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He's carrying with him an army carrying case.

He asks if anyone is up for a game.

You ask him what he's playing.

He gives you a [INSERT FACTION HERE] army list. No forgeworld, everything looks fine and legal.

You agree and both begin pulling out models.

You notice that his models look little-to-nothing like GW Models, only their size is comparable. Though they do look right at home within the setting even if somewhat out of fluff for the faction he is playing. You can tell he's put a lot of work into these models.

In fact they look more like [INSERT OTHER FACTION]. You can clearly tell that that [MODEL] has a particular [WEAPON] and even tell that that Unit is [TROOPS] and that other one is an [ELITE]

You ask the guy "What are these?" indicating his army.

"I'm playing the [INSERT FIRST FACTION] Codex, but they're just fluffed as being [INSERT SECOND FACTION]. I sculpted the models myself. I hope you don't mind too much."

Your FLGS has no rules against such a thing, so how do you react?

what's the problem here? You play the guy, I don't even see where there is an issue.

You roll for initiative and start playing.

Dude could be using glued-together bottlecaps and model cars for all I care.

For the army he's playing, can you tell that a meltagun is a meltagun, and so on, no big deal. Let's play.

That is so freaking cool would be my response for anny great looking army. Lets play!

Sounds awesome. I'd be interested in knowing if this was an actual situation that happened and what the army was, but in general I'm a huge fan of alternative models, creative counts-as army and custom jobs.

Yeah, rule of cool here.

So long as its recognizable and consistent, you're fine. Extra mega bonus points if it looks ballin' too.

Since it's clear what unit is what model, and he's being upfront with it, I have no problem. I commend him for his excellent work, although I of course ask him if he's had any issues with these at tournaments - purely out of curiosity. I'll be looking forward to our game

Additionally, it's clear that there's a lot of work put into these - so it's not like I'm fighting someone claiming a pop can is a Carnifex ("Hello boys!" - cookies for whomever gets the reference).

Poll should be multiple choice.

That is so freaking cool.
Sounds fine to me. It's just a friendly game.
I will expect him to answer questions when I ask him what model that unit is but otherwise I'm fine with the idea

I love it when people put extra effort in their armies, and do fun and interesting conversions. But whenever you do step outside the “official” model, you should be courteous to your opponent and let them know what’s what. Reminding them when needed.

As others have said, as long it's clear what everything is meant to represent, play the game. On the other hand, if it's convoluted and all but impossible to figure out the flying feth anything is, then absolutely you're within your right to politely decline a game.

I've seen some really insanely cool scratch builds over the years, two of which come to mind are;

1. An all 'counts as' Necron army that was mostly scratch sculpted to look like an army of Zoats!
Everything looked absolutely amazing, and you could readily tell apart all the various units.

2. A 'counts as' "Looted Sisters army" based around a horde of scratch-built grots and their insane creations.
While the army looked visually quite impressive, playing against it was actually confusing as ****! The only unit that was even remotely easy to tell what was what, was the unit of 'power armoured grots' that counted as basic bolter sisters. All the various 'grot mechs' however were just impossible to keep strait.
I lost that game simply because I spent more time trying to remember what was what & repeatedly asking my opponent what stuff was. The guy was a nice enough opponent and all, but you couldn't pay me enough to play against that army again, simply because it was too much of an utter mess trying to track everything.

I'm fine with it, as long as it's clear what everything is, that sounds ok with me.

My answer depends entirely on the kind of list my opponent is using. If his chosen faction is blatantly an attempt to get more powerful rules than the faction that's more appropriate fluff-wise then I'm probably not going to be very interested in that game. If the choice of rules faction makes sense for something other than "I want to win more" then I'd probably be ok with it, though I think your premise of "everything is clearly WYSIWYG" is incredibly optimistic for the average counts-as/proxy army.

Sounds awesome, but again I would want to make sure I knew what each model was supposed to be rules-wise before we started.

Other then that, heck-yeah I'd play this guy. sculpting his own models meant he probably took way more time and effort than I did with my 3/4s painted Ork army.

Normally I only play armies that fit in the fluff and aesthethic, but if he has put in a lot of work I'd definitely make an exception.

Depends how cool the models are.

A family of assumptions which I see you included some in the OP would need to be made for me to answer this question without seeing the army first but yeah if it's a fabulous looking army, no confusions and all said assumed criteria met (which isn't hard for me, I'm open minded), I don't see why not.

That's pretty cool actually. The only case I wouldn't play him if they were proxied as eldar.

 Paradigm wrote:
Sounds awesome. I'd be interested in knowing if this was an actual situation that happened and what the army was, but in general I'm a huge fan of alternative models, creative counts-as army and custom jobs.

This is a situation I run into every time I play, because I'm the guy doing it. My army is either IG, Renegades and Heretics, or Elysians.

The clincher is that 95% of the infantry are 3rd party ork minis - Spellcrow and Kromlech. The ones which aren't 3rd party are still GW orks. Most of my vehicles are in a similar situation, I have converted 1/35 half-tracks that I use as Chimera, tanks are a smattering of both converted model kits (usually 1/35) with a few Ramshackle Games pieces. My stationary artilelry are Long Tom models kits which I've converted, some WW2 NamenWurfer (sp) kits, and stationary AT from historical kits / other retailers which I'll use as either quad-guns or Hydra Flak Platforms.

All of my infantry are properly equipped. They've all got Orc sized rifles to represent lasguns. Special weapons are all flash-gun weapons appropriately put together, I.E. using the head which looks exactly like a (massive) melta-gun nozzle to represent a melta gun, or the one which looks like a (gigantic) plasma-gun head to represent plasma guns. Underslung attachments and even clips are standardized for these weapons, to make them all look the same and minimize confusion. The list goes on, but 97% is WYSIWYG, with the exception of a couple of HQ's / squad leads who have powerfists(klaws)modeled on but are not equipped.

I haven't had any problems playing people yet and I'm not even done. Ergo still using a fair number of "standard" GW boyz as normal geq, and I'm only just starting to tackle painting this beast.

No FW, no game

Long as he tells me what's proxying what, let's roll.

Sounds like the situation every time I walked in with my old Bloodaxe Blitzkreeg army. Ork models with all lasguns and Guard weapons and equipment. never had much of an issue.

if it looks like he's really put heart into it to make it "his" army. I would for sure play it. I love playing armies that stand out!

If it looks cool and everything is pretty easy to recognize what it is then good on him. I'll play it.

I couldn't complain when all of my cultists aren't even WYSIWYG.

I love fighting proxy armies, especially if it's clear that care and effort has been put into them and the theme. I wouldn't care if the army was made out of (correctly scaled) anime figurines. I'd still give them the game, and fail to see the problem with doing so.

we have a guy who uses legos for his blood bowl undead team. I have never not had fun playing against him. As long as its a good game...bonus if there good looking miniatures,

kburn wrote:
That's pretty cool actually. The only case I wouldn't play him if they were proxied as eldar.

That would have been my question, "are they Eldar?"

If not then we're good to go.

And maybe if they are. There are still some interesting Eldar armies.

I'd like to see a Sisters of Battle army using Blood Angel rules (now Blood Angels can take heavy flamers in Tactical squads).

As long as I know what everything is, I'm fine with that.
(If you've got a proxied or heavily converted army, the responsibility does fall on you to make sure your opponent knows what things are what).

He sculpted them himself?

I enthuse at his skill and ask him detailed questions on how long it took to make them and how he did the vehicles, all the time saying how I wish I could do that.

I so wanna play vs The Smurfs army.

http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=129973