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Is "Counts As" a real rule, or is it something the community made up?
I can't find it in the rule book.

See P127 - ultramarines and other chapters. This specifies that you can use a special character "to represent a mighty hero of a different chapter".

With the exception of the special characters thing, no, it's not technically a rule.

It's just a courtesy that players extend to each other, under the understanding that 40k is a VERY expensive and time consuming hobby. Not everyone is going to want to buy, assemble, and paint a whole new model (or unit of models), just to try something out.

It's especially important with trivial upgrades. I'd have to have like 20 guard sergeants if I wanted them all to be wysiwyg, and I only field like 6 at a time.

its a real "rule" is the same vain as RAW and RAI, basically its a generally accepted thing

Ok, that makes sense to me.
I was planning on converting a Dreadnought in to a looted vehicle and "counts as" a Deffdread and was wondering how that would work for the rules.

There's a couple of different things we're talking about here

Conversions - e.g. making a custom dread or kit bashing your own Lysander model. There are no rules to allow conversions but as long as it's clear what it is and it's about the same size as the original model then you're generally fine.

Counts As - model substitutions for thematic reasons. e.g. exodite eldar armies with dinosaurs of various sizes for vehicles. Most people are okay with it as long as it's cool. You need to be careful to stay consistent and try to have it make sense or you'll just end up with opponents being confused.

Proxies - substituting something for a model so you can try it e.g. soda bottle drop pods or space marines being used as guard veterans just because you had some handy. Some gaming groups are cool with this, some are absolutely not.

Awesome answers Scott. Thank you for all the details.
I have only played with my close friends, so I have not had to deal with WYSIWYG rules yet. I'd just like to get a head start on what to expect from strangers.

Ah.

In the case of ork stuff, their entire army is basically counts-as. If you throw together some random garbage with the correct guns, it's still a wysiwyg dread. Without the correct weapons, it's still likely good enough if you tell your opponents what they are beforehand.

It especially shouldn't be a problem with close friends.


oh, and a looted dread is an excellent idea. Very orky.

Ailaros wrote:In the case of ork stuff, their entire army is basically counts-as. If you throw together some random garbage with the correct guns, it's still a wysiwyg dread. Without the correct weapons, it's still likely good enough if you tell your opponents what they are beforehand.

It especially shouldn't be a problem with close friends.

oh, and a looted dread is an excellent idea. Very orky.

Somewhere out there, I hope there is an Oscar the Grouch ork dread.

Looted Carnifex!

A lot of 'counts as' players are not saying something about their special rules character (like some bright green SM captain who has the same rules as Shrike or whatnot), which is cool and accepted as a substitute. These are the good 'counts as'. Then there's the 'counts as' marine codex thing I see done where whichever special rules you want to spam you make your generic boys in power armor counts as space wolves one week, blood angels the next, and CSM the next. Most people I know who play think this is kind of WAAC TFG etc way of hobbying.

I had a kid with 2 feet glued to a MC base, said it was his dread. He was 10-ish. I was cool with that, he hasn't built his first dread but he wanted to play with it. I had another guy, at least in his 20s, maybe 30s, who had an entire SW army without arms, weapons, and some without heads, some just legs glued to a base. This was not so okay. May as well be using a chess set or something, but hey his army kicked some butt with his counts as long fangs everywhere.

Guitardian wrote: I had a kid with 2 feet glued to a MC base, said it was his dread. He was 10-ish. I was cool with that, he hasn't built his first dread but he wanted to play with it. I had another guy, at least in his 20s, maybe 30s, who had an entire SW army without arms, weapons, and some without heads, some just legs glued to a base. This was not so okay. May as well be using a chess set or something, but hey his army kicked some butt with his counts as long fangs everywhere.

I'm fine with the latter case, if it's a new army & some progress is being made on it over time. Sometimes it's nice to be able to play with your toys after the first 10 hours of cutting/cleaning/gluing.