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really if they make it clear before the game begins that "this model/can/barbie is this" and as long as the person doesnt try to cheat me its all good.

Best one was a few years ago my friend used a Barbie for a Keeper of Secrets, It was more or less modeled right, On a base and with a small knife taped to her hand. I have never laughed so hard while getting my butt kicked

There are only 2 things I proxy. My Tau battle suit weapons (bought the suits off another player & don't have extra) & Pathfinders.

For the suits they are all armed the same (Plas / MP / MT) so it's never a big deal. As for the pathfinders, I like the rail rifle models but It's not worth the points to lose a ML, also I use FW w/o the big shoulder pad as pathfinders but I make sure to give them a Pulse Carbine instead of the rifle they all have.

I have become tired of proxy in apocalypse now. Too many players want to play as huge armies as possible, therefore using models from on of their armies as the other. I don't like it. Their goal is to try out the most badass units with all the best/expensive equipment. However they don't have the models for it.

The idea about apocalypse for me was always to bring as much as possible of your army and play with all of it, instead of being limited in points and force organization charts. Some players use the freedom apocalypse gives to proxy and cheese the game. That to me is the wrong point of view for apocalypse.

I have never complained about a player occasionally using proxy in various degrees in friendly games, as long as it doesn't repeats time after time.

There’s an important distinction to be made between ‘proxy’ and ‘counts-as’ here, as the two are very different.

To proxy is to temporarily use something hanging around to represent a model you don’t currently own or is unavailable for some reason and that the object probably bears minimal resemblance to what it is trying to represent. This is a non-desirable solution, but allows you to replace models which have been lost/forgotten/broken or to test out potential new units without the upfront cost of buying that unit and possibly finding it actually sucks.

The former is typically an improvised solution to a problem that would otherwise stop you playing. I’m tolerant of this if it’s obvious the person honestly forgot or just broke something, even in tournament games so long as the person is reasonable about it (i.e. does not then try to gain an advantage by purposely substituting a model that is clearly the wrong size).

The latter is acceptable amongst friends; my gaming buddies do it all the time to test experimental lists or units. I remember me and a friend confusing a lot of people at a store when we played a Tyranid vs Tyranid game the day the codex was released using our space marine armies. Rhinos as Trygons and vehicle damage markers as Termagaunts is not a situation to spring on an unsuspecting player you haven’t met before, and defiantly not at a tournament. Between friends having a laugh, why not?

A less extreme example is my imperial guard army. Built for 4th edition, all the special weapons in the force are plasma guns. But on the rare times it’s wheeled out for a 5th ed game, my friends are happy for me to proxy all the plasma guns as melta guns. It’s a universal change, is non-ambiguous and they’re understanding that it would be a hell of a task to replace all 21 special weapons.

Counts-As is something very different. Counts-as is to purposely use a non-standard model to represent something it isn’t for modelling / fluff reasons. It’s not a stop-gap, it’s not a temporary solution, and it’s a permanent change. This has a whole different set of rules, because you aren’t getting by on good will.

As an example, a player at my gaming club has marines mounted on Lizardmen Carnasaurs in his Salamanders army to count-as attack bikes. It’s not an attempt to gain an advantage; the carnosaur is much larger than the bike it’s counting as. It’s not an attempt to save money, the carnosaur is more expensive, and the cost of the marine and multimelta has to be accounted for too. Instead, it gets by on ‘rule-of-cool’ because it’s awesome, and I’m happy to play against it. You might need to be told what it represents once, but after that it’s easy to remember.

Bad counts-as however, is a bad thing. A player at a local tournament used an Ork Battlewagon to counts-as a Trukk. Ok, Orks have a flimsy regard for conformity, but that’s just confusing. A player looking at that army will just assume it’s a Battlewagon. Similarly, a player has a white and blue generic marine army which he uses as whatever marine codex just came out. That’s not cool, it’s just cheap.

