Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I'm not really strict on WYSIWYG but I do like because it helps with the narrative of a game, but I know a few people who are and I have a question for those who consider themselves to be WYSIWYG gamers:

How far does WYSIWYG stretch? I ask because I've built a Tempestus Scions Command Squad with Plasma Guns, but one of the guys with a plasma gun is converted to have a banner in his other hand (I can't help myself, Command Squads just look a bit sad to me if they're not flying colours). So would it be safe for me to say 'He has a Plasma Gun in his right hand therefore he is equipped with a Plasma Gun and not the Banner' or does technically giving him two potential loadouts a bit of a stretch?

I wouldn't complain, and I suspect it'd take a pretty over-the-top strict person to do so.

As long as he HAS THE GUN, I don't care what's in his off hand. I don't think anyone actually runs the Banner for Scions anyway, so feel free to toss it on him.

In my opinion.

I take it the banner is a specific piece of wargear with rules? Is it a relevant thing, or just a minor buff.

While not strict WYSWYG, I’d be fine with “He doesn’t actually have the banner, but it just looks cool so I needed to build him”

With a few provisions:
There are no banners (mechanically) in your list. If not, we end up with “This banner is real, these are just decoration. Hope you can remember which is which” Which is one of the things WYSWYG is supposed to prevent.

You play it consistently. If I play you 4 games, and it’s just for show, and the 5th game you actually paid points for it, I might get torqued. If you do flip flop, be clear to your opponents what the deal is for that game.

This is more relevant if it has solid rules (I honestly don’t know what it does for you). If it lets you do something lame like re-roll pinning tests, I don’t care either way. If it give the squad +1A, fearless, and counter attack, that’s something I need to pay very careful attention to. Those sort of rules will impact how I treat the unit on the table.

To be honest, I feel your pain here. I have a standard bearer for my company. I’m quite fond of the model, and think I did a good job painting him. It feels wrong to field the command squad without him. But he feels like such a waste of points. Not just for the ones spent on the banner (which is mostly useless) but the opportunity cost of not fielding a more relevant modal in the squad. On my list of things to do is paint up a better equipped/magnetized guy with a furled banner on his back. That way the fluff bunny in me know that the company colors are on the field, but there isn’t the WYSWYG issue of the banner like you are having.

I feel the pain too, the colours must fly tall and proud. But the rules aren't great. I like to be as WYSIWYG as possible on my models but there area few things I don't do . I find having a replacement model is always useful to bring for any that may raise questions.

I don't mind too much about it in all honesty, but when opponents get picky about my banners or snipers even if i explain it and keep consistency I switch. I'm trying to have fun with a cool looking models, but you can't win em all.

Some opponent's demand full WYSIWYG, and if that happens take a glance at their models. One guy I faced demanded full WYSIWYG, but his marines had no grendades on. I wanted to try ou using a power maul instead of a sword and he wouldn't let me so when he charged my guys in cover my commisar started rolling and he said he had higher initiative. Pointed out the lack of WYSIWYG grenades and he soon loosened his opinion on absolute WYSIWYG and started playing a bit easier in the group. Was real an improvement for all. We all began being better at correct wargear but also open to just trying new loadouts every now and then

To me, consistency is the big issue. The guy modeled with a banner, but not actually equipped with it would't faze me at all. Heck, it wouldn't even faze me to say "I know this squad is modeled with plasma guns, but this game, they're all meltaguns" - as long as they're all meltaguns. If you said "this squad actually has plasma, this one has melta" even though the models all have plasma, that'd be annoying, and mixing withing a squad would drive me bugs.

I'm with Nevelon. Pretty easy for me to ignore the banner as a piece of wargear, especially if there are no other actual banners in the army to potentially confuse me. Rule of cool in this case wins if its consistently applied.

I think consistency helps WYSIWYG stretch a bit too. As other suggested, as long as no other models actually have a certain upgrade, you can use it to represent whatever.

Grey Knights, for example do not come with enough Psycannons on some of their kits. The Psilencer looks a bit like a Pyscannon (some would argue it looks MORE like how a Psycannon should look). Therefore it is quite common for GK players to have a mix of Psycannons and Psilencers representing all Psycannons.
As long as no model actually has a Psilencer, there is no issue. But as soon as you have to keep track of who has the ACTUAL Pscilencer and which ones are 'Psycannons" then the WYSIWYG has been stretched too far.

