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I've only recently started playing AoS with Sylvaneth and now I'm branching out to start a collection of Ironweld Arsenal (Probably to be supported by Duardin and Free People) and I find that the Ironweld are awesome in terms of looks and fluff, but just don't have that many options. And while of course friendliness to homebrew depends a lot from person to person, would you generally be averse to say, a homebrewed variant of the Steamtank (replacing it's regular cannon for a strange gattling gun thing that I have yet to name), or a Dwarf Zeppelin (I've been modelling the thing for ages so a friend and I are writing it rules so it might be played).

I know this isn't much of a question without specific examples, but it's just something I thought I'd throw to the community at large. Thoughts?

I suppose narrative and casual players would not mind at all, but tournament and competitive players do not like anything that's not official.

I personally would not mind playing your steamtank with a gatling gun of some kind, I would imagine it fires like a hellblaster.

I have seen some AoS rules for Tyranids and Warmahordes made by fans, I think it was PPC and some other group.

about sums up my opinion of it, that said I would never say "no you cant try that" because I dont play "competitive" in AoS

 TheManWithNoPlan wrote:
I've only recently started playing AoS with Sylvaneth and now I'm branching out..

Oh yeah! haha

But to answer your question. I would say it's similar to all wargames. People like to stick by the rules. But AoS does try to encourage this home brewing in narrative play as much as possible. I have seen MongooseMatt use custom warscrolls and people at Warhammer World too. You just need the right situation. Usually a climax of a campaign is a great time to introduce a wacky custom model.

Me personally, I would have no problem in a pick up game playing against a homebrew unit. Especially if the opponent had made an official looking Warscroll and given it a points cost. (AoS points are in blocks of 20 usually, so it's easy to come up with an estimated points cost.)

 Bottle wrote:

 TheManWithNoPlan wrote:
I've only recently started playing AoS with Sylvaneth and now I'm branching out..

Oh yeah! haha

But to answer your question. I would say it's similar to all wargames. People like to stick by the rules. But AoS does try to encourage this home brewing in narrative play as much as possible. I have seen MongooseMatt use custom warscrolls and people at Warhammer World too. You just need the right situation. Usually a climax of a campaign is a great time to introduce a wacky custom model.

Me personally, I would have no problem in a pick up game playing against a homebrew unit. Especially if the opponent had made an official looking Warscroll and given it a points cost. (AoS points are in blocks of 20 usually, so it's easy to come up with an estimated points cost.)

I'm so glad somebody got that particular line. And I also really like your idea for ending a campaign with a big model.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

aquietfrog wrote:
I suppose narrative and casual players would not mind at all, but tournament and competitive players do not like anything that's not official.

I personally would not mind playing your steamtank with a gatling gun of some kind, I would imagine it fires like a hellblaster..

Yes, of course I wouldn't try to bring one to matched play unless I was given direct approval, and I certainly wouldn't try to bring one to a tournament. I was asking as even some fluffy players can be quite the purists when you mention custom rules.

I'd be okay with it in narrative/open play. As long as it's not little Timmy writing the rules and make me go "Whyyyyyyy!?". I've seen some bad stuff... really bad stuff.

I write campaigns that have houserules. Been doing this for 20 years. I enjoy it. THere are people that enjoy it.

That being said, its highly polarizing in a community and you will receive a shed-load of hate and gamer-politics for doing it unless you are just playing in your garage with a couple of your buddies. Once you branch out into public events with your event/house rules ... you will get the hate-train rolling.

 auticus wrote:
I write campaigns that have houserules. Been doing this for 20 years. I enjoy it. THere are people that enjoy it.

That being said, its highly polarizing in a community and you will receive a shed-load of hate and gamer-politics for doing it unless you are just playing in your garage with a couple of your buddies. Once you branch out into public events with your event/house rules ... you will get the hate-train rolling.

This is pretty spot on. I've never seen anyone at like a store or whatever allow house rules or homebrew anything. The one exception has behind when my GW does a special like holiday event with a special little scenario and then they seemed pretty receptive but those are just scenario rules and I don't know anyone who would allow Homebrew units outside of your own close group of friends

I wouldn't mind at all if you are a reasonable person. Say we try it out, it's over powered, some units you destroyed come back free while we play so everyone has fun and then you can tweak the rules for next time to see if it's more fair.

After all it's all about fun.

I have less experience with them in AoS because i have less experience with the game in general, but in other games I've always accepted house rules and very often made my own.

The big thing being that i almost always play at home with friends where it's very easy to discuss and make things so they work for everyone playing. I wouldn't bring my house rules to a game shop, because that's not what they're for. I don't expect some random person who doesn't know me to play "Hunt for the Holy Star Moose" and that's ok.

It seems like the AoS players at GW studios would be entirely fine with it - they're always posting about letting Blood Angels take Land Speeder Storms, or converting an Archaeon into a three-bloodthirster headed thing.

For my part, it would heavily come down to the model, and the rules. The cooler the model, and the more moderate the rules, the better.

As an example, a nicely converted steamtank, brandishing a gatling cannon, with D6 attacks, 4+ to hit, 2+ to wound, Rend -2, and Damage 1 (Special Rule - Scything Fire: Due to spray of bullets, add 1 to hit rolls for a gatling cannon if the target unit has 10 or more models) would work very well for me. This is because it is virtually the same rules as the existing cannon, with the D6 moved from Damage to Attacks. So, you get more opportunities to hit, but the hits don't do as much damage as a cannon ball. Jobs a good un'.

Where I've always gone wrong with these sorts of projects, is I'll try to convince a friend my gatling tank should be +50 points over standard, but have 15 attacks because it shoots so much. Then it has a huge impact, and my friend and I debate if 50 points was fair, or if it should be half as many attacks, etc. And I'll argue that I could have bought X unit for that many points, and it would have done Y damage, so it really is fair. And, everyone is left feeling vaguely annoyed.

So, keep in simple, but otherwise I'd love it just to see the conversion.

The recent Realms at War event proves that home brew and narrative games can be very very popular at an organized event.

Go for it! I say, if it's done well people will appreciate the effort and be happy to play with the rules/against them.

You'll likely have to use you custom stuff a lot less often, as people also like to play regular games too. That's something you're going to have to accept.

I look forward to seeing it, and remember, stay positive and your positivity will rub off on others.

I'd have no problem with that, if someone has made a nice custom model then it seems rude not to use it, preferably with a custom scenario to boot.

Its obviously easier if you keep the rules for it pretty close to something existing.

For myself I keep putting off the Driders to go with my Dark elf 'Drow', and the arachnarok 'demon' spider with priestess on it. I'll probably get round to it eventually, driders could just be cold one riders and the aracharock a cauldron of blood. But they feel like they could do with their own cool rules.

If I can find someone who's done the trouble of decent homebrew of 40k stuff (so that ranged, power armor, etc. are well represented) I'd be happy to give that a go.