen in real life...

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
One thing that people need to realise, is that playing tactical marines as devastators with bolters is proxying, as devastators have different legs. The usual reply to this is to say that this obviously is fine, but why is it obviously fine to run tacticals as devastators, and not fine to run guardsmen as space marines, if one for example wants to represent a regiment of elite guard. This to me seems like a matter of taste, and forcing your taste on others is not nice.

Also, if keeping track of units like deathwatch is difficult, then an easy solution is to color code each squad and give each individual member a number on their shoulderpad so that they can be identified.

The reason it's obviously fine is because it's easy to keep track of what the unit is, what the unit can do, and it doesn't f*** up the sense of immersion!

C'mon! This isn't a philosophical debate! There's no "Ship of Theseus" data card! It's a silly fun game with which to play out cool sci-fi battles with your friends!

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

I would still complain about that (and I have in the past if you recall), but at least the melee weapons available are less offensive than the current ones.

It doesn't even matter if it's more competitive to take all LCs or not. The current organization of the sprues is disgusting. There's a whole fething section dedicated to trophy racks for crying out loud. I find it hard to believe the current way is anyone's preference, because said preference doesn't actually make a good kit whatsoever.

Well, I mean trophy racks are kind of their thing...

It isn't anyone's preference, because it straddles the line on everything, essentially. Does the kit need 9 heads? Or a heavy flamer? Probably not, but I'd wager there's a subsection of people that would get pissed at removing head options.

You don't need 9 heads to make the default loadout for the damn unit is the difference.

Printed army list and make sure to mark special loadouts. A bit of poster tack, a tooth pick and a, small flag identifying the unit works as you can list.

It does nothing to me as I have a good memory and can remember it all. But if you can magnetize or acquire the guys don't proxy for 6 months with no progress.

That said I get those of us who are frustrated by GWs insistence on making models that can legitimately make a loadout my personal example is the Tau commander who for some reason has one airbursting frag launcher and cyclic ion blaster. So I have to buy 3-4 to make one commander. It's annoying.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

You don't need 9 heads to make the default loadout for the damn unit is the difference.

Whilst that kit's design is far from ideal, your dismissal of the purely aesthetic options is really missing what's actually the point of this hobby to many. Yearlier you even complained about trophy racks on Chaos Terminators! That is one of their signature features! Building aesthetically evocative models and being able to customise their appearance is pretty much the main draw of Warhammer and that should never be sacrificed for any other goal.

But if they molded more fancy, tiny details into the panels they’d have a little more room for more one or two more weapon options, something I could get behind. Maybe I’m getting old but good Lord some of the tiny pieces you clip off sprues these days are just aggravating. Have you seen the gems on Custodes’ shields or the shield generators on AT scale Reavers? I’ve been lucky not to lose any.

 captain collius wrote:

That said I get those of us who are frustrated by GWs insistence on making models that can legitimately make a loadout my personal example is the Tau commander who for some reason has one airbursting frag launcher and cyclic ion blaster. So I have to buy 3-4 to make one commander. It's annoying.

And GW gets upset when 3rd party companies make bits to fill that demand. Unfortunately instead of producing a superior product, they basically start writing rules to exactly match what's available in their kits which is both uncreative and more restrictive.

This is really sappy, sentimental and dumb, but I hope this thread at least results in Castozor trying his hand at trying out a few simple kitbashes and exploring that side of the hobby. It's really fun! Especially with orks!

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

You don't need 9 heads to make the default loadout for the damn unit is the difference.

Whilst that kit's design is far from ideal, your dismissal of the purely aesthetic options is really missing what's actually the point of this hobby to many. Yearlier you even complained about trophy racks on Chaos Terminators! That is one of their signature features! Building aesthetically evocative models and being able to customise their appearance is pretty much the main draw of Warhammer and that should never be sacrificed for any other goal.

The trophy racks aren't necessary for gameplay. THAT is the definition of something that can go on a upgrade sprue like they've been doing for the Marine Chapters. So no it IS a valid complaint.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
One thing that people need to realise, is that playing tactical marines as devastators with bolters is proxying, as devastators have different legs. The usual reply to this is to say that this obviously is fine, but why is it obviously fine to run tacticals as devastators, and not fine to run guardsmen as space marines, if one for example wants to represent a regiment of elite guard. This to me seems like a matter of taste, and forcing your taste on others is not nice.

Also, if keeping track of units like deathwatch is difficult, then an easy solution is to color code each squad and give each individual member a number on their shoulderpad so that they can be identified.

Essentially, you're dismissing several of the fundamental reasons that people play wargames, or 40K. You don't have those same interests or value those same things, so you're somehow offended by other people having different standards or practices to you.

There is a very common "Game at all costs" mentality which is something many gamers do not bother with. If I value the aesthetic, lore, and appearance of an army - that's my prerogative. That is what is primarily important to me, and important that I provide such to my opponent as a courtesy. I'm an adult with limited free time, and I've been in the wargaming hobby (not the GW "hobby", there is no such thing) for 25+ years. If I'm going to spend time wargaming, I'd like to play at a level that I enjoy. I don't "need" to game. I don't need shortcuts. I don't need to meta-game to win, etc. I want an attractive enjoyable game with painted armies - accurately equipped, with a cool scenario on a beautiful table.

40K as a ruleset is pretty poor...so I'm not interested in just playing it for the rules. I don't need to proxy stuff. I own two fully painted armies (both bought relatively cheap and painted quickly and efficiently). These armies include numerous sub-par weapons and equipment. I'm not so desperate to win that I have to proxy better options for a game. I can just cope with the sub-par weapons. That's fine. If I'm that anxious about it, I can modify or re-build some models.