Where's WYSIWYG in the rulebook?

O wait, it isn't.

That's curious, since WYSIWYG has been in almost every rule book up till now. Not, perhaps as a strict rule but a general suggestion for gameplay.

I build my models towards with the WYSIWYG mentality but I would not care if someone was holding a Standard that is not being used. For me the modeled Wargear is a bit different than modeled weapons, since it's not like you have two flamers in a squad and pick and choose which one is the meltagun depending on how you are being attacked. Standards are a waste of points anyway, but saying that it is not an actual upgrade before a match should be good enough. I doubt you'd even have the chance to attempt to use it against a halfway decent assault force anyway.

I completely agree with Nevelon and Galef.

In the specific case of MT's banner, I always assume they're just for show, given how bad they are (for those who don't know, a unit with a banner counts as scoring an additional wound when calculating assault results, for 10pts…).
I would actually prefer you to model the banner and not count it, rather than not model it at all, because that's the easiest way to quickly recognize a command squad on the field.

WYSIWYG is impossible when you have character models who take different equipment in each game. Only option is to get extra arms with different weapons, magnetize everything, but that's expensive, time consuming and ridiculous and I don't make anyone do it. Only other options is to buy multiple models (even more silly).

 TheManWithNoPlan wrote:
So I'm not really strict on WYSIWYG but I do like because it helps with the narrative of a game, but I know a few people who are and I have a question for those who consider themselves to be WYSIWYG gamers:

How far does WYSIWYG stretch? I ask because I've built a Tempestus Scions Command Squad with Plasma Guns, but one of the guys with a plasma gun is converted to have a banner in his other hand (I can't help myself, Command Squads just look a bit sad to me if they're not flying colours). So would it be safe for me to say 'He has a Plasma Gun in his right hand therefore he is equipped with a Plasma Gun and not the Banner' or does technically giving him two potential loadouts a bit of a stretch?

I don't have a problem with it. "He doesn't actually have a banner." "Cool." Game on.

It's a shame too because the stormtroopers have one of the coolest banners.

I actually considered doing this as well, except I was going to place a small standard in every platoon/command squad. Mainly because I run a ton of infantry and I was trying to think of ways to help the command squads stand out on the tabletop.

The problem is I actually run standards in the company command squads, and theyre VERY important (they let you reroll morale/fear/pinning tests, which is crucial) Which means I would run into the problem of "this one is a standard, but that one isn't" that we all know and hate. Worst part is there is no reason to run platoon command standards as they are terrible, count as an extra wound in assault? When on earth is a platoon command squad going to even survive the initial phase of an assault, let alone make it to combat resolution?

I don't see a problem with models having war gear that isn't actually being used in the game, as long as it isn't there for obfuscation or for advantage, and as long as it doesn't suddenly become part of the game (which is something opponents have tried to pull on me before).

As long as it is easy to keep up with which units actually have what, it's cool.

But like MrMoustaffa said, it can be a problem.

 kronk wrote:

 TheManWithNoPlan wrote:
So I'm not really strict on WYSIWYG but I do like because it helps with the narrative of a game, but I know a few people who are and I have a question for those who consider themselves to be WYSIWYG gamers:

How far does WYSIWYG stretch? I ask because I've built a Tempestus Scions Command Squad with Plasma Guns, but one of the guys with a plasma gun is converted to have a banner in his other hand (I can't help myself, Command Squads just look a bit sad to me if they're not flying colours). So would it be safe for me to say 'He has a Plasma Gun in his right hand therefore he is equipped with a Plasma Gun and not the Banner' or does technically giving him two potential loadouts a bit of a stretch?

I don't have a problem with it. "He doesn't actually have a banner." "Cool." Game on.

It's really about consistency. If it were possible to equip multiple banners in an army for whatever bonuses and then you had this one model who carries a banner and is not equipped with it, that's where it starts becoming a problem.

As is, I pretty much do the same thing. Banner carrying IG look cool.

 Bookwrack wrote:

It's really about consistency. If it were possible to equip multiple banners in an army for whatever bonuses and then you had this one model who carries a banner and is not equipped with it, that's where it starts becoming a problem.

