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I'm wondering how other players would have handled this:

I played against a Dark Eldar player who had the obligatory 3 units of trueborn with blasters in venoms. This is pretty much every Dark Eldar army I've ever faced. What he did, however, was just use 12 regular warriors as his 12 blasterborn, with splinter rifles. Because he had no other splinter rifle warriors in his army, it really didn't affect gameplay at all. I knew the whole game what those models were. It was the laziness that irked me.

So, ruleswise, was this ok? I've been told that 'counts-as' wargear is fine as long as the same weapon isn't used as different weapons in the rules across the entire army. If the only splinter rifles in the army are used as blasters, is that acceptable WYSIWYG?

Oaka wrote:I'm wondering how other players would have handled this:

I played against a Dark Eldar player who have the obligatory 3 units of trueborn with blasters in venoms. This is pretty much every Dark Eldar army I've ever faced. What he did, however, was just use 12 regular warriors as his 12 blasterborn, with splinter rifles. Because he had no other splinter rifle warriors in his army, it really didn't affect gameplay at all. I knew the whole game what those models were. It was the laziness that irked me.

So, ruleswise, was this ok? I've been told that 'counts-as' wargear is fine as long as the same weapon isn't used as different weapons in the rules across the entire army. If the only splinter rifles in the army are used as blasters, is that acceptable WYSIWYG?

In a friendly game, I wouldn't care. But it's up to you.
In a tournament, ask the TO.

WYSIWYG is pretty nebulous overall - anything not 100% accurate is going to need your opponents permission.

If you agree to it then it is acceptable WYSIWYG.

If not then it is not acceptable WYSIWYG.

WYSIWYG is only as enforced as you make it.

The whole point of WYSIWYG is to make the game more easy to play for both players, as it means they don't have to remember what is what, they can just look at the models.

So as far as 'strict' WYSIWYG goes, no, using splinter rifles as anything other than splinter rifles is a bit off.

However, if both players are clear as to just what is going on, and neither of them have a problem with it, it's really not a problem.

Common sense has no place in 40k.

I would be slightly annoyed but understanding with an opponent in a pickup/practice game.

In a tournament, no chance.

I blame GW for this situation.

Its entirely too hard to get enough blasters for a DE army unless you shop ebay and the bits stores.

Weapon packs should be available for every army IMO.

Oaka wrote:So, ruleswise, was this ok? I've been told that 'counts-as' wargear is fine as long as the same weapon isn't used as different weapons in the rules across the entire army. If the only splinter rifles in the army are used as blasters, is that acceptable WYSIWYG?

"Counts as" is a convention, not a rule (with the exception of a number of codices which specifically allow "counts as" for special characters). If you don't feel comfortable playing against it, then you have every right to not do so.

BarBoBot wrote:Its entirely too hard to get enough blasters for a DE army unless you shop ebay and the bits stores.

getting them off bitz sites is hard too, as everyone else does it too and they're sold out too

BarBoBot wrote:I blame GW for this situation.

Its entirely too hard to get enough blasters for a DE army unless you shop ebay and the bits stores.

Weapon packs should be available for every army IMO.

It wasn't that bad if you were starting from scratch with Dark Eldar.
Every box of Warriors and Wyches has a Blaster and a Shredder on the sprue. The Scourges came with one as well.
Building Three Warrior units and one of Scourges, gets you four Blasters right there. Plus the extra box of Warriors you need to build your Trueborn. That gives you Five Blasters.
As long as you're not putting blasters in your Warrior units, you"ll have plenty.

I would let him play on a temporary nature if he was proxying or planning to make the units correct later.

I would not play against this person on a long-term basis if he had no intent of modeling his units correctly.

I would be astounded to encounter this in a tournament. I would expect that any fairly-minded TO would not allow this.

Cheexsta wrote:"Counts as" is a convention, not a rule (with the exception of a number of codices which specifically allow "counts as" for special characters). If you don't feel comfortable playing against it, then you have every right to not do so.

and WYSIWYG is really only for characters.RAW P.47

I liked that you were irked at the player for their laziness and not GW for not including popular options in their kits or selling blasters separately.

The player could have modeled or changed the splinter rifles to make them unique or more blaster looking. Any TO would say to that.

Dunwich wrote:I liked that you were irked at the player for their laziness and not GW for not including popular options in their kits or selling blasters separately.

You can get 2 blasters per warrior box by converting the blaster pistol/shredder.

If you have way more trueborn than warriors you will run into trouble, but otherwise I wouldn't call it particularly unreasonable... and this is as a Dark Eldar player with way more trueborn than warriors.

This is not Vietnam, there are rules.

In friendly games, its fine, but in tournaments, proxies should be within reason ;D

ToBeWilly wrote:

BarBoBot wrote:I blame GW for this situation.