We're on the internet where anything beyond a race to the bottom is always viewed as elitist or "wrong", even if it's something that doesn't impact the other party. If you want to game and you have half-assembled, or heavily proxied models, unpainted, or want to play on a table covered with cans and styrofoam, I'll pass. That's not some slight on you. That is not a game environment I'm interested in bothering with. I did that when I was 12-15. I'm past that stage now. I'm not desperately trying to put a game together at all costs.

I'm not going to apologize because certain things appeal to me and other things don't.

There is no opinion I will have that is ever going to stop you from playing 40K. That's on you.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

You don't need 9 heads to make the default loadout for the damn unit is the difference.

Whilst that kit's design is far from ideal, your dismissal of the purely aesthetic options is really missing what's actually the point of this hobby to many. Yearlier you even complained about trophy racks on Chaos Terminators! That is one of their signature features! Building aesthetically evocative models and being able to customise their appearance is pretty much the main draw of Warhammer and that should never be sacrificed for any other goal.

The trophy racks aren't necessary for gameplay. THAT is the definition of something that can go on a upgrade sprue like they've been doing for the Marine Chapters. So no it IS a valid complaint.

Are you... um... seriously trying to make the argument that anything that doesn't impact gameplay should not be in a kit at the expense of MOAR WEA[PONS?

Cos...uh... I can think of a FEW problems with that reasoning...

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

The trophy racks aren't necessary for gameplay. THAT is the definition of something that can go on a upgrade sprue like they've been doing for the Marine Chapters. So no it IS a valid complaint.

Those extra weapons are not required for the gameplay either, you can build a perfectly legal squad with the contents of the box. And if you don't care about aesthetics, you can play using those bottlecaps and save your money.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

You don't need 9 heads to make the default loadout for the damn unit is the difference.

Whilst that kit's design is far from ideal, your dismissal of the purely aesthetic options is really missing what's actually the point of this hobby to many. Yearlier you even complained about trophy racks on Chaos Terminators! That is one of their signature features! Building aesthetically evocative models and being able to customise their appearance is pretty much the main draw of Warhammer and that should never be sacrificed for any other goal.

The trophy racks aren't necessary for gameplay. THAT is the definition of something that can go on a upgrade sprue like they've been doing for the Marine Chapters. So no it IS a valid complaint.

Shoulder pads aren't necessary for gameplay. Arms that aren't holding weapons aren't necessary for gameplay. Heads aren't necessary for gameplay.

nataliereed1984 wrote:This is really sappy, sentimental and dumb, but I hope this thread at least results in Castozor trying his hand at trying out a few simple kitbashes and exploring that side of the hobby. It's really fun! Especially with orks!

Yes, he should make a WIP thread.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
The trophy racks aren't necessary for gameplay. THAT is the definition of something that can go on a upgrade sprue like they've been doing for the Marine Chapters. So no it IS a valid complaint.

Actually pretty fair complaint. There probably wouldn't be 3rd party companies making trophy racks but not giving us enough weapons certainly provided a market for 3rd party or 3d printed guns. See: Adeptus Titanicus.

What you see is what you get is a cancerous gatekeeping rule. Very few people have such an encyclopedic knowledge of the game as to know what every weapon in every army should look like, meaning knowing what something is equipped with is a silly notion anyway.
As to modeling individual guns, if I take the care to build, paint and base a model, I have no desire to rip off its gun arm and replace it because the latest FAQ decided to change the optimal load out, nor do I want to run a sub-par build. The only thing which requires me to chose to do one of those things is what you see is what you get. Sure, you can magnetize, but that is also time consuming, doesn't work in all modeling situations and ignores the fact that easy-to-build models (like the Shadow Spear CSM) exist and GW doesn't provide a full kit to build the optimal squad in a box (nor do they sell reasonably priced bits).
Honestly, it's a guideline that keeps a lot of people out of tourneys because they don't want the annoyance of butchering their models to conform to it.

I generally have everything WYSIWYG down to the paint job. Probably the biggest exception is my Reivers which I purposely left off the grav chutes. I don't like the look of grav chutes and on a long enough timeline at least couple would get broken. I am not that fussed about it since I don't use them (the grav chutes, I always run Reivers when playing Primaris) in Kill Team, and by the time they hit the table rules they are used for (deep strike) has occurred. I just tend to describe the Reviers, as I am reaching to get ready to place them on the table, "screaming out of the sky on burning grav chutes consumed on entry, the remaining molten stubs are quickly ejected upon landing as the Reivers proceed on foot" and the game continues.

As for my opponent, I would rather they have a painted army than WYSIWYG. That tends to not happen that much already. So I am not that ruffled by a few count as/proxies. I will admit just like faction paint, I would prefer them to use what they have over what they think is best that they need to proxy. I still have a bunch of Chaos Termincide terminators with combi-melta and powerfists that I use as modeled and they are always Black Legion and have not yet been fielded with Abbaddon. So absolute best list is something I usually don't have anyways. And I my opponent thinks somehow my list is way stronger I am always willing to take things out. But if they feel the need to proxy I usually don't mind.

nataliereed1984 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

You don't need 9 heads to make the default loadout for the damn unit is the difference.

Whilst that kit's design is far from ideal, your dismissal of the purely aesthetic options is really missing what's actually the point of this hobby to many. Yearlier you even complained about trophy racks on Chaos Terminators! That is one of their signature features! Building aesthetically evocative models and being able to customise their appearance is pretty much the main draw of Warhammer and that should never be sacrificed for any other goal.

The trophy racks aren't necessary for gameplay. THAT is the definition of something that can go on a upgrade sprue like they've been doing for the Marine Chapters. So no it IS a valid complaint.

Are you... um... seriously trying to make the argument that anything that doesn't impact gameplay should not be in a kit at the expense of MOAR WEA[PONS?

Cos...uh... I can think of a FEW problems with that reasoning...

