Limitations on Proxying in GW Events?

[Schurge]

I have a simple question and this might be the wrong sub-forum for it... but 'ere goes. In GW events would it be verboten for me to proxy Bloodletters with armor plates and tower shields as Plaguebearers or greenstuff'd Khornish-blood-slime creatures as Nurglings? The idea would be to maintain a mono-Khorne theme daemon army while having access to some of the utility from other Chaos gods.

[Marshal Rohr]

As long as the base models are GW anything goes

[PeteySödes]

For any other tournaments if you're unsure a quick pic or two to the TO will alleviate any stress.

[MARK0SIAN]

I think TOs might raise some issues with the fact you’ve got some Khorne stuff being Khorne, but then some other Khorne stuff being nurgle and some other Khorne stuff being tzeentch etc as it would be quite confusing for your opponent.

 

The event packs for a lot of GW events also specify that the models must accurately represent their entry on your roster, including their wargear which it doesn’t sound like yours would. I don’t think they would allow what you’re suggesting. The full text from the GW grand tournament pack is below for reference:

 

Each model must completely and accurately represent its entry on your army roster (including all weapons and equipment). If you have painted your models in a specific way, we expect you to use the rules relevant to that scheme. For example, if you have painted your models as Salamanders, your army must have the Salamanders keyword.If you have created your own unique colour scheme, then you may give them any keyword that you wish. If you have used different keywords between Detachments, there must be a clear visual difference between each Detachment. For example, if you have a Tyranid army with Detachments from both Hive Fleet Kraken and Kronos, the models in each Detachment must be clearly distinguishable from one to another such as a different coloured carapace.

[Marshal Rohr]

If you’ve heavily converted something like armored blood letters with shields they’d be fine because a blood letter is a definitive model and changing it significantly with a shield and armor allows you wiggle room to be anything

[Gederas]

I think TOs might raise some issues with the fact you’ve got some Khorne stuff being Khorne, but then some other Khorne stuff being nurgle and some other Khorne stuff being tzeentch etc as it would be quite confusing for your opponent.

 

The event packs for a lot of GW events also specify that the models must accurately represent their entry on your roster, including their wargear which it doesn’t sound like yours would. I don’t think they would allow what you’re suggesting. The full text from the GW grand tournament pack is below for reference:

 

Each model must completely and accurately represent its entry on your army roster (including all weapons and equipment). If you have painted your models in a specific way, we expect you to use the rules relevant to that scheme. For example, if you have painted your models as Salamanders, your army must have the Salamanders keyword.If you have created your own unique colour scheme, then you may give them any keyword that you wish. If you have used different keywords between Detachments, there must be a clear visual difference between each Detachment. For example, if you have a Tyranid army with Detachments from both Hive Fleet Kraken and Kronos, the models in each Detachment must be clearly distinguishable from one to another such as a different coloured carapace.

Huh.... I wonder how that rule about colours would affect my Dark Angels?

[MARK0SIAN]

 

 

I think TOs might raise some issues with the fact you’ve got some Khorne stuff being Khorne, but then some other Khorne stuff being nurgle and some other Khorne stuff being tzeentch etc as it would be quite confusing for your opponent.

 

The event packs for a lot of GW events also specify that the models must accurately represent their entry on your roster, including their wargear which it doesn’t sound like yours would. I don’t think they would allow what you’re suggesting. The full text from the GW grand tournament pack is below for reference:

 

Each model must completely and accurately represent its entry on your army roster (including all weapons and equipment). If you have painted your models in a specific way, we expect you to use the rules relevant to that scheme. For example, if you have painted your models as Salamanders, your army must have the Salamanders keyword.If you have created your own unique colour scheme, then you may give them any keyword that you wish. If you have used different keywords between Detachments, there must be a clear visual difference between each Detachment. For example, if you have a Tyranid army with Detachments from both Hive Fleet Kraken and Kronos, the models in each Detachment must be clearly distinguishable from one to another such as a different coloured carapace.

Huh.... I wonder how that rule about colours would affect my Dark Angels?

I don’t know how you’ve painted your DA but if it’s abything other than the standard scheme it probably falls under the category of your own unique scheme so can be given any keyword you like :)

[MARK0SIAN]

If you’ve heavily converted something like armored blood letters with shields they’d be fine because a blood letter is a definitive model and changing it significantly with a shield and armor allows you wiggle room to be anything

A heavy conversion doesn’t give it licence to be anything for a tournament though, the conversion just gives it licence to not be a Blood letter anymore. It doesn’t mean it accurately represents the model on the entry. Shields are a piece of wargear, if I equipped my devastator squad with storm shields for aesthetics then to a random opponent it would look like that’s what they’re equipped with.

