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So this is for full count-as armies and not proxies. This was brought up by Dashofpepper and I think it merits it's own thread

Feel free to discuss your reasons and thoughts on counts-as.

Me, I'm good with it. I like counts-as and feels like it brings something to the hobby creativity wise. It's fun and as long as the work is put in I don't mind do a little extra mental lifting for playing against a unique and cool army.

B. on the condition that the models are modeled with easily identifiable weapons, are the proper size and rough shape, and cannot be confused with units that they are not.

Also if you are going to use this for justification to create and use your particular counts-as army in a tournament, you are going to want to post what that counts-as is.
I believe for the most part people are fine with clear counts-as armies in tournaments--I have both played and fought against them in the past.
Your newest proposed counts-as, however, received a somewhat different response on your old poll.

Linkie?

If it is easy to identify what is what, go for it.

The only time I get annoyed is when it's clearly an attempt to recycle models or just based on laziness.

I think this is a complex question to answer.

If I had an army where not one single model was actually the models from the codex, I'd quickly get into a situation where life was not only difficult for my opponents, but VERY difficult for opponents who weren't as experienced against multiple codex styles.

Example - You do a "Knight" Space Marine army. All of your models look like foot knights from the Middle Ages; guys with "bolters" all have crossbows, guys with bolt pistols and close combat weapons all have little hand firing crossbows or early era pistols, and swords. All your guys with power weapons have big-ass swords of epic size, or steampunkily look "energized," or glow like magic weapons, etc. This is pretty easy - a future space marine is a dude in heavy armor with a big weapon of some kind. These are just like old fashioned marines.

Example - You do an alien insect space marine army. All your space marines w/ bolters are those squat buggly looking insects with creepy looking gun #1 (they're the proper size, proper base size, by the way). All those very heavily armored bugs are terminators, with different weird weaponized arms all being different things. You can "kinda" clearly tell what each is supposed to be, but life is suddenly EXTREMELY hard on your opponent.

In the 2nd example, while I still think it could be OK, you need to go above and beyond to explain not just what the units are, but what they do, at all times and repeatedly, until your opponent clearly gets it. You know I <3 you, but your Ad Mech demons army is a good example of the 2nd above sample, not the first - nothing in your army had weapons that were like Demon weapons (which are mostly just claws), none of them really looked at all like demons (base and model sizes were fine), and any opponent who wasn't super experienced dealing w/ demons in the first place was going to have an even harder time keeping track w/out a lot of constant reminders and aid. Veteran opponents in a quick game could easily forget which 40mm bases were XYZ, which were XZY, etc.

That's what this gets into ... let's say with your AdMech, that someone forgot which models were Screamers of Tzeentch and which were Fiends of Slaanesh (I think you had both). He gets some unit out and goes after the Fiends, thinking they're the Screamers. Do you suggest it's a bad idea, even in the movement phase when yo'ure not sure what he's doing? Do you allow him to go back when he's reminded by you and completely change his whole turn's movement to that point, b/c he would have "done it differently" if only he'd known? How do you react and adjust?

Not all opponents aren't going to be able to keep up, but the more you get away from the way the models should look naturally, the more you have to do some ABSURDLY over the top explanations to make it clear without either a) having to do something wrong (like suggesting what your opponent should or shouldn't do as a practice of reminding him what the models are), or b) pissing people off.

So, there's no firm answer here. A Pre-Heresy counts-as army where you creatively but clearly model more out-dated weapons or vehicle chassis to stay in tune with the fluff where those weapons didn't exist? Cool. An entirely counts-as army where none of the models are even remotely visually similar to their Codex counterparts, where none of the weapons are the same, and where every single model requires an explanation pre-game of what's what? Much tougher to pull off fairly (to both you AND your opponent).

I voted B, but I agree with everything MVBrandt said. I'm not the sharpest tournament gamer out there, but I have played your AdMech army and while I love it, I also found parts of it confusing. "Easily identifiable" means different things to different people. In your army, everything looks different from each other, so an opponent shouldn't have trouble differentiating the bloodcrushers from the fiends for example. But there is a much better chance of them forgetting which is which than there is against an actual Daemon army. Luckily I don't ever know what anything is even in a normal army so I just have to constantly ask questions, but someone who doesn't ask a lot of questions may easily make a mistake that costs a game due to confusing two units.