Its entirely too hard to get enough blasters for a DE army unless you shop ebay and the bits stores.

Weapon packs should be available for every army IMO.

It wasn't that bad if you were starting from scratch with Dark Eldar.
Every box of Warriors and Wyches has a Blaster and a Shredder on the sprue. The Scourges came with one as well.
Building Three Warrior units and one of Scourges, gets you four Blasters right there. Plus the extra box of Warriors you need to build your Trueborn. That gives you Five Blasters.
As long as you're not putting blasters in your Warrior units, you"ll have plenty.

so your saying there are plenty of blasters available as long as I dont use them? Thats absurd.

If GW gives me the option of having a weapon in my troops unit, as well as multiple of them in a elite unit, then they should provide me with a way to obtain the weapons.

BarBoBot wrote:If GW gives me the option of having a weapon in my troops unit, as well as multiple of them in a elite unit, then they should provide me with a way to obtain the weapons.

Tell that to nids - Shrikes and Warriors have a LW/BS or BS/BS option. There's zero non-MC LW/BS out there from GW (that are still in print).

oh I totally sympathise with nid players. They got the shaft...

NecronLord3 wrote:This is not Vietnam, there are rules.

"But. . ."

"Shut the f**k up, Donny!"

BarBoBot wrote:
[...]
so your saying there are plenty of blasters available as long as I dont use them? Thats absurd.

If GW gives me the option of having a weapon in my troops unit, as well as multiple of them in a elite unit, then they should provide me with a way to obtain the weapons.

curse this for not being a creative/modelling hobby...... does it irk you that you have to construct your models??

a bit harsh i guess but i dont want to know how much it would cost to set up a seperate sprue of just heavy/special weapons that will sell a few every couple of months....


anyway, to the OP:

WYSIWYG can mean modelling all the grenades/combat weapons/pistols/guns on each space marine.... sometimes a bit of "artistic liberty" is overlooked....

personally, i would have had no issue with this guy for a game or 2 but i would have expected them to make an effort at converting them to make regular use of them.

Honestly as long as someone tells me I'm fine with it. My army isnt WYSIWYG as it's quite costly.

1 flamer, 1 meltagun, 1 plasma gun per $45 box of CSM. I usually run 2 flamers, or 2 meltaguns per 10 man squad which means I need to use 2 box's worth to get a flamer out there. Not only that but autocannons, ML, lascannons do not come in my box's yet I can equip them in squads of 10.

Usually I will have 10 CSM, and 2 special weapon guys, whether its meltagun, flamers, or sometimes havocs if i dont have the models I make it clear that 7 of them are regular guys (as they actually are) But the only 2 holding special weapons ARE my special weapons guys, whether they be flamers, meltaguns, plasma,s etc.... and of course I always have a Aspiring Champion that has a PF/PS.

Would you guys consider this acceptable? you can still pickout the 2 special weapon guys, and the Aspiring champion.

I will convert them all some day but I've always just had fun with making my models look cool ( Like the plague marine that dual wields plasma pistols >.> !)

mrspadge wrote:
curse this for not being a creative/modelling hobby...... does it irk you that you have to construct your models??

a bit harsh i guess but i dont want to know how much it would cost to set up a seperate sprue of just heavy/special weapons that will sell a few every couple of months....

I think they already have a few of these weapon packs set up for melta and plasma guns. My FLGS owner said they used to be able to order the guns in 6 packs for about 10 bucks, but they're all metal.

What I think he's complaining about is the fact that he has the "option" to load out his squad a certain way, but since he has no way to buy the special weapons seperately, he's stuck either making due without, or making another weapon count as them (I know nothing about DE, so I cant say much about their weapons, sorry)

I know as IG, where I can easily have 3 or 4 of the same special weapon per squad, that there is no sane way to get enough special weapons just through normally buying your troops. We only get 1 melta/plasmas/heavy flamers/PW/PF in a commander pack. The typical infantry squad only comes with 1 GL and 1 Flamer, and thats it. As cool as the command squad bits for IG are, I'm not going to shell out $25 everytime I want a couple of special weapons. So unless we run like 20 GL's (something I'm stuck doing at the moment since I only have 4 meltas/plasmas right now) we have to either make due without or try to pass off another weapon as what we need. Plus, I'd hate to convert 15 meltas only to go to a tourny and a guy say "hey, those arent real meltas, you cant take those". None of the armies seem to have an efficient way to buy the special/heavy weapons they need. What's sadder is that IG seem to be pretty well off compared to other armies, at least all of our gear exists in some sort of plastic form, unlike the poor tyranids and other armies.

