Originally Posted by
Kaika87
So, I admit, I'm partially wanting to post this for the whole March contest dealie, but also I think that it's a topic that rarely gets a real discussion going. I remember months ago, a BoLS battle report had some Death Guard counts-as Black Templar, and the comments were full of seething, uncontrollable fury at the very notion. Especially as I near completion of my own counts-as army, I start to worry if that's really the dominant opinion on the idea. Obviously, there are instances of Counts-As that take it too far and are quite unacceptable, but then there are others.
From my perspective, I can identify 3 broad categories of Counts-As, and for the sake of discussion, let's talk about all of these from the perspective of seeing this unpacked across from you in a tournament environment, because with a friendly game, all bets are off. Hell, until I was sure of the army list for my current project, I was using Styrofoam 3-d cutouts of Rhinos in casual games.
Category 1 - "The Proxy": These are your players that have decided to change one of their current armies over to another with little no conversions done. WSIWYG is most certainly not in effect here, and instead you'll hear an explanation of how the models with dark lances instead are carrying heavy bolters, or how the squad of models without heads is a squad of Genestealers, not Skeletons. Really, this is the army that won't be allowed in a tournament setting in the way that I've explained it, as most tournaments enforce WSIWYG. I've seen a couple exceptions from local 3-game events, though, so it's not outside the realm of possibility.
The outermost edge of this category would be the Space Marine bandwagon-jumper. If you sit across from someone that has a beautiful Ultramarines army and then hear him start explaining that he's got Njal and 3 squads of Grey Hunters, you know you've found this type of Proxy army. In this case, everything is in fact WSIWYG, but it's still pretty obvious that this guy is adhering to the first sentence of this category, taking a current army and using it for a different codex.
Category 2 - "The Conversion": This is probably where the majority of actually-played-in-tournaments Counts-As armies fall. These are your World Eaters Counts-As Blood Angels, Thousand Sons Counts-As Grey Knights, and your Eldar Counts-As Dark Eldar. The player that made this army put at least some effort into changing over the models to be appropriate to the codex he's playing out of, and in some cases a great deal of effort. Effectively, this category attempts to blend the aesthetic of the models with the rules they're playing out of. Taking the World Eaters counts-as Blood Angels as an example, it'd be doing simple things like making Assault Marines out of Berzerkers, up through, for example, greenstuffing wings onto Bloodletters to make them into Sanguinary Guard, with plenty of gore and viscera lovingly adorning everything. This army could well be something the owner had previously been using under a different codex and converted over for one reason or another, or a project entirely taken from the ground up as a way of alternatively modelling units from a different codex. In either case, WSIWYG will most certainly be adhered to here, and again, attempts will be made to blend aesthetic and rule mechanics.
Category 3 - "You have too much free time on your hands.": I could go on a long explanation of this one too, but instead I'll just introduce (or re-introduce) you to a man named Michael Strange.
[url]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4nzgPbHlNo4/TF-S0aBe19I/AAAAAAAAIwE/ms9KF31WMGc/s1600/strange-03.jpg[/url]
[url]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4nzgPbHlNo4/TF-R3O4eE1I/AAAAAAAAIv8/nrHU727fV_k/s1600/strange-02.jpg[/url]
[url]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4nzgPbHlNo4/TF-THa6uh3I/AAAAAAAAIwU/ebIkvO7EG1Y/s1600/strange-05.jpg[/url]
[url]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4nzgPbHlNo4/TF-TR8oE50I/AAAAAAAAIwc/ht4kIY3deP8/s1600/strange-06.jpg[/url]
So those are the 3 categories. And now I ask you, which of these would you be comfortable sitting across the table from in a tournament? Why? Obviously you'd play it out assuming it was deemed legal by the TO, but would you feel like your opponent is trying to cheat you? Would you care at all?
Personally, I think that #1 is pushing it for a tournament, especially if there is no WSIWYG. I can understand if this was a last-minute idea, and you're just trying something out for fun (especially if it's the Ultra-Wolves I mentioned earlier and it's a local tournament), but for a big, weekend tournament I feel like you should pay the toll and make an army for that codex. Be it the actual GW models for the codex, a bunch of conversions, or....Mechanids. From a game mechanics standpoint, so long as I can identify a visually distinction between units and wargear, I'm satisfied, especially if I get to look at some eye-candy in the process.