I’m currently making a 40k Beastmen army using the Daemons of Chaos rules because I dislike metal models and want a more coherent looking force than the mismatch that most daemon armies are. I’ve tried to make everything as obvious as possible – model’s skin colour will be of their God, they’ll have banners of the appropriate colour and with their God’s symbol on, and the models are as close to their daemon counterpart as I could make: Gors as Plaguebearers (they don’t sell Pestigor anymore, grumble), Centigor as Slaanesh Fiends (The least obvious unit, as Slaanesh get two fast units, Fiends and Seekers), Minotaurs as Bloodcrushers, Chariots as Heralds on Chariots and Chaos Hounds as Fleshhounds. Going by my own ‘I’ll tell you what it is once and you should get it’ rule, do you think this will pass?

When they are too large / too small, and when the player using them loses track of which ones are which.

I'm having a hard time with planning out my army because i'm afraid i'm going to put the wrong pieces on the models and people will say that it's not correct. That there are certain pieces that make it upgraded to a branchnymph or whatever special upgrade i'm trying to do at that point.

What's missing from this discussion is the most important rule of all. Communication with your opponent. It may be difficult to communicate ahead of time with your opponent if you're just playing a pick-up game at a local shop, but it's never to late to discuss with your opponent what you are each trying to get out of the game you are playing.

Your opponent just enjoys the rules, and wants to use colored stones for their armies. Fine, but if you place a premium on the spectacle of plainted armies, then that person might not be your ideal opponent, and you're well within your rights. To let them know how you feel and even decline the game.

What I'm trying to say is that in a friendly game (tournaments have thier own rules) there is no set "line". The only line is the one you and your opponent agree to for that specific game, and what agree too is probably going to depend on a multitude of factors such as how well you know the opponent, how good a sport they are, how often you or they proxy/counts-as, their attitude, whether the person is making any effort to build their own army, etc, etc.

As to what was said by others previously...

GC Mandrake makes an excellent point about the differences between Proxy, Count's-As and the importantce of the Rule-Of-Cool. Alot of these kind of discussions start without defining the terms involved.

I personally am usually fine with some counts as, and almost always willing to extend someone the benefit of the doubt, if their forces are modeled and consistent. You want to use your painted (insert random sci-fi troopers army that are cheaper than GW) as Imperial guard. Fine, as long as all the standard weapons are lasguns, all the support weapons of one given type correspond to a certain type of IG weapon,etc. I have no problem with that.

You want to use your Ultramarines as BA (on a regular basis, not just to try rules). As long as you're willing to go WYSIWYG on the weapons, that's fine with me.

and so on...

Lastly, about apocalypse, Doesn't it say somewhere that all models, except for interesting "counts-as" conversions are supposed to be WYSIWYG?

It says so in the apocalypse book? I don't have it, so I'd like to know which page number it's on, or I can ask my friends if they have read it. Thanks Mandrake for clearing things out.

I am of course in favour of proxy lost/forgotten/testing, but never on a regular basis or anything beyond the absolute minimal.

What you call count-as I call conversion, but if it's well done and reasonable (Like Salamanders mentioned earlier) that would only be an improvement.

What I am tired of is the escalating use of count-as, let's say a chaos marine as a space marine in a space marine list. The two models are similar, and may be similarly equipped, but I don't like it. Another trend I've noticed is that some players don't care to model plasma guns or melta guns. In apocalypse they use ridiculous amounts of such special weapons without having it on the models (typical of Imperial Guard with their veterans).

I think some of the counts-as army switches (Chaos using BA stats for example) are the ineveitable result of GW Codex creep. If you have a set of players who percieve their chosen army to be weaker than a more recent army that is armed and organized similarly then it's not surprising that they may choose to use the new stats for their existing miniatures.

I lived through 2 editions of mediocre online BA codicies, so not having the newest/strongest army doesn't bother me. However, as long as it's close to WYSIWYG, I'm not comfortable with telling someone they can't use the "new" stats because their codex is outclassed by the newest breed of uber-marines. It seems a bit cheesy to me, but I put the blame more on GW than the players.