I would have picked B... But the issue is many unreasonable total conversion armies do not fit "easy to identify" even though the person with the counts-as army has rosey-colored glasses on how awesome his army is and how anyone who doesn't clearly recognize his models is just being a hater.

Because 'clear conversions' are a grey area which cannot be objectively determined, I will have to go with C. I do not mind them in tourneys, but I often find myself really hoping not to play specific armies which I see that are unclear and would make for a terrible game and burden me personally with a disadvantage as I have to spend effort with a decoder ring to understand what i am actually fighting.

I have played against terrible counts-as in tourneys and it is miserable, especially when the person is clearly power-gaming. It always seems to be squats as orks or some sort of Humans as demons or 'something' as duallash oblit spam. They not trying to fit a theme at all, same old meta list and the counts-as is a piece of wargear trying to confuse opponents.

Friendly play, hobby events... fine. Competitive tourneys... Your unclear proxies, I don't want to play them.

@Ph34r

It's actually not for my other idea. It was an idea brought up by Dash. Has nothing to do with any army I've made or may make in the future. Not everything is about me

@MVB

And I totally get where you are coming from. And the answer honestly if they look to be going after the wrong target I will say things like "scared of those screamers are ya?" when they start to move that way. That way they remember what they are, haven't moved yet, and we don't have any issues. I have taken more extreme steps with the Admech actually to make it more clear (picture cheat sheet) but I do in fact understand. I love that army and I'm not sure I'll ever do such an extensive counts-as again even though I was considering a daemon one for Adepticon but after some thinking and some people's reactions I've decided I'll likely just do a mech guard traitor force which though boring for me will pass muster

Brad,

Sensible, but that's actually precisely the problem. It doesn't really matter how you go about it, you're playing head games or unintentionally taking advantage or risking them going "woah, I gotta take back my whole turn, those first 4 moves were also related to me going after those fiends thinking they were screamers."

Unless you start every one of your and your opponent's turns going "this is x, this is y, this is z, this is a, this is b, this is c," even a great opponent might forget at the worst possible time, leading to an unfair loss or an unpleasant exchange of "take back" requests.

So that's not me saying don't do it, but you basically have to do the "xyzabc" above, every turn, until your opponent specifically asks you not to, that they've got it. Of course, then when they make an innocent mistake confusing two units with each other ... you're still "in the wrong," and all the problems resurface.

For a tournament setting, you should probably have an army that does NOT require explanation, or is so close to "clearly identifiable" that after your very first explanation, your opponent's go "ah, makes sense," and that's that. Case in point - Dan Oppedisano has a counts-as guard army that is Vraksian Renegade Militia. All the weapons are wysiwyg, but the vehicle mounts and conversions are a bit more demonic ... i.e. brass cannons of khorne instead of medusa cannons. Once explaing, it's sensible - you're like, OH, duh. But the army doesn't really "look" anything like a guard army at a glance.

Anyway, just rambling. You know I <3 you, and <3'ed your admech force, but speaking in the vacuum and speaking as a TO, that's my perspective. Even "sly reminders" are absolutely the wrong way to go about it, b/c they don't actually preempt the possible problems .. and you end up being a pushy boor if you go through every unit at the top of every player turn to keep your opponent from forgetting in the first place (or being able to claim that's what happened). Very catch 22 possible in a hurry.

Obviously there are 5,000,000 steps you can probably take to preempt problems, but I don't know that any are perfect.

Oh no offense taken at all Mike. I love that army, I'll probably continue to expand it cause I just love the modeling but Daemons have taken a back seat this year to Nids (at 2k) and Dark Eldar at 1,850. Nids because if I don't play them I'll feel like a hypocrit after saying they can compete and Dark Eldar at 1,850 because I don't like any of the armies I can make at 1,850 for bugs I've also considered a traitor guard army (inspired by Dan no less ) that uses rough riders, orgryns, and exterminators (not Executioners!).

Basically I enjoyed it, most of my opponents enjoyed it, it's a great modeling project that was and is a lot of fun but it's probably not gonna see much light outside of fun games or tournaments that a lot of people have seen it already (i.e. SoCal based one )

Aye - I feel you, and it's more of a good example of a problem area than a unique example of one badly done, or anything.