You think there's a problem that it's reasonable to point out the kit can't create the default loadout of the unit itself? Any decorative bitz don't need to take up space on the main sprue, and I'm sorry you don't like hearing that, but I'm pretty sure you won't miss that loincloth in your Tactical Marine box in exchange for a Grav Cannon or Multi-Melta. Ya know, stuff you can actually use!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

The trophy racks aren't necessary for gameplay. THAT is the definition of something that can go on a upgrade sprue like they've been doing for the Marine Chapters. So no it IS a valid complaint.

Those extra weapons are not required for the gameplay either, you can build a perfectly legal squad with the contents of the box. And if you don't care about aesthetics, you can play using those bottlecaps and save your money.

Way to miss the argument. I'm betting you didn't even bother so check how much space your precious trophy racks take up too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

The trophy racks aren't necessary for gameplay. THAT is the definition of something that can go on a upgrade sprue like they've been doing for the Marine Chapters. So no it IS a valid complaint.

Those extra weapons are not required for the gameplay either, you can build a perfectly legal squad with the contents of the box. And if you don't care about aesthetics, you can play using those bottlecaps and save your money.

They are if you want to upgrade the unit with them. You don't purchase trophy racks as an upgrade.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Fajita Fan wrote:

nataliereed1984 wrote:This is really sappy, sentimental and dumb, but I hope this thread at least results in Castozor trying his hand at trying out a few simple kitbashes and exploring that side of the hobby. It's really fun! Especially with orks!

Yes, he should make a WIP thread.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
The trophy racks aren't necessary for gameplay. THAT is the definition of something that can go on a upgrade sprue like they've been doing for the Marine Chapters. So no it IS a valid complaint.

Actually pretty fair complaint. There probably wouldn't be 3rd party companies making trophy racks but not giving us enough weapons certainly provided a market for 3rd party or 3d printed guns. See: Adeptus Titanicus.

If you've noticed, the most popular bitz sellers sell weapons and weapon proxies. Wonder why that is?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 cole1114 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

You don't need 9 heads to make the default loadout for the damn unit is the difference.

Whilst that kit's design is far from ideal, your dismissal of the purely aesthetic options is really missing what's actually the point of this hobby to many. Yearlier you even complained about trophy racks on Chaos Terminators! That is one of their signature features! Building aesthetically evocative models and being able to customise their appearance is pretty much the main draw of Warhammer and that should never be sacrificed for any other goal.

The trophy racks aren't necessary for gameplay. THAT is the definition of something that can go on a upgrade sprue like they've been doing for the Marine Chapters. So no it IS a valid complaint.

Shoulder pads aren't necessary for gameplay. Arms that aren't holding weapons aren't necessary for gameplay. Heads aren't necessary for gameplay.

Technically they aren't (unless TLOS comes back for aiming in which case heads are necessary), but if you have any more stupid arguments I'd love to hear them.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

nataliereed1984 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

You don't need 9 heads to make the default loadout for the damn unit is the difference.

Whilst that kit's design is far from ideal, your dismissal of the purely aesthetic options is really missing what's actually the point of this hobby to many. Yearlier you even complained about trophy racks on Chaos Terminators! That is one of their signature features! Building aesthetically evocative models and being able to customise their appearance is pretty much the main draw of Warhammer and that should never be sacrificed for any other goal.

The trophy racks aren't necessary for gameplay. THAT is the definition of something that can go on a upgrade sprue like they've been doing for the Marine Chapters. So no it IS a valid complaint.

Are you... um... seriously trying to make the argument that anything that doesn't impact gameplay should not be in a kit at the expense of MOAR WEA[PONS?

Cos...uh... I can think of a FEW problems with that reasoning...

You think there's a problem that it's reasonable to point out the kit can't create the default loadout of the unit itself? Any decorative bitz don't need to take up space on the main sprue, and I'm sorry you don't like hearing that, but I'm pretty sure you won't miss that loincloth in your Tactical Marine box in exchange for a Grav Cannon or Multi-Melta. Ya know, stuff you can actually use!

I would have absolutely ZERO interest in playing a tabletop miniatures game that consisted of nothing but stiff, bare bones models stripped down to the most basic appearance just to make room for extra weapon options.

There's reasons we all enjoy 40k in lieu of other games, and they mostly have nothing whatsoever to do with strategy, gameplay, or weapon loadouts.

It's also really really REALLY worth remembering that a huge portion of hobbyists don't actually play the game and just enjoy collecting, building, and painting the models, and that that is a perfectly legitimate way to enjoy it. Being all "get rid of the trophy racks and loincloths for extra grav guns we can ACTUALLY USE" is just wanting those fans to be badly screwed over just so that you aren't mildly inconvenienced.

 Castozor wrote:

 Fajita Fan wrote:

The Internet doesn’t convey tone or subtlety. I can promise you as one former Mek Boss to a future one whatever effort or materials you put into converting your Ork models for WYSIWYG would only be appreciated and you’ll find your skills will grow. No other Ork player will look down on you for some kustomizin’.

And if you’re ever in the DC area PM me and you can have my FW biker warboss. Not a joke.

You having said that I do apologize for my tone. But no i'm bad at converting and very cross the box doesn't have all the proper options. I do see your point though, but I'm agin not very comfortable with kitbashing and I'd rather not ruin my expensive models.

Edit @Natalie: yes I'm sure I picked the right army but I'm in this hobby for the game. As mentioned upthread I'd totally play with beer caps and lego models if I could get away with it. Orks for me are fluff wise just so great and have so many ways to build an army I fell in love with them, I want to improve my kitbashing eventually but my skills just aren't up to snuff just yet.

The dread big shootas are designed to fit kans with 0 conversion work.

If you want an out the box solution try a mixed weapons group of kans. Or trading bits with other collectors.

nataliereed1984 wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
It's not hard if you don't suck with money.

