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Only if the person actually wants to control someone else. I don't play with any unpainted miniatures on the table. I don't care if people paint their miniatures or not or if two people who are not me go ahead and play a game with their grey hordes.

I imagine if someone has some sort of vision for what 40k should look like and they don't find a given miniature or conversion to fit, then whether or not they are a control freak would be if they care at all about what the person does with people who are not them.

At a tournament, it's the TO's job to define acceptable models and people to vote with their entrance fees accordingly. It would be poor form to use the sportsmanship score to penalize someone for using something the event organizers okayed.

 Chamberlain wrote:
I don't care if people paint their miniatures or not or if two people who are not me go ahead and play a game with their grey hordes.

Same. Rock on, people who aren't me.

I don't play with any unpainted miniatures on the table.

I try very hard to not play with any of my own unpainted any longer, but you certainly get a larger player pool if you can stomach other people's unpainted stuff. That said, tabletop wargaming is really sweet when everything is painted, and it's only recently I've gotten to enjoy that in W40K. So thanks 8E

Extremely Brief Anecdote: I used to play WMH, and enjoyed the game. But one of the reasons I ultimately quit was absolutely because nobody painted their gak. I'm in these games for the hobby.

As for tournaments, yea, that's a different kettle of fish and expectations for painting and proxies should be spelled out by the TO before the event. Ideally with paint scoring breakdown and all that - but that's not really what we're talking about it here.

- Salvage

Rule of cool is good by me, as long as its easy to keep track of what is what.

 Chamberlain wrote:
He doesn't want rubric marines. That's approaching it backwards.

He has these models that with some modification and an appropriate paint job would be cool dark mechanicus daemon robots. Then we went and looked for appropriate rules so he could use them on the table top.

The goal was never to make rubric marines.

 feeder wrote:
Quite a bit of gatekeeping in this thread.

If it's clear what the model is supposed to represent, and the owner has put a reasonable amount of effort into making it look decent, then the actual model shouldn't matter.

If one's opponent's models fulfill the above two criteria, and they are still vexing, then one is likely a bit of a control freak and should probably seek help before it degrades one's other, more important interpersonal relationships.

/thread, really.

As long as someone isn't taking the piss("This marine with a flamer is a plasma gun, that marine with a flamer is a sniper rifle, and those three marines with missile launchers are a missile launcher, a plasma cannon, and a lascannon. Also that half-eaten sandwich is an autolas predator."), use whatever rules you like with whatever models you like, "official" be damned. If you want your experience to be more curated than that, form a regular group with people who have similar opinions and game with them.

As head judge and assistant TO for the 40K events at a convention, Gatekeeping is very much my responsibility.

Boss Salvage wrote:I try very hard to not play with any of my own unpainted any longer, but you certainly get a larger player pool if you can stomach other people's unpainted stuff. That said, tabletop wargaming is really sweet when everything is painted, and it's only recently I've gotten to enjoy that in W40K. So thanks 8E

I was only recently convinced to go painted only by a local guy. It's been 4 months and I've noticed the amount of games I've been playing has actually gone up. The local people who do painted only tend to exchange details and be active in social media groups. A lot of the people are more competitive than I am (by far) but if people are painting to score points in an event, I'll still enjoy their painted miniatures even if they crush me and my terrible lists and sloppy game play. Though I'm far happier playing with my group of friends doing skirmishy inquisimunda/qausi-RPG type stuff. Friends of mine now have a lot of young children so we tend to meet up at each other's places as usually someone has to be at home for the kids on a given saturday night.

Once a year I do like to go to an ITC event and meet new people there. They're usually all painted only as people with unpainted miniatures are barred from prizes.

I think there definitely are stylistic differences between model ranges, conversions, proxies, and even paint jobs. I get it that some people have an idea in their head about what the 40k universe looks like and as "anime" as the tau are, for example, I get it when people find most gundams not to fit stylistically with the range (as an example).

As long as I get the explanation before the game and there are not too many. Sometimes you seen really neat models from other ranges that fit perfectly with the genre.

My group instituted that every game played with partially painted miniatures would require something else painted before the next match. Suddenly those armies of silver, grey and black blossomed into colour.

My two cents,

CB

I love conversions and scratch builds. I personally spend an extensive amount of time converting models from starter sets to save money, because it lets me get armies done at around $2 per model or less in a lot of cases. I'm talking about buying large batches of the starter armies and bits and then individually converting each one to fit an actual list.

