When a proxy isn't a proxy

[Wolfshade]

I love this:




Brilliant fun conversion and you can see what it is, the despicable me army I have the problem that I look at it and I don't see what they are. The Gnomes are brilliantly tongue in cheek and readily identifiable.

[legalsmash]

Here's what I think:

Depending on the degree of familiarity with the player, game setting and nature of proxy, I may or may not go along with it.
For years me and an old buddy played games throughout 2-4th edition in which due to a combination of youth, brokeness, and lack of a model type, would proxy things in game, he played orks and had a LOT of really tricked out model cars in the correct dimensions that were orked out in his trukk based army. We were kids and it was what we did, but followed the game rules and labeled everything clearly.

As college kids, we both still gamed together, our terrain was mostly proxied, my guard army was pretty much all GW stuff, with the exception of imperial armor/compendium units that didn't have models yet. He used orks, most of his stuff was similarly GW, painted and put together, but again, trucks and vehicles, especially larger ones tended to be scratchbuilts with a model car or toy car of some sort as a base.

We are adults now, he uses killburstas and killkrushas... based mostly off kitbashed models, ork stuff, in some cases moded out baneblades. His army is pretty much all GW, with a lot of conversion and tamiya stuff thrown in there for good measure. My IG army is stupid huge and with the exception of some command vehicles that I use for objectives/special things are GW/ not proxy. I will generally play with him any time without hestitation, we always label things out and even if a model is missing a kind of weapon (he has older orks may not have X or Y weapon on a killa kan, etc.

Contrast this with an individual, not really a friend, random FLGS guy in the south, who had a marine "army" that I would not want to play with : He used the legs.... just the effing legs. The individual would tell me the guy with blue sticky was plasma, yet midgame this would be a sergeant or a melta, etc. He had random objects for drop pods (more than the number of troop/elite, etc. choiices he had. He had no paint on any of this, not an undercoat, not a dip, nothing. This guy was a class 1 assclown and I feel bad for anyone who has to play them.

I don't refuse to play many people, I have to either have a bad experience with you due to rule shenanigans, power-gaming tabling activities or general unpleasantness. A person who thoughtfully makes a model, proxies a model reasonably (a similarly shape and dimension tank for a predator, ork looted tank, etc.) related to the model, with clear definition of what it is, or has alternate models (WG factory, etc.) that are well painted, I'm cool with. I'd prefer to play them than someone with unpainted, generally unassembled plastic. I won't however, see the point of getting all my crap off my shelves to play against green army men led by skeletor and micromachines.

My point here:

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

Back when I first started sculpting, I did an Enslaver army which was a counts as eldar jetbike list. If GW (and pretty much all other mini game companies) actually did some decent alien looking aliens (that arent f**king starship trooper "bugs"/xenomorph ripoffs), I wouldnt of had to do this in the first place, but then again if I hadnt done that army I wouldnt of started my own wargame that allowed me to be free from crap looking Soft SF aliens forever.