Typical elitist lack of respect for those of us who suck with money.

I think you may be the best of us...

 solkan wrote:
Corvus Belli doesn't actually produce all of the unit and weapon combinations that their game specifies. So they have an official policy that if a model-combination doesn't exist, you're allowed to proxy. In order to make that proxying feasible, there are various people who have taken to 3D-printing little signs to indicate things likes 'Heavy machine gun', or 'Profile X'.

Granted, it's an actual skirmish game, so normally only ten to twenty models on each side.

Infinity also only has about an average of 3 weapon options per unit. Not to mention, a lot of the weapons look very similar. You know the difference between a HMG and a Molotok? Me neither. Also, Nomads' Red Fury/Spitfire looks more like a shotgun to me.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Way to miss the argument. I'm betting you didn't even bother so check how much space your precious trophy racks take up too.

They take the amount of space that is needed for them to be included, and as they're an essential part of Chaos Terminator aesthetic, not having them there is not an option. It is you who is missing the point. And not only of this discussion, but the whole hobby.

They are if you want to upgrade the unit with them. You don't purchase trophy racks as an upgrade.

Indeed. So trophy racks are always needed whereas the extra weapons are only needed if you make a choice to take them. And no one forces you to make such a choice.

drakerocket wrote:
What you see is what you get is a cancerous gatekeeping rule. Very few people have such an encyclopedic knowledge of the game as to know what every weapon in every army should look like, meaning knowing what something is equipped with is a silly notion anyway.
As to modeling individual guns, if I take the care to build, paint and base a model, I have no desire to rip off its gun arm and replace it because the latest FAQ decided to change the optimal load out, nor do I want to run a sub-par build. The only thing which requires me to chose to do one of those things is what you see is what you get. Sure, you can magnetize, but that is also time consuming, doesn't work in all modeling situations and ignores the fact that easy-to-build models (like the Shadow Spear CSM) exist and GW doesn't provide a full kit to build the optimal squad in a box (nor do they sell reasonably priced bits).
Honestly, it's a guideline that keeps a lot of people out of tourneys because they don't want the annoyance of butchering their models to conform to it.

A few pages back I asked a question of people who proxy: if you tell me a unit is armed with plasmas and two hours later I deep strike right next to models that look like they’re armed with bolters or grenade launchers are you going to remind me they’re actually supposed to be plasmas? Is it my responsibility to keep track of what’s representing what in your meta-optimized-list-of-the-week?

 Fajita Fan wrote:

drakerocket wrote:
What you see is what you get is a cancerous gatekeeping rule. Very few people have such an encyclopedic knowledge of the game as to know what every weapon in every army should look like, meaning knowing what something is equipped with is a silly notion anyway.
As to modeling individual guns, if I take the care to build, paint and base a model, I have no desire to rip off its gun arm and replace it because the latest FAQ decided to change the optimal load out, nor do I want to run a sub-par build. The only thing which requires me to chose to do one of those things is what you see is what you get. Sure, you can magnetize, but that is also time consuming, doesn't work in all modeling situations and ignores the fact that easy-to-build models (like the Shadow Spear CSM) exist and GW doesn't provide a full kit to build the optimal squad in a box (nor do they sell reasonably priced bits).
Honestly, it's a guideline that keeps a lot of people out of tourneys because they don't want the annoyance of butchering their models to conform to it.

A few pages back I asked a question of people who proxy: if you tell me a unit is armed with plasmas and two hours later I deep strike right next to models that look like they’re armed with bolters or grenade launchers are you going to remind me they’re actually supposed to be plasmas? Is it my responsibility to keep track of what’s representing what in your meta-optimized-list-of-the-week?

And that is pretty reasonable to expect them to remind you since they are proxying. I have no problem with the occasional proxy for things like MIA models and when someone wants to test a unit out before they buy it to see if it fits well in their army. I expect in a friendly game that people will remind each other about rules to avoid gotcha scenarios, had a friend who was going to deep strike right next to my infantry and I reminded him that if they were within 12 I did have a stratagem that would let me shoot his models.

TBH in the discussion about chaos terminator thropy racks, theres something called optimization and space economization.

By an in-industry standard, that kit is horrible. Having a "Minor" (I know thropy racks are an iconic part of chaos terminators , just like the horned helmets, but in the grand scheme of things they are a minimal part of the miniature, not the WHOLE) characteristic ocuppy so much space in detriment of everything else, is at a technical level, a very bad job.

They should have added an extra sprue in the kit but they take the cheap and lazy way to do the kit. And thats why is one of the "worst" kits, if not the worst, of that release. Not on aesthetic, but at a pure technical level. Is one of the worst terminator kits GW has ever done.

Only Deathsroud terminators are worse, seconded by Blood Angel Terminators. In the other hand you have kits like Grey Knight Terminators (The best terminator kit ever produced by GW with EVERY weapon option and even extra bits for customization)

Would anyone honestly be opposed to GW offering a full price (50/USD) box of weapon sprus? It's got 4 of each special weapon, and 4 of each melee weapon. Bam. Done. Too easy. They would FLY OFF THE SHELVES.

If they "just" added an extra sprue, it would increase the manufacturing costs, box size, warehouse space, and shipping costs, all of which would have to result in a more expensive kit, that they undoubtedly determined would be beyond what the average person is willing to pay for five infantry.

It never ceases to amaze me how often people on the internet assume that people who's entire careers are devoted to understanding highly complicated and intricate issues and carefully balancing different needs should "just" do the suggestion they casually thought up in five minutes, at their computer, with zero experience and training, as though it just never occurred to those guys who's whole jobs are about thinking about this stuff and finding optimal solutions.

*siiiiiigh*

The Deathwing kit was pretty good IIRC.