I also think opponents are more willing to let things slide when you've clearly put your back into an army; this doesn't make the pitfalls in terms of "fairness" go away, but it does ease tensions.

Not a huge fan of counts as in tournaments. Mostly because its hard to tell where to draw the line. Yeah a pre- heresy marine army is pretty easy but than i have seen some conversions that just make me shake my head and wonder WTF. I remember playing a guy in the Chicago GT years ago that ran a Chaos army that was so heavily converted with Green Stuff it was next to impossible to tell what was what. I cannot remember his name but many of the old timers would remember this guy. He was some kind of graphic design guru and his stuff looked amazing. It was just impossible to tell exactly what it was. The next year he showed up with a Marine Templar army and that was just as hard to figure out.

Were the templars yellow? Just wondering

If it really is that big of a difference, then make some little name plates to put next to the units when they are on the board. I do this with my psychic powers. You can always convert fancy little plates that are themed around your army.

Hulksmash wrote:So this is for full count-as armies and not proxies. This was brought up by Dashofpepper and I think it merits it's own thread

Feel free to discuss your reasons and thoughts on counts-as.

Me, I'm good with it. I like counts-as and feels like it brings something to the hobby creativity wise. It's fun and as long as the work is put in I don't mind do a little extra mental lifting for playing against a unique and cool army.

Depends on what it is, what it represents, and how much effort went into it. For example:

Years ago there was a hockey team for a 40K army, complete with bus at a GT. Tons of effort, but complete pain to figure out everything exactly, as things didnt translate well. Bad counts as army, as it requires too much effort on ones part to figure out whats what.

Variety of steeds to count as bikes? So long as their roughly the same size as bikes, its all good. Cold ones instead of bikes work out well for a snakebite ork army or a marine varient from a hostile world, or something a touch different then horses for rough riders(or bikes in some cases instead of horses). Very good counts as.

Or juggernauts instead of giant wolves for space wolves/chaos 'counts as". I can see a chaos warband, non-marked, easily using the space wolves book.


Goofy, and very un40k-ish items in the game? Not very good. Its gotta have some relative place. I can live with female marines for example. I cant live with a hockey team.

Arg. If I had known you were going to post this as a separate poll, I would have worded the answers differently to establish better categories.

Inquisitor_Malice wrote:If it really is that big of a difference, then make some little name plates to put next to the units when they are on the board. I do this with my psychic powers. You can always convert fancy little plates that are themed around your army.

Presuming your sizes are correct this is a very strong solution.

You should know better by now Dash

I voted for "C", but I could also see "B" as well. Basically, the rule of cool would apply, as always... if it's awesomely done (and very clear) people should not have any problem with it.

But when people decide to run orks as nids or vice versa simply due to the advantages of one codex over the other (as an example) I cry party foul...

Hulksmash wrote:So this is for full count-as armies and not proxies.

nkelsch wrote:. Competitive tourneys... Your unclear proxies, I don't want to play them.

RiTides wrote:But when people decide to run orks as nids or vice versa simply due to the advantages of one codex over the other (as an example) I cry party foul...

Not to get snotty, but how many times does the difference between "counts-as" and proxying need to be explained?

Whoops

One more time, perhaps?

Although, I personally think people draw a rather clear line there when there isn't always one (i.e. there is overlap between the two at times)... but then again I haven't seen too many of these in-person, so perhaps I'm just unclear on it.

::Claps for Polonius::

It's all good Rtides. I think where your at is why most people have problems with "count-as". Most people to closely associate it with proxying. Where 90% of counts-as style armies are generally well thought out and pretty well done. At least from my person experience.

@IM

I've already gotten some tiny markers done from the suggested sight you guys gave me when I asked about counts-as for Adepticon

Hulksmash wrote:::Claps for Polonius::

It's all good Rtides. I think where your at is why most people have problems with "count-as". Most people to closely associate it with proxying. Where 90% of counts-as style armies are generally well thought out and pretty well done. At least from my person experience.

@IM

I've already gotten some tiny markers done from the suggested sight you guys gave me when I asked about counts-as for Adepticon

Best example I can offer is this.