Sorry to stand on my soapbox there for a minute but I just had to get that out of my system, I dont know how these guys that are running Melta vet spam lists are getting so many special weapons, some of them can have anywhere between 10 and 20 meltas if they really go nuts with it. I agree that modeling stuff and converting can be fun (heck almost all my guardsmen have specially converted greatcoats, and I made a commisar from scratch from a commander kit) but I dont like using weapons that dont look like what they're supposed to be. GL's and Flamers are easy to proxy and make, but meltas have a really distinct look, and I dont think it'd be fair to my opponent to have a misshapen lump glued to my guy's arm and say "oh yeah, thats totally a melta."

Even if new molds for special weapons cost a bit, I would be willing to bet that they'd make their money back easily. They already have the molds to an extent, they just need to take the sculpt, copy it 5 times in a tiny sprue, and voila, special weapons packs. That or just make a "special weapons box" that has all the special gear for an army (like the IG commander box, minus the guys) and just have 3 or 4 of each special bit. sell it for 20 or 30 bucks, and then a player would have all the gear they'd ever need after a couple of boxes.

< Taken by the void dragon. >

Che-Vito wrote:
Maybe this is a midwest thing:

Even at tourneys, I have not run into issues with "counts as", as long as it is clear. Why? Because the majority of the gamers are not on a very big budget, but want to try out different army builds...for fun, flavor, and everything in-between. I've not run into any issue, because as long as the ease of gaming is not changed, then where lies the issue?

Agreed. Maybe it is a Midwest thing I personally don't care what my opponent counts as or proxies as long as I know what it is. I play to have fun, and if someone else needs to count as to have fun, I don't care.

Secondly, I play BT, and as over half of my Initiates come from AoBR, I end up counting as BP/CCW or special weapons for many of my guys. One other thing that was a good point in a previous post was to try and be consistent with the counts as (ie all meltas are flamers etc). Also, unless you need a model for another unit, counts as with similar weapons to the intended weapon. (ie missile launchers look/are held more like lascannons than a flamer.

The one exception I would have to this is if someone used a model as counts as when there are more suitable models (using a rhino for a land raider when a devilfish or hammerhead was available.)

My army was built slowly over birthday and Christmas money, and gifts. I do not have the funds to buy all the individual bits to ensure my army will have "Correctly Modeled" models. Let alone the skill to magnetize all of my marines and rhinos so that if I change a list. I'm not going to purchase more marines than I will ever use in, say, an apoc game.

I've been in a tournament as well, and not a single person complained about this either. So long as we had a written list, we were allowed to use whatever weapon were legally avaliable to it legally.

I commend those able to have a perfectly modeled unit for the wysiwyg stuff. If its painted, modeled, on the right base. That's all that I care about for myself.

mrspadge wrote:

BarBoBot wrote:
[...]
so your saying there are plenty of blasters available as long as I dont use them? Thats absurd.

If GW gives me the option of having a weapon in my troops unit, as well as multiple of them in a elite unit, then they should provide me with a way to obtain the weapons.

curse this for not being a creative/modelling hobby...... does it irk you that you have to construct your models??

a bit harsh i guess but i dont want to know how much it would cost to set up a seperate sprue of just heavy/special weapons that will sell a few every couple of months....


anyway, to the OP:

WYSIWYG can mean modelling all the grenades/combat weapons/pistols/guns on each space marine.... sometimes a bit of "artistic liberty" is overlooked....

personally, i would have had no issue with this guy for a game or 2 but i would have expected them to make an effort at converting them to make regular use of them.

so your going to bash me because I think there should be weapon packs? REALLY?

Im not sure how long you've been at this game, but I have been playing for 15 years.

Pardon me for rememberering the times when you could walk into a GW and order all the weapons and bits you could ever need seperately...

Imo if they have paid the points for them and have made it clear to you what they are then i dont see an issue.

A lot of fanboys seem to forget that the game is actually 99% imagination 1% toy soldiers on a table.

If you are in any doubt just ask to check his list to ensure he has paid for them.

GW would love us all to go buy every combo for every model and even TO's need a reality check nowdays as most are becoming elitist fools.
Do you really want to be part of something that excludes people due to money or not being able to build / paint models properly? If you dont then i would seriously urge you all to take a look at the upcoming tournaments and demand that WYSIWYG and Painting are not part of overall scoring.

GBDarkAngel wrote:GW would love us all to go buy every combo for every model and even TO's need a reality check nowdays as most are becoming elitist fools.
Do you really want to be part of something that excludes people due to money or not being able to build / paint models properly? If you dont then i would seriously urge you all to take a look at the upcoming tournaments and demand that WYSIWYG and Painting are not part of overall scoring.

WYSIWYG has absolutely nothing to do with money. It has everything to do with being polite to your opponent. At the beginning of the game, I'm going to ask you to remember 3 numbers. After the game, I will ask you what those three numbers are, and if you get one of them wrong, you lose the game - regardless of how the actual play turned out. Having to remember what counts as what puts a burned on your opponent for absolutely no reason.