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Such as Alpharius, or the mastodon tank

As long as it has paint, it's fun. Have played against people with Styrofoam cup Dreads before and enjoyed it.

It is only recent that almost all things do have models and I always have enjoyed the conversions.

Alpharius? GW has about a thousand models that could be him...


Seriously, though, so long as they have a decent stand in, I don't know why anyone would have an issue with it.

If it fits the role I do not care. Someone using a soda bottle as a tank on the other hand is not fine.

 phantombap wrote:
Such as Alpharius, or the mastodon tank

An Alpharius counts-as seems more reasonable to me than a Mastodon counts-as. The Mastodon is gigantic and has a very unique set of weapons and capabilities, so any conversion is going to have to do a pretty good job of representing these things on the tabletop. Something tells me a poorly painted Baneblade was doing the proxy legwork in this case...

Both Alpharius and the Mastodon have models on their way, just wait a bit.

For things that really have no model, a conversion that is fluffy and looks good will do. But it absolutely must fit in the fluff!

I prefer if the model is at least somewhat accurate. Raptors as Night Lords ASM? 100% fine. Crisis Suits as Terminators? Fine a few times, but if you intend to keep playing them you should probably get the real stuff.

3rd party not-Terminators as Terminators? Dandy.

I thought most things had a model now, but if it doesn't then anything passable is fine.

Now back in the eighties and early nineties tons of stuff didn't have models. Plus the internet wasn't a huge thing yet so even if a model existed your local store might not carry it anyway so you had to scratch build it.

I think the main principles are as follows:

1. It is acceptable to use something other than the official GW model to represent a given model in a codex, whether or not an "official" model actually exists.

2. What you actually put on the table top should represent that model in the codex (the WYSIWYG rule).

3. The constituents of whatever you actually put on the table top should be "from" GW, at least, for the most part.

Example: I use tactical marine models with flamers to represent assault marines with flamers.

From what I understand, it's also common practice to take a power armored marine, file down a shoulder pauldron, glue it over his head, and attack a boltpistol and a power weapon and call him a librarian.

Some of my "sternguard" are actually tactical marines with a scoped boltgun, a different paint scheme and tabards (is that the correct word?) on at least one of their shoulder pads.

My captain is a sternguard model with a different color scheme, a power fist, a stormbolter and a backpack with an iron halo and banner glued on. And a tabard on one of his shoulder pads.

Most people would be perfectly fine with this.

If someone puts down a generic model, in grey plastic, then I'm not going to let them. That's just boring. Any attempt to convert or make a cool looking model is fine by me. It doesn't even have to be well done.