I know my the Necron Codex, the Ork Codex, and the Dark Eldar codex. The old Dark Eldar codex. I hate the new one (Damn you forever GW for raping and despoiling my beautiful Lelith into an inferior HQ).

Short of my codexes, I Space Marines fairly well, although need to ask questions about what vanguard veterans do, and what wargear things have....but I know that its mostly BS4, T4, 3+ saves with 2+/5++ for terminators. Sisters...I know that the immolator has flamers and the heavy support thingy shoots D6 STR8 AP1 missiles. Tyranids I know decently but still need to ask a lot of questions, and the same now for daemons. I know they all have invulnerable saves, and in general which ones are shooty and which ones are assaulty.

You ran an admech counts-as daemon army at the Nova Open - and while looking at it was a visual treat, I was thinking to myself that I hoped I didn't have to play it - because I don't know daemons like the back of my hand, and you'd be putting me in a position of not even getting to look at models and say, "Oh - that's a daemon prince...what mark does he have? What does it do? What's his toughness and save?" I don't know if screamers are the flying melta bombs or the flying flamers, but you had counts as some of those, and it would have been an absolutely confusing game for me trying to not only associate unfamiliar models (counts as) with their semi-familiar would be models, but to try tracking them throughout the game. You PERSONALLY I can trust to not switch things up on me, and to be patient answering my questions....but I've run into things like, "I'm not answering your questions, here's my codex" before. Not that I'd expect that on any kind of regular basis, but I'm just more comfortable playing against models that I can recognize. I remember seeing a beautiful Ork counts as army once - the guy had nob bikers - and to count as them each nob biker was a space marine biker in close combat with a nob - the one I clearly remember had a nob with a pike or something impaled through a space marine, and the whole bike and space marine was lifted over the nob's head like a giant hammer; or as if he had just speared him and was going to crash him into the ground. But I couldn't make out the nob's wargear for WYSIWYG or anything, and wouldn't want to play against that either.

I think they are beautiful armies if done well, just not something I want to face in a tournament that is timed, when every question I have to ask, remember, and get answered, and try keeping track of and strategize against is time against the clock that we should be playing - I already have a tough time getting through 6-7 turns in a game.

In a friendly game with no time limit....absolutely. Bring it.

Dashofpepper wrote:Arg. If I had known you were going to post this as a separate poll, I would have worded the answers differently to establish better categories.

Yeah. I would think that most people that were against Hulk's proposed army would still vote B in this poll -- to not do so would be to preclude armies like renegades counts as Space Wolves or traitor guard counts as IG, or other such counts-as armies that are very easy to play against without a bit of confusion.

sabote wrote:Not a huge fan of counts as in tournaments. Mostly because its hard to tell where to draw the line. Yeah a pre- heresy marine army is pretty easy but than i have seen some conversions that just make me shake my head and wonder WTF. I remember playing a guy in the Chicago GT years ago that ran a Chaos army that was so heavily converted with Green Stuff it was next to impossible to tell what was what. I cannot remember his name but many of the old timers would remember this guy. He was some kind of graphic design guru and his stuff looked amazing. It was just impossible to tell exactly what it was. The next year he showed up with a Marine Templar army and that was just as hard to figure out.

This guy might have been Joe Orteza. I remember seeing some of his stuff in White Dwarf back in the day.

Be more specific.

I don't see why that is a problem Ph34r. Basically you, who is against non-easily recognized counts-as could still vote two which says it's cool as long as I can tell what it is easily. If you don't like counts-as in a tournament even if it's easy you choose the others. B would still exclude armies the one up for discussion. I suppose I could have added more depth but I was at work and Dash had brought it up so I used his

Well, even though I voted as I did for "general" counts-as, I certainly make exceptions for awesomeness as do most people I know!

Hulksmash wrote:I was at work and Dash had brought it up so I used his

PIllager!! And stuff!!

I have to say go for it. I love to convert models, but I keep them in the realm of canon. I am currently doing a sisters of silence army. No female models out there except for sisters of battle (boooo) or dark eldar wyches (maybe yay). I had to order a lot of custom parts and assemble the pieces for a count as army.

I dont think you should be running a soda can you just finished drinking out of as a drop pod, nor a space marine as a imperial guardsman. However, if your army is themed and modelled to fit, then go for it.