 

The point of the rules is to make it as clear as possible for your opponent with as little confusion as possible. I think the OPs idea would fall foul of that principle and the rules as written. Especially if the plague bearer blood letters are in a separate detachment as they would not have a clear enough visual distinction between the Khorne detachment and the nurgle one.

[Toomanyprojects]

For a tournament organised outside of GW then your idea will be absolutely fine as long as you played fair and accurately reported what was what to your opponent whenever they asked. Subject of course, to individual rules from the organisers.

 

For a GW tourney, I doubt what you’re proposing would be acceptable. The spirit of the rules are that your opponent should be able to evaluate what is what at a glance and be able to associate that with a unit and various abilities etc and so therefore WYSIWYG applies. Proxying Nurgle with Khorne models (albeit converted) will almost certainly be judged as having too much potential to go wrong and cause issues in the game.

[Closet Skeleton]

You can use any conversions you want in a GW run event at Warhammer world if the events team approves it.

 

I think TOs might raise some issues with the fact you’ve got some Khorne stuff being Khorne, but then some other Khorne stuff being nurgle and some other Khorne stuff being tzeentch etc as it would be quite confusing for your opponent.

The event packs for a lot of GW events also specify that the models must accurately represent their entry on your roster, including their wargear which it doesn’t sound like yours would. I don’t think they would allow what you’re suggesting. The full text from the GW grand tournament pack is below for reference:

Each model must completely and accurately represent its entry on your army roster (including all weapons and equipment). If you have painted your models in a specific way, we expect you to use the rules relevant to that scheme. For example, if you have painted your models as Salamanders, your army must have the Salamanders keyword.If you have created your own unique colour scheme, then you may give them any keyword that you wish. If you have used different keywords between Detachments, there must be a clear visual difference between each Detachment. For example, if you have a Tyranid army with Detachments from both Hive Fleet Kraken and Kronos, the models in each Detachment must be clearly distinguishable from one to another such as a different coloured carapace.

 

There's more to the tournament pack than that.

 

 

Finally, you need to contact us to let us know about any conversions you are planning on using, and provide us with photos ofthe models in question where possible. Don’t worry –we fully appreciate spectacular modelling skills, but we just want to make sure everything is super clear for your opponent so that no confusion can arise during games.

 

If you contact us, please include pictures of the models in question. And don’t panic! We’re very friendly and we love creativity in modelling

 

I'm not sure you could get away with the tower shield bloodletters but the khorne nurgling blood monsters sounds like the sort of thing they'd be happy to approve.

[Marshal Rohr]

 

If you’ve heavily converted something like armored blood letters with shields they’d be fine because a blood letter is a definitive model and changing it significantly with a shield and armor allows you wiggle room to be anything

A heavy conversion doesn’t give it licence to be anything for a tournament though, the conversion just gives it licence to not be a Blood letter anymore. It doesn’t mean it accurately represents the model on the entry. Shields are a piece of wargear, if I equipped my devastator squad with storm shields for aesthetics then to a random opponent it would look like that’s what they’re equipped with.

 

The point of the rules is to make it as clear as possible for your opponent with as little confusion as possible. I think the OPs idea would fall foul of that principle and the rules as written. Especially if the plague bearer blood letters are in a separate detachment as they would not have a clear enough visual distinction between the Khorne detachment and the nurgle one.

No demon units have shields and using shields to represent the increased toughness of a Nurgle unit goes back to like.... white dwarf when it was still half black and white. One of our own board members did it to make uncorrupted black legion plague marines once as well. Storm shield might be wargear but the random Age of Sigmar chaos shields are not.

[MARK0SIAN]

You can use any conversions you want in a GW run event at Warhammer world if the events team approves it.

 

 

I think TOs might raise some issues with the fact you’ve got some Khorne stuff being Khorne, but then some other Khorne stuff being nurgle and some other Khorne stuff being tzeentch etc as it would be quite confusing for your opponent.

 

The event packs for a lot of GW events also specify that the models must accurately represent their entry on your roster, including their wargear which it doesn’t sound like yours would. I don’t think they would allow what you’re suggesting. The full text from the GW grand tournament pack is below for reference:

 

Each model must completely and accurately represent its entry on your army roster (including all weapons and equipment). If you have painted your models in a specific way, we expect you to use the rules relevant to that scheme. For example, if you have painted your models as Salamanders, your army must have the Salamanders keyword.If you have created your own unique colour scheme, then you may give them any keyword that you wish. If you have used different keywords between Detachments, there must be a clear visual difference between each Detachment. For example, if you have a Tyranid army with Detachments from both Hive Fleet Kraken and Kronos, the models in