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I did the same with my Dark Eldar Warriors. Each has its own helmet style. Some with Plumes, some with spikes, some with spikes and plumes, etc....It twas easy to make 8 different squads that way.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
Slightly off topic but since we're talking about taking in things at a glance- one of my pet peeves is the lack of easily seen squad markings. Since my store uses ITC in a lot of games it's nice to be able to tell who belongs to which unit. And by easy I don't mean "See this guys shoulder pad it has a little spot of green at the very top as opposed to this guys little spot of blue. I mean how hard would it be to band a base or make all the bases of one unit different from the other same equipped unit.

Major problem then is what happens when you have variable unit compositions regularly like say I have? I don't have same unit loadouts all the time so that would require tons of spare models to swap around.

I’m a big proponent of WYSIWG. It helps everyone, speeds up gameplay, and is kind of the point, yes? If you like swapping out stuff all the time (as I absolutely do), magnetize your stuff.

Obviously there are going to be exceptions, some proxying when starting a new army and so forth, some wiggle room for cool conversions, etc.. but seriously just play with the models you have.

I’d put WYSIWYG even above painting.

Someone mentioned trading bits, that is a great idea and there is probably a lot of people willing to do that.

One thing I always liked was buying bits online and sometimes even building whole models out of bits sites on eBay. I used to have a pretty awesome Honour Guard of five dudes, two with swords and two with axes and the champion had a T-Hammer and Combat Blade. The whole squad I made from Blood Angels, Space Wolf and Dark Angels bits I got online and I mashed em up with some vanilla marine stuff. Everyone was jealous of that squad and they turned into such a fire magnet, not only because they smashed faces relentlessly, but because they were the centerpieces of the army. All I did was mash up a bunch of space marine bits, no more skill involved than putting together a normal kit. But the results were amazing and the squad looked great on the table. Sadly they went with all my other GW stuff in the Great Purge.

I could have just said my regular Tacs were HGs and ran proxies and not spent what amounted to about the same as an SM command squad. But would that have been as fun for me or anyone else?

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
Is this a troll post? It really feels like a topic made for the sake of making crap arguments and throwing obscure references that may or may not support thr OP's point.

WYSIWYG is far from dead, I find it a requirement for my games unless it is currently incapable due to finanacial restrictions my opponent has.

I assure you this is not a troll post. To give you some background I have about 8k in orks half of which is fully painted; 2.5k in White scars fully painted; 2k of Grey knights fully painted; and a whole host of other bits and bobs. My post is not in reference to proxying but it is more in the realms of I've spent the last 2 editions equipping things in certain ways. I have a full time job a 3 year old son and a wife that persistently questions the cost of my hobby(if only she knew the truth). My most valuable resource right now is time. I've never been a true hobbyist preferring reading all the lore I can get my hands on and actually playing the game. I have fat fingers and have never gotten down to magnetising anything.

In this context I have marines equipped with grav guns rather than plasma and grav cannons over lascannons. I've got hordes of choppa boyz and have repurposed many of my shoota boyz into tankbustas. The idea that as the edition shifts priority for listbuilding shifts and certain weapon loadouts become redundant. I'm actually in the bizarre situation that I'm now looking for plasma guns which was never an issue before.

I paint my models not because I love the hobby but because I have a level of respect for my opponents to match their basic hobby requirements but true WYSWYG is a pepretually moving target in 40k

I think it's sort of a two way street where both players should be reasonable. You should do what you can to be WYSIWYG and your opponent should be cool when you can't be 100%. I don't mind non WYSIWYG stuff as long as it's reasonable and not confusing. Saying "All flamers on my marines are actually plasma rifles" is no problem. Saying "That flamer in that squad is a plasma gun, that flamer in that squad is a melta" is kinda crappy. Even then I'd let that slide in a casual game if you mark the model with a piece of paper or something.

For characters I usually don't care because those usually have the most options and you own the least of them. A marine player will probably end up with 2-3 of each special weapon, but you might only have 1 captain. I only have the newer plastic Farseer with the spear, but I pretty much only run him with a sword. Stuff like that never bothers me.

Has anyone mentioned that it's not unusual for people to be a bit looser about WYSIWYG when new codices/editions launch and people want to experiment with new builds/units etc. Given the constant updates to the game atm, it's not surprising if people overall noticing less emphasis in their local area on it for the moment.

WYSIWYG does not equal "no conversions".

Conversions, IMO, are amazing; as long as they are consistent. As long as my opponent tells me "this Demon Prince has claws and wings" and it looks like, well yeah, he does... sure. It only becomes an issue if its not outlined properly, or if people are pulling "proxies" out; i.e. models they didn't even attempt to convert into something they are supposed to be. Unless, of course, its a friendly game.

I guess this becomes an issue when people abuse conversions, i.e. modeling for advantage. I make a very conscious effort to do WYSIWYG to avoid confusion, like I converted ALL my CCW cultists to have weapons that could be seen as autoguns, or double pistols to be auto-guns; or strapped rifles over their backs.

I try to use WYSIWYG, but I don't take it too far. For instance, I've switched my Death Company to bolters in this edition instead of bolt pistols, but I already had 20ish DC models with bolt pistols. I'm not just going to stop using those models and build all new ones with bolters/chainswords. Nobody I've played so far has had an issue with me saying that all those bolt pistols are actually bolters.

My group plays power levels and thus WYSIWYG becomes more important. We allow exceptions and insist on any deviations get identified before the game begins. The only two poor games where one player tabled another were both examples of one player taking advantage and having multiple proxies that just happened to exploit the other players weaknesses. So we have started a discussion on how many exceptions we will allow.

My two cents,

CB

I really only enforce WYSIWYG for big stuff. That guy is supposed to field a hammer? Please don't model a sword then. He has a banner/shield? Please give him one.

Guns I don't care so much about. I can't tell 90% of the gun models apart anyway. So just give me the list.

Tiny gear like Tyranid sacs, grenades, e.t.c. I really just do not care if they're on the model or not.