Agreed on that. In other WYSIWYG threads, my stance has been: You can say "all flamers are meltas", and I won't bat an eye. If you say "This melta is a flamer, that one is a plasma, and those two are actually melta", I'll pass.

I don't like "Book Keeping" 40k!

I don't mind guys being modeled with upgrades they don't have. I do it myself too sometimes to make a good look cool. As long as you don't have any actual banners or have some way to distinguish the "real" banner from the "mock" one I'd be happy with it.

Something i like to do is (i didn't read all the comments if it was said already sorry, bu i just woke up lol).

I like to put the weapon on the back, over the shoulder etc... when i'm doing conversion work. this way its still there and it looks cool.

I like to keep my army painted up and WYSIWYG and normally I'm fine if my opponent isn't so long as it's not a hodge podge. If I know whats what and he knows whats what I'm generally happy. It's when they roll the game and on turn 2 they're like 'oh I took these bolters as Lascannons' that I get really irate.

I would not mind one bit, I do proxies on my TWC whenever I bring them (because I built them in the least optimized way possible), but otherwise I prefer keeping WYSWYG as it just looks better and is very satisfying to me on the table.

If an opponent is a jerk about it then that's their prerogative.

I'd be fine with it
My fire warriors have servants modeled but I never pay for the upgrade and I've even used the breacher back pack on them.
My devil fishes don't have the d pods moddeled on but that's because Im not quite sure how you'd represent it

While I limit myself to strictly WYSIWYG and I prefer the opposing army to do so, I can cope with the occasional special character having alternate wargear.

Entire armies, tanks etc? Put some more effort in. There are more and more players (particularly in games like 40K/Warmahordes) who are pushing the limits of playing miniature wargames. It starts to beg the question - why bother?

In casual play, WYSIWYG is less important. Just agree with your opponent about what is what, and it should only be an issue with multiple types of weapons in one squad. I have a Command Squad for my Dark Angels with a terrible loadout (I built it to use the 6th edition Standard of Devastation, so bolters and combi-plasmas). I once played it against a friend in a casual game, and said to ignore what was modeled, they all have Gravguns. He was fine with it, since it was understood that all the models were carrying Gravguns. The banner guy and Apothecary were easy to identify (hard to miss a banner after all, and the Apothecary is painted, albeit poorly), so it wasn't confusing.

In a tournament, WYSIWYG should be a little bit stricter, but even then as long as it's not all across the army, there shouldn't be too big a problem. I never run Plasma Pistols (because they're overpriced crap), but some of my models have them. I just make it clear to my opponents that they are Bolt Pistols instead, and no one has ever given me a hard time about it even in tournament play.

Here's what's going to happen, OP, at least in a casual game:

You place your model with a banner.

Your opponent notices the banner: "Is that such and such banner?"

You: "Nope. Just for decoration."

If your opponent isn't a donkey cave, he'll then say: "Ah, alright then. Duly noted."

Just make sure you don't have similar models with banners modeled which actually do have banners as wargear.

Something similar has arisen in games I've played:

Me: Are those melta guns?

Opponent: Nope. Counts as grav.

Me: Ah, alright then.

Me: Is that a thunder hammer?

Opponent: Nope. "Staff of office." Just for show.

Me: Ah, OK.

I'm a kit basher so I'm pretty lax about WYSIWYG.

Had an opponent stretch his budget by glueing leftover Space Marine backpacks and pauldrons onto cheap shop army men - I wish like crazy I'd thought of that.

I'd also like to ask here about the army I want to feel. I've mainly just made the units 'to look cool' but I keep similar wargear across all the dudes.

I'm running some Deathwatch so all the Vanguards and Bikes are in squads with normal Marines.

So...

Seargents with Power Fist - Using power weapons

Mixed combi-weapon squad - All using one type of combi

Heavy Thunder Hammers - Using as Power Weapons

Marine with Sniper Rifle - Vindicare Assassin

Eagle Backpack Marines - Bikes

Hammer and Shield Marines - Vanguard Veterans with MELEE WEAPON HERE and Shields

Teleporter Backpack Marines - Vanguard Veterans with the wargear represented on the model

Would all that be acceptable to you guys?