Testing new combos, your own basement, and new players aren’t what WYSIWYG is for, it’s for the spirit of a good experience in a neutral setting among strangers playing a game. Obfuscation is not part of mini war gaming unless it’s built into a unit’s design and points cost (Skaven assassins, Night Goblin Fanatics) and having things clear to your opponent is simply an extension of having your list available to your opponent or shaking hands afterwards.

I’m not rich but this is kinda my only hobby after I gave up wanting hot rods (now there’s a money pit!!), I’m about the most humble and least WAAC kind of player out there and but I believe in sportsmanship. WYSIWYG is simply part of gaming (not just GW) and it existed when only half a model had to be GW parts. WYSIWYG existed when there were special characters or models that didn’t have official sculpts - how could it be a standard to simply get you to buy more stuff that didn’t actually exist?

We might all feel we’re totally justified playing a game with strangers in a neutral setting however we want and anyone who disagrees is a rich, elitist, try hard, WAAC jerk. There’a plenty of things that we probably all wouldn’t want in an opponent in that setting:
Rude
Not paying attention
Smelly
Doesn’t bring army or rulebooks
Ignores FAQs it updates
Doesn’t bring any or enough tools (dice, tape measure)
Spreads out their food or books on the table
Creative premeasuring
Measuring move distances front to back of models for extra movement
Creative rolling
“Misremembering” rules until called out
Nudging models
Expecting others to abide by your house rules
Etc, etc, etc

“Play your way” is great in your own house, heck we had to proxy a ton of stuff and house rule things when we started in a friend’s basement. Going to a neutral setting and expecting others to play your way isn’t necessarily great though.

We can make a ton of straw men about WYSIWYG from how it fosters cheating on one side to “this is all I can afford” on the other. I’d be more than happy to play a struggling gamer who’s fun to play and makes sure I’m aware of their proxies. I don’t want to play someone with a beautiful army who’s a pain in the ass.

 Fajita Fan wrote:


We might all feel we’re totally justified playing a game with strangers in a neutral setting however we want and anyone who disagrees is a rich, elitist, try hard, WAAC jerk. There’a plenty of things that we probably all wouldn’t want in an opponent in that setting:

Rude
Smelly

Typical elitist lack of respect for us rude and smelly people.

nataliereed1984 wrote:
If they "just" added an extra sprue, it would increase the manufacturing costs, box size, warehouse space, and shipping costs, all of which would have to result in a more expensive kit, that they undoubtedly determined would be beyond what the average person is willing to pay for five infantry.

It never ceases to amaze me how often people on the internet assume that people who's entire careers are devoted to understanding highly complicated and intricate issues and carefully balancing different needs should "just" do the suggestion they casually thought up in five minutes, at their computer, with zero experience and training, as though it just never occurred to those guys who's whole jobs are about thinking about this stuff and finding optimal solutions.

*siiiiiigh*

You assume all corporation decissions are always made by the guys that know about and not the guys that have the money to pay and many times ignore the guys that know about the stuff.

By your metric, no corporation would ever made a mistake, or be wrong or right in different ocassions because the "experts" would always reach the correct conclusions. And the reality is that GW is clearly prone to do many mistakes or just to be inconsistent in their politics and decissions.

I know an extra sprue would be more expensive for GW. Thats why they chose to made the kit on the cheap, and thats why is at a technical level a inferior kit compared with other terminator ones.

Of COURSE corporations make mistakes. I just think there's an arrogance to saying professionals in a field you do not share and do not fully understand the issues of should "just" do solution X, as though you understand the job better than they do and the incredibly basic suggestion you came up with was never considered by them. They're not perfect, but they're also not completely braindead either. Of course they considered the question of how many sprues they could reasonably fit in the box. And then they made a decision about it, and what exactly to put on those sprues, to balance: sales, pricing, size, storage, shipping, aesthetic appeal of the model, and weapon options. They decided on a specific compromise. There's no simple solution they can "just" do to magically make the kit better. There's too many competing needs.

We have established that wysiwyg is not necessary to keep track of each model, as there are other methods to do it, and also using different datasheets for identical models is in general accepted, like for example with conscripts and relic options for HQ units. Also the distinction of what is acceptable proxying and what isn't is wholly arbitrary because nobody has justified why tactical marines can be used as a proxy for devastators but why guardsmen cannot be used as proxies for tactical marines, since in both cases just telling your opponent is all the clarity that is needed. Therefore trying to enforce wysiwyg on other people is done purely because of one's personal tastes. I don't see how that is different from refusing to play someone just because you don't like their paint scheme, and I don't see how that is acceptable behaviour.

 Galas wrote:

nataliereed1984 wrote:
If they "just" added an extra sprue, it would increase the manufacturing costs, box size, warehouse space, and shipping costs, all of which would have to result in a more expensive kit, that they undoubtedly determined would be beyond what the average person is willing to pay for five infantry.

It never ceases to amaze me how often people on the internet assume that people who's entire careers are devoted to understanding highly complicated and intricate issues and carefully balancing different needs should "just" do the suggestion they casually thought up in five minutes, at their computer, with zero experience and training, as though it just never occurred to those guys who's whole jobs are about thinking about this stuff and finding optimal solutions.

*siiiiiigh*

You assume all corporation decissions are always made by the guys that know about and not the guys that have the money to pay and many times ignore the guys that know about the stuff.

By your metric, no corporation would ever made a mistake, or be wrong or right in different ocassions because the "experts" would always reach the correct conclusions. And the reality is that GW is clearly prone to do many mistakes or just to be inconsistent in their politics and decissions.

I know an extra sprue would be more expensive for GW. Thats why they chose to made the kit on the cheap, and thats why is at a technical level a inferior kit compared with other terminator ones.