Of course, I'm just happy to find the time to get my toys on the table, so I'm not terribly picky about peripheral issues.

i had a friend who had a whole bunch of kroot but didnt' have the models yet and i gave him a nervous approval when he said that he wanted to use a whole mess of empty black and clear bases as the kroot. well by the end of the game i kept sweeping the field for what to shoot at but kept forgetting about his "invisible kroot", we had a laugh about it but i told him we couldn't do that like ever again.

Baxx wrote:Too many players want to play as huge armies as possible, therefore using models from on of their armies as the other.

The idea about apocalypse for me was always to bring as much as possible of your army and play with all of it, instead of being limited in points and force organization charts.

Treating a Chaos Marine as a Space Marine, or vice versa is OK. Treating a Termagant as a Marine isn't.

Apoc is points limited - you still play a fixed point value per player / per side. It's not a game of "see who can pile more stuff on the board". Well, not exactly...
____

GCMandrake wrote:I remember me and a friend confusing a lot of people at a store when we played a Tyranid vs Tyranid game the day the codex was released using our space marine armies.

A less extreme example is my imperial guard army. Built for 4th edition, all the special weapons in the force are plasma guns. But on the rare times it’s wheeled out for a 5th ed game, my friends are happy for me to proxy all the plasma guns as melta guns.

As an example, a player at my gaming club has marines mounted on Lizardmen Carnasaurs in his Salamanders army to count-as attack bikes.

A player at a local tournament used an Ork Battlewagon to counts-as a Trukk.

a player has a white and blue generic marine army which he uses as whatever marine codex just came out.

I’m currently making a 40k Beastmen army using the Daemons of Chaos rules because I dislike metal models and want a more coherent looking force than the mismatch that most daemon armies are.

If you both agree to the proxies, it's all good, but generally, I wouldn't accept Marines standing in as Nids.

For a one-off game, *ALL* Special Weapons being Meltas is fine. Having *some* Specials Weapons be Meltas and others not, is not cool.

Using Carnasaurs as Attack Bikes is cool, and thematic for Salamanders. He gets bonus points!

Battlewagon as Trukk is not cool. There are distinct models for each, and it's just confusing.

Generic Marines are cool, provided that the weapons and options are correct. He plays a generic chapter, and as long as the upgrades and options are clearly modeled WYSIWYG / counts-as (like the Carnasaur), you have no basis for complaint. There are a *lot* of Grey Marines players out there who do precisely this. Jervis himself, included.

Using WFB Beastmen models for 40k Daemons is OK, because there aren't any 40k Beastmen and Daemons can take any shape. You are matching shapes and following colors and Marks / Icons, so this is pretty clear to the opponent. All good, I'd play it. I'd also accept an army using WFB Ghouls, Dryads, and so forth for Daemons because those models don't appear in 40k, and Daemons are variable shape.
____

Eilif wrote:What's missing from this discussion is the most important rule of all. Communication with your opponent.

I personally am usually fine with some counts as, and almost always willing to extend someone the benefit of the doubt, if their forces are modeled and consistent.

You want to use your painted (insert random sci-fi troopers army that are cheaper than GW) as Imperial guard.

You want to use your Ultramarines as BA (on a regular basis, not just to try rules).

Lastly, about apocalypse, Doesn't it say somewhere that all models, except for interesting "counts-as" conversions are supposed to be WYSIWYG?

Exactly. Communication is key.

Consistency is key.

If someone wants to field their OOP Bauhaus or Growlers "counts as", all good, as long as they're consistent and clear about what's what, and it's instantly visible from a WYSIWYG perspective.

Full color, full Heraldry, full insignia Ultramarines as BA, not cool. If every bit on the models screams "ULTRAMARINES" then that what the opponent is going to expect, not Death Company, etc. OTOH, if we're talking about blue marines, supplemented with BA-specific models (e.g. black marines with red chainswards using the BA DC bitz, turret swaps with the twin AssCan, etc.), and *removing* any UM-specific models, then that would be OK. Nows it's just a blue-painted Grey Marines army, which is OK.

