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Recently I have been toying with the idea of writing a codex for a homemade army I have been thinking of. This led me to research custom codices and what it takes to make any such army balanced in crunch and points wise. I found a number of people that said they would play against homemade armies if they could read the codex first and if they could have two games - one against the homemade army, and one as the homemade army. Many of the codices I found were balanced, and people said that they would play against homemade armies using this codex.

What are your opinions then on using fanmade codices?
Would you allow them?
Would you create your own?
Should I write my own one?

Would I play against a homemade army/codex? Sure once it's balanced and well thought out, might be interesting to play against a homemade army.
Should you write one? Of coarse, why not? If you can find someone willing to play against you what do you have to lose?
What type of army were you thinking of?

Occasionally a home made codex or more often somebodies own version of an existing codex comes up. They look like masses of work to which I salute, but personally I wouldn't have the time.
I would however be happy to play against one, or be the test army to run it against.
Balance would be the major issue, although there are those that say there is very little of that in W40k at the moment.
Write your own if you have somebody you know is happy to play against it, otherwise it's a bit of a waste.

 d00mspire wrote:
Recently I have been toying with the idea of writing a codex for a homemade army I have been thinking of. This led me to research custom codices and what it takes to make any such army balanced in crunch and points wise. I found a number of people that said they would play against homemade armies if they could read the codex first and if they could have two games - one against the homemade army, and one as the homemade army. Many of the codices I found were balanced, and people said that they would play against homemade armies using this codex.

What are your opinions then on using fanmade codices?
Would you allow them?
Would you create your own?
Should I write my own one?

Would I allow them? That depends on the codex and execution of models If codex looks reasonable(I don't even expect full balance. GW codexes are and they are(or at least are supposed to be) pros...) and models look good(bunch of count as....Nah. Starts to smell fan codex for sake of power) sure.

Not creating my own though modifying the 2nd edition ones adding new units and changing things(as well as modifying base rules). And long time ago did have own supplement of sort for epic armageddon. Was fun little project. Never got it quite finished though but army lists got heavy usage.

And should you create own? Sure if you have cool idea and can convince your opponents to at least try go for it!

Pick up game, sure. Friendly game, sure. Competitive game, god no.

90% of fandexes I've seen is overpowered crap arguing "oh but I'm just as good as eldar, it's fair!" so they can pull the kid at the playground using his "invincible shield"

The other 10% is actually cool good ideas which was just people trying to represent their unique force that couldn't really be represented anywhere else, and they were fair and just.

Also, if you want people to play games with your dex, try and make it underpowered or handicapped and avoid special snowflakes.

Nope. 90% of the time fan codices are just fanboy "MY SPACE MAREINS ARE THE AWESOMEST EVAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!" garbage, and most of the remaining 10% suffer from a complete lack of playtesting. And with the sheer diversity of rules in 40k right now it would be hard to imagine an army concept that can't be represented with existing rules (using counts-as models where necessary). Maybe if the author was someone I know and play with regularly I'd consider it, but in a pickup game it's just not worth dealing with all the extra trouble.

Not my cup of tea at all. Mostly for the reasons previously posted.

+1 to the "most of them are comically over-powered, no-penalty garbage created by overzealous teenagers" camp.

I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions out there. I have invariably run into far more of the opposite.

I have seen an instance where we had "need" of a codex: Squats!!!

A friend of ours has a large amount of the stunty guys and he takes FOREVER to get things together so we had to keep the guys going.

We grabbed the original rules and borrowed from many codexes to validate the modernized points and rules
Heck, the "easter egg" terminator suits of theirs took a bit of doing.
We have been updating the codex every rule change and sometimes more if the meta gets nasty like "Decurion".
The "flavor" is mining equipment on steroids (looking at the gene stealer cult "weapons" to add).
The "Termite" in particular is very much in the theme: think of tunneling "drop"-pod.
Thudd Gun... etc.

I do see the concern with other armies: why not pick a proper codex and just do a "counts-as" and it should all work out.
We could combine choice elements of imperial guard and space marines and it should pretty much cover Squats now.
We just have too much material we do not want to give up and they make a great scary opponent for the rest of us.

I heard he took it a couple times to a FLGS and it was well received and people were more than happy to play it.
It really helps if you make a small cheat-sheet of the "special" rules and keep everything else as similar as possible (capabilities and points cost) to other units in 40k.

If a CSM player made CSM book with Factions like the SM book and it was just as powerful HECK yeah I would let him play it.

CSM should be that.

 dakkajet wrote:
Would I play against a homemade army/codex? Sure once it's balanced and well thought out

So you wouldn't be interested in playtesting it, then?

I'd give it a go, certainly. I've been playing Inquisimunda recently, which is nothing but fan-written army lists. No need to let the existence of poorly-written ones prejudice me against the idea.

I'd be happy to play one as a pick up game. Though if it's overpowered don't expect me to play against it more than once

I've read a fair few fan made codices over the years. In my opinion one of the biggest pitfalls (ignoring the power level) is that they tend to be overly complicated. Full of special rules that do add flavour but ultimately just slow the game down. Avoid that pitfall and you and your opponents should have a better time of it.

I would give it a shot if I felt they made a genuine attempt to make a balanced codices, but it it looks like x army is boosted to insane levels (which is usually is) I'll pass.