Then there are factors such as when the sprue was originally created. New techniques and materials have come around since many of these "bad kits" were introduced, and who knows when they will bother organizing to make a new one. Sometimes, their biggest task is just recreating what was available on the old one and introduce any new Wargear that they will be providing. Let's face it, even the Terminator trophy rack takes up less space than a Heavy Flamer or a Reaper Autocannon, so they really aren't that comparable (though 5 racks vs one Autocannon does apply).

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
I don't see how that is different from refusing to play someone just because you don't like their paint scheme, and I don't see how that is acceptable behaviour.

You can refuse to play anyone you want for any reason you want.

Of course at a competitive event that might cost you winning the event or even placing in the event. Similarly if you refuse to play anyone at your local group you, well, won't be playing many games.

Playing a game is always a case of finding a middleground between you and the other people taking part and enjoying the game as a group; even if you are competing against them.

Guardsmen have different base sizes, and height, so that actually affects gameplay. If I were to say this cotton ball on a 24mm base counts as Mortarian, it would be an obvious advantage. I can see the weapon proxy argument, but I think it's a stretch to say guardsmen should count as SMs.

As to the "basic" fix argument, the point of my suggestion was that this issue is easily solved by the power of the wallet. Now, GW is only motivated by the power of the wallet. They are not in this to make sure the good guy wins in the fluff or that the lore is consistent. They aren't in this even to ensure you have a good time. They are only in this to serve the basic function of any company. To make profit.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:


As to the "basic" fix argument, the point of my suggestion was that this issue is easily solved by the power of the wallet. Now, GW is only motivated by the power of the wallet. They are not in this to make sure the good guy wins in the fluff or that the lore is consistent. They aren't in this even to ensure you have a good time. They are only in this to serve the basic function of any company. To make profit.

I was more responding to the person (Galas, I think?) who said they 'should have just added an extra sprue'.

Space marines used to come with 25mm bases, and using those is still allowed as far as I know. Also cadians are about marine height.

 Galas wrote:

nataliereed1984 wrote:
If they "just" added an extra sprue, it would increase the manufacturing costs, box size, warehouse space, and shipping costs, all of which would have to result in a more expensive kit, that they undoubtedly determined would be beyond what the average person is willing to pay for five infantry.

It never ceases to amaze me how often people on the internet assume that people who's entire careers are devoted to understanding highly complicated and intricate issues and carefully balancing different needs should "just" do the suggestion they casually thought up in five minutes, at their computer, with zero experience and training, as though it just never occurred to those guys who's whole jobs are about thinking about this stuff and finding optimal solutions.

*siiiiiigh*

You assume all corporation decissions are always made by the guys that know about and not the guys that have the money to pay and many times ignore the guys that know about the stuff.

By your metric, no corporation would ever made a mistake, or be wrong or right in different ocassions because the "experts" would always reach the correct conclusions. And the reality is that GW is clearly prone to do many mistakes or just to be inconsistent in their politics and decissions.

I know an extra sprue would be more expensive for GW. Thats why they chose to made the kit on the cheap, and thats why is at a technical level a inferior kit compared with other terminator ones.

Do any of the other terminator kits have the level of flexibility of CSM terminators?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Galas wrote:

nataliereed1984 wrote:
If they "just" added an extra sprue, it would increase the manufacturing costs, box size, warehouse space, and shipping costs, all of which would have to result in a more expensive kit, that they undoubtedly determined would be beyond what the average person is willing to pay for five infantry.

It never ceases to amaze me how often people on the internet assume that people who's entire careers are devoted to understanding highly complicated and intricate issues and carefully balancing different needs should "just" do the suggestion they casually thought up in five minutes, at their computer, with zero experience and training, as though it just never occurred to those guys who's whole jobs are about thinking about this stuff and finding optimal solutions.

*siiiiiigh*

You assume all corporation decissions are always made by the guys that know about and not the guys that have the money to pay and many times ignore the guys that know about the stuff.

By your metric, no corporation would ever made a mistake, or be wrong or right in different ocassions because the "experts" would always reach the correct conclusions. And the reality is that GW is clearly prone to do many mistakes or just to be inconsistent in their politics and decissions.

I know an extra sprue would be more expensive for GW. Thats why they chose to made the kit on the cheap, and thats why is at a technical level a inferior kit compared with other terminator ones.

Do any of the other terminator kits have the level of flexibility of CSM terminators?

In an ironic twist, I think the Grey Knight Termy's have a stupid amount of options and their sprues have all the options on them.

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Way to miss the argument. I'm betting you didn't even bother so check how much space your precious trophy racks take up too.

They take the amount of space that is needed for them to be included, and as they're an essential part of Chaos Terminator aesthetic, not having them there is not an option. It is you who is missing the point. And not only of this discussion, but the whole hobby.

They are if you want to upgrade the unit with them. You don't purchase trophy racks as an upgrade.

Indeed. So trophy racks are always needed whereas the extra weapons are only needed if you make a choice to take them. And no one forces you to make such a choice.

They're NOT an essential part of the Chaos Terminator aesthetic, and you could've just said no that you didn't bother to look at the kit because it might hurt your argument. Seriously, look at the new kit and all the space your precious trophy racks take up. Just stop white knighting and admit not getting the actual BASE UNIT makes for a garbage kit.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Way to miss the argument. I'm betting you didn't even bother so check how much space your precious trophy racks take up too.

They take the amount of space that is needed for them to be included, and as they're an essential part of Chaos Terminator aesthetic, not having them there is not an option. It is you who is missing the point. And not only of this discussion, but the whole hobby.

They are if you want to upgrade the unit with them. You don't purchase trophy racks as an upgrade.

Indeed. So trophy racks are always needed whereas the extra weapons are only needed if you make a choice to take them. And no one forces you to make such a choice.

They're NOT an essential part of the Chaos Terminator aesthetic, and you could've just said no that you didn't bother to look at the kit because it might hurt your argument. Seriously, look at the new kit and all the space your precious trophy racks take up. Just stop white knighting and admit not getting the actual BASE UNIT makes for a garbage kit.

Ah, yes, the old "Any opinion that differs from my own automatically counts as White Knight-ing for GW" argument.

 Octopoid wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Way to miss the argument. I'm betting you didn't even bother so check how much space your precious trophy racks take up too.

They take the amount of space that is needed for them to be included, and as they're an essential part of Chaos Terminator aesthetic, not having them there is not an option. It is you who is missing the point. And not only of this discussion, but the whole hobby.

They are if you want to upgrade the unit with them. You don't purchase trophy racks as an upgrade.

Indeed. So trophy racks are always needed whereas the extra weapons are only needed if you make a choice to take them. And no one forces you to make such a choice.

They're NOT an essential part of the Chaos Terminator aesthetic, and you could've just said no that you didn't bother to look at the kit because it might hurt your argument. Seriously, look at the new kit and all the space your precious trophy racks take up. Just stop white knighting and admit not getting the actual BASE UNIT makes for a garbage kit.

Ah, yes, the old "Any opinion that differs from my own automatically counts as White Knight-ing for GW" argument.

It is white knighting. Did you look at the Chaos Terminator kit? Yes or no?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Octopoid wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Way to miss the argument. I'm betting you didn't even bother so check how much space your precious trophy racks take up too.

They take the amount of space that is needed for them to be included, and as they're an essential part of Chaos Terminator aesthetic, not having them there is not an option. It is you who is missing the point. And not only of this discussion, but the whole hobby.

They are if you want to upgrade the unit with them. You don't purchase trophy racks as an upgrade.

Indeed. So trophy racks are always needed whereas the extra weapons are only needed if you make a choice to take them. And no one forces you to make such a choice.

They're NOT an essential part of the Chaos Terminator aesthetic, and you could've just said no that you didn't bother to look at the kit because it might hurt your argument. Seriously, look at the new kit and all the space your precious trophy racks take up. Just stop white knighting and admit not getting the actual BASE UNIT makes for a garbage kit.

Ah, yes, the old "Any opinion that differs from my own automatically counts as White Knight-ing for GW" argument.

It is white knighting. Did you look at the Chaos Terminator kit? Yes or no?

I have looked at it. I own it. I disagree that the options on there make it a good kit. However, that doesn't mean that someone who disagrees with you is White Knight-ing, and repeating that it is doesn't make it true.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:They're NOT an essential part of the Chaos Terminator aesthetic

You're welcome to that opinion.

It doesn't make it correct.

 Tamwulf wrote:


In an ironic twist, I think the Grey Knight Termy's have a stupid amount of options and their sprues have all the options on them.

Not correct. It lacks daemonhammers and warding staves for every member . GK otherwise only have the option for a 1-in-5 special weapon and that's it.

And it still doesn't come close to what CTs can do for a loadout, which requires 5 combi-bolters, 5 combi-flamer, 5 combi-plasma, 5 combi-melta, reaper, h.flamer, 5 pairs of LC, 5 chainaxes, 5 chain fists, 5 p.fists, 5 p.mauls, 5 p.swords, and 5 p.axes.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
Space marines used to come with 25mm bases, and using those is still allowed as far as I know. Also cadians are about marine height.

I’m trying to be very general here, my location is in my profile and there’s people from my GW on this board (if not in this thread). I’m trying not to call out a few people in particular by keeping this general so let’s say the examples I’ve used in this thread aren’t actually hypothetical what-ifs but actual games. I have seen half a marine army represented by half assembled eBayed guardsmen. I have lost a deep striking terminator squad to a bunch of bolters who looked like objective squatters but were actually a plasma-toting command squad who I would’ve avoided. I have seen a predator with TL las/ dual ACs represented by a 2nd edition rhino with a lascannon devastator on the roof.

On the other extreme I’ve seen a guy who refuses to play against hidden models like NG Fanatics in WHFB. He expected us to tell him how many Fanatics were in each of our units so he can plan accordingly - the secret nature of Fanatics or DE assassins was built into their points cost. Fanatics were 25 pts/model because your opponent had to carefully approach any NG unit. If you know where my Fanatics are you can just move your cav in around them and gut my army. Not fun :(

My GW is pretty nice now and I think the population has aged, the armies look really good, and WYSIWYG isn’t that much of a problem there. Dismissing a tradition that was implemented in the spirit of sportsmanship and making things clear to your opponent as just corporate greed is seeing the devil where he isn’t. There’s tons of things GW does for greed - I was told I can’t bring a 3rd party 4’x4’ gaming mat for AT to my store when GW doesn’t sell a 4’x4’ sci-fi mat anymore - but this is the tiniest form of greed if that was their motivation.

Maybe you’re the player who always reminds people what you’re proxying throughout the game and maybe you’re a really fun person to play against. I still think having the correct models represent what you’ve chosen after you play test it is a reasonable expectation without being labeled as intolerant simply because I don’t want to bring post it notes to stick on your models for clarity.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

They're NOT an essential part of the Chaos Terminator aesthetic,

Yes they are.

and you could've just said no that you didn't bother to look at the kit because it might hurt your argument. Seriously, look at the new kit and all the space your precious trophy racks take up. Just stop white knighting and admit not getting the actual BASE UNIT makes for a garbage kit.

I have looked at the sprues. It probably is not the best layout they could have gone with. This doesn't mean jettisoning the trophy racks was an option. (There are six pairs though, so an argument could be made that one could be sacrificed.) They also could have added a third sprue to cover all the options, but then it would have increased the cost and people would have complained about that. And units are rarely fielded in their base layout, the options exist to be taken. Why would you want to have all your Chaos terminator with the stock equipment anyway? Giving them variety of weapons makes the unit look much more interesting and befits their individualistic chaotic nature.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
We have established that wysiwyg is not necessary to keep track of each model, as there are other methods to do it, and also using different datasheets for identical models is in general accepted, like for example with conscripts and relic options for HQ units. Also the distinction of what is acceptable proxying and what isn't is wholly arbitrary because nobody has justified why tactical marines can be used as a proxy for devastators but why guardsmen cannot be used as proxies for tactical marines, since in both cases just telling your opponent is all the clarity that is needed. Therefore trying to enforce wysiwyg on other people is done purely because of one's personal tastes. I don't see how that is different from refusing to play someone just because you don't like their paint scheme, and I don't see how that is acceptable behaviour.

That WYSIWYG is not a finely detailed rule doesn't mean it is fully arbitrary, and you probably actually know that when coming up with these disingenuous examples. Devastator marines for example are Space Marines just like tacticals, and share an identical statline. Furthemore, historically they have often shared the same basic bits for the body, the current kit is an exception. Guardsmesn are completely different both rules wise and visually. And yes, people are indeed fully within their rights to not play against anyone for any reason. I for one have no interest playing against someone's unpainted and half assembled proxy trash. Sorry for having modicum of aesthetic standards.

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

They're NOT an essential part of the Chaos Terminator aesthetic,

Yes they are.

and you could've just said no that you didn't bother to look at the kit because it might hurt your argument. Seriously, look at the new kit and all the space your precious trophy racks take up. Just stop white knighting and admit not getting the actual BASE UNIT makes for a garbage kit.

I have looked at the sprues. It probably is not the best layout they could have gone with. This doesn't mean jettisoning the trophy racks was an option. (There are six pairs though, so an argument could be made that one could be sacrificed.) They also could have added a third sprue to cover all the options, but then it would have increased the cost and people would have complained about that. And units are rarely fielded in their base layout, the options exist to be taken. Why would you want to have all your Chaos terminator with the stock equipment anyway? Giving them variety of weapons makes the unit look much more interesting and befits their individualistic chaotic nature.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
We have established that wysiwyg is not necessary to keep track of each model, as there are other methods to do it, and also using different datasheets for identical models is in general accepted, like for example with conscripts and relic options for HQ units. Also the distinction of what is acceptable proxying and what isn't is wholly arbitrary because nobody has justified why tactical marines can be used as a proxy for devastators but why guardsmen cannot be used as proxies for tactical marines, since in both cases just telling your opponent is all the clarity that is needed. Therefore trying to enforce wysiwyg on other people is done purely because of one's personal tastes. I don't see how that is different from refusing to play someone just because you don't like their paint scheme, and I don't see how that is acceptable behaviour.

That WYSIWYG is not a finely detailed rule doesn't mean it is fully arbitrary, and you probably actually know that when coming up with these disingenuous examples. Devastator marines for example are Space Marines just like tacticals, and share an identical statline. Furthemore, historically they have often shared the same basic bits for the body, the current kit is an exception. Guardsmesn are completely different both rules wise and visually. And yes, people are indeed fully within their rights to not play against anyone for any reason. I for one have no interest playing against someone's unpainted and half assembled proxy trash. Sorry for having modicum of aesthetic standards.

IOW: Chaos Terminators are just like Chaos Marines: Spiky Marines! That's the army!
Also one of the best loadouts IS the stock equipment. You seem to forget that Chaos Terminators were more expensive than the stock Loyalist ones for literally no good reason, so there were issues already being discussed on procuring Chainaxes! Hodgepodge garbage of "every guy looks different" doesn't look good anyway and doesn't perform in the game either. The fact you defend this garbage when the Grey Knight Terminator kit exists is also mind boggling as well, since that kit just about gives you the default loadout too!

I can understand that special and optional ... options, are limited in a box. But for a box to not allow you to build a unit with the base equipement is just ... it doesn't make any sense.

It does not matter how one tryes to justify it.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Do any of the other terminator kits have the level of flexibility of CSM terminators?

Space Wolf Guard Terminators, I believe.
- 4 Wolf Claw sets
- 1 Assault Cannon
- 4 Thunder Hammers/Storm Shields
- 1 Heavy Flamer
- 5 Storm Bolters
- 3 Power Fists
- 2 Chainfists
- 1 Frost Axe
- 1 Power Sword

versus Chaos Terminator's:
- 1 chain axe
- 1 chainfist
- 1 power sword
- 1 power axe
- 1 power maul
- 2 power fists
- 2 lightning claws
- 1 heavy flamer
- 1 reaper autocannon
- 5 combi-weapons

You forgot Grey Knight Terminators

Not try holding GW’s water here with respect to CSM terminator spruce layout but y’all realize that loyal marine terminators are split between shooty and assault units. Loyalist players don’t get to mix and match their shooty and assault models like Chaos or DA so they have two different boxes with 2 frames.

If Chaos termies could be built in box with 5 combi bolters, Reaper AC, heavy flamer, 10 lightning claws, 5 powerfists (and just make 5 chainfist addons), and 5 power weapons you’d probably be looking at 3 frames for the box. They’d probably charge $75 USD for that box in that case because they’re typically $25-30 a frame.

They're charging you for a box you can't even build the base unit with, so they shouldn't be charging anything for it at all!

What’s the base loadout you’re trying to build? No offense here but they’d charge you more to include every option for a 5 man unit that can mix/match shooty and assault units. Would you prefer to have two separate boxes for ranged and assault terminators like loyalists?

This goes back to the larger point people keep making in this thread: because of GW’s panicked fear of 3rd party bits companies you will find more and more the unit entry being limited by what’s in the box rather that having codex options not in the box. In 5 years this won’t be much of a problem as they get rid of regular marines and we have Primarishammer 41k.