Apoc needs WYSIWYG because of the size and scale.

The Night Stalker wrote:and he seemed to be pulling rules out of thin air, most of which I couldn't really challenge because I had ever heard of the unit in question.

He didn't have the rules with him? That's your first and biggest problem - even if his models were perfect.


Personally, proxies = not allowed.

Unless you're testing a new army and you've arranged it with me in advance.

Baxx wrote:It says so in the apocalypse book? I don't have it, so I'd like to know which page number it's on, or I can ask my friends if they have read it.
... In apocalypse they use ridiculous amounts of such special weapons without having it on the models (typical of Imperial Guard with their veterans).

That flies in the face of what Apocalypse is all about. Apocalypse is all about:

"Just bring your collection and play" (Apoc. Page 18) , it's NOT about play what you don't have.

Additionally, it reads

"... in Apocalypse battles upgrades must absolutely be represented on the model as otherwise keeping track of which model has which upgrade becomes very hard" (Apoc. Page 18)

The ONLY allowance that Apoc makes for Counts-as is:

"The 'counts as' rule allows you to apply the rules for existing units to older or scratch built models that do not have rules of their own." (Apoc. Page 62)

Counts as is a way for defunct units to play, and for folks to bring in creations of their own design. It's NOT a chance for all a person's rhino's to become Land Raiders.

Some folks seem to think that Apocalypse is a sort of "do whatever" game, but it's not. There's a big difference between "bring whatever" and "do whatever".

I can't be one to speak as I distinctly remember proxying a TV remote for a Rhino back in 2007, but I hate proxies. It's fine if you want to try out a unit, but actually buy the stuff eventually.
Now if it's something as a fex for a Tyrannofex or Tervigon or a FW dread for a regular dread, I don't care.
Greetsz,
Mr. Self Destruct

Wow, I feel much better about my proxies after reading this thread. The only thing I have completely proxied was using nalgene bottles for drop pods. Everything else was switching weapons on my old vehicles that I made before magnets (i.e. saying my original predator annihilator has an autocannon, and my MM/HB landspeeder has MM/HF). I have also used some of the 2nd edition starter set flamer marines as melta guns before I finally got around to buying more special weapons.

But my favorite proxy of all time is my roommate's battle wagon. He took a G.I. Joe TigerCat and modded it to make a flat bed in the back and put a single big GI Joe gun on a turret in the front. It is pretty awesome.

I think the tiger cat would be an awesome base for a Battle wagon conversion. It's stuff like that, that tempts me to play orks.

Oh yeah it is super awesome! He has tons of sweet ork conversions like a deff dread made out of a dreadnaught body with the army off a toy of the exoskeleton from Aliens. His killa kans are IG sentinels with giant wrecking balls and orky guns bolted on.

MekanobSamael wrote:Termagants as M&M's! That way you get a delicious snack every time your opponent kills some.

How about Peeps?

I had a particularly problematic pick-up game of 40k last Thursday with an IG player who:
1. Proxied a Medusa as a broken Rhino.
2. Proxied a Manticore as a Basilisk.
3. Had 20+ legs on a base as guardsmen.
4. Proxied every single one of his heavy weapons (as far as I could tell).
5. Had a command squad which had an astropath and and I think a master of the fleet, but not modeled as such.
6. Didn't even have enough guardsmen models to represent all the ones in his transports.
7. And, of course, almost nothing was painted.

I, on the other hand, had a WYISWYG Iron Warriors army that was fully painted. I had one proxy terminator (different weapon loadout) because one of the terminators broke in transport, which, honestly, I think is a fair proxy if there ever was one. (Note to self: pack superglue next time!)

You cannot seriously expect me to keep track of what you've got when half your army is not what it looks like. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that level of proxying is an unfair advantage that lends itself to cheating. It was almost a relief to see his two Leman Russes and Sentinel squad pop out from reserves, as they were miraculously WYISWYG.

I'm not sure I'd play that opponent again - and if I did, I'd insist he keep his army sheet on the table within close reach so I could peruse it as needed.