BUT - I am very careful to only use the EXACT weapons that I'm trying to represent. No exceptions; if it's on my list, it's 1:1 on the model. I don't know all of the rules and wargear options for every army out there, but I know what the weapons look like. Keeping to that convention is, for me, a modicum of courtesy. I spend a lot of time converting my models to make them fit the part, so I am not going to be impressed by someone who just throws down some non-standard models and asks me to remember what each piece is supposed to represent when that takes more effort than their "conversion" did in the first place.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:

 thekingofkings wrote:

Honestly the top ones I wouldn't really know the difference without getting too close to the model than is polite, the middle, depending on the rest of the army, and the hird, no. yeah they are cool models, but no. If we were playing mutant chronicles or Void 1.1 probably.

I would play against any of those with no problem. I personally hate the Dreadknight model and find that a suitable replacement. I don't mind those Dreamforge Eisenkern, I would personally swap the arms out for something that looks a bit more 40k, same with the heads, they are a bit derpy.
The Blood Warriors I wouldn't mind as long as there was a pistol on the model somewhere at least.
Shoot, in my Death Guard army I had a few years ago, I used the Fantasy Nurgle Sorcerer/Lord on horseback as my Chaos Lord on Palanquin of Nurgle. I never got any complaints about it since people thought it was cool.
Shoot, I don't mind if people use alternate models, I just want to play games.

Yeah, I got the Dreamforge Leviathans because I think they look much better than the official Dreadknight for that specific job.

For me, it mostly depends on "Does it make sense?" and "Could be this confusing?"

In a serious tabletop battle, it should be clear what is supposed to be what. I can accept the traditional example of a soda can used as a Carnifex to try out the monster's rules.
I also once had a not-so-serious game where I played a whole Ork army using Guard models to test the rules (this was when I started and we wanted to know if the Orks are good, which they were). Since that was a not so serious game and a one-time deal, it was alright.

On the other hand, if someone for example uses a Grot as an Ogyrn (should use something of similar size like a Terminator really), or say 40 identical Space Marines to portray a squad of regular CSM, Berserkers, Thousand Sons and Noise Marines each at the same time, I'd definitely say no to that because it would be very confusing. Same for an entire army of Tyranids made of bottle caps propped upright (yes I've seen that), used multiple times at that. Once for testing I'd say ok but not more than that.

I myself play Orks and I know quite well how hard it can be to discern between the various units, so I took to modeling/converting (and to some degree also painting i.e. with "troop marks") them into different-looking styles that are similar across the mob but still visually distinct from other mobs. One of my Ork Boy mobs is made from Savage Orcs of Fantasy with some guns, for example, and it works very well.
So say, if someone models their Cadian troops with assault rifles rather than laser guns, that would be fine with me, or say they use different Guard models for different troops, that's alright too if it's obvious in regards to what they actually are. Using a blingtastic Command Squad as Penal Troops for example might be ok once but not multiple times and definitely not en masse (it would also be a pretty weird choice).

In short, if you want to convert but also play, I won't say no to playing provided the conversions are consistent and sensible enough.

 Luciferian wrote:
I love conversions and scratch builds. I personally spend an extensive amount of time converting models from starter sets to save money, because it lets me get armies done at around $2 per model or less in a lot of cases. I'm talking about buying large batches of the starter armies and bits and then individually converting each one to fit an actual list.

BUT - I am very careful to only use the EXACT weapons that I'm trying to represent. No exceptions; if it's on my list, it's 1:1 on the model. I don't know all of the rules and wargear options for every army out there, but I know what the weapons look like. Keeping to that convention is, for me, a modicum of courtesy. I spend a lot of time converting my models to make them fit the part, so I am not going to be impressed by someone who just throws down some non-standard models and asks me to remember what each piece is supposed to represent when that takes more effort than their "conversion" did in the first place.

This. I'm a baller on a budget, I'm at uni, and as much as I'd like to buy all the models in the world, I can't - I just don't have the money. But what I do have is time, and I put that into my army(s), from things like converting a second set of plague marines from dark imperium so that I don't have two identical squads running around, to using a grenade throwing marine as a base for a Biologus Putrifier conversion covered in grenades, canisters, and such. The big thing for me is to make sure that everything is WYSIWYG. Every time I work on a conversion, once I decide what it's going to be, then I make sure that every weapon/piece of gear is represented on that model, and looks similar to the GW 'official' piece of kit.

I don't mind playing against completely proxies armies, and I actually prefer playing against armies which are creatively modelled (I don't want to see three of the same marine across the table) - one of the blokes down at the local GW is building a night lords army basing large portions of it on the vampire counts range. Yes please!

And as far as painting goes, it always looks better painted, but it is rather snobbish to refuse to play someone with an unpainted army. I've only got a couple of models painted in my death guard, not due to laziness but simply because I'm not quite old enough to purchase spray paint to undercoat with. And I'm going around that by having some shipped to me asap. But until then, my grey hordes will continue to rampage across the board, and when they're painted, likely play against loads of grey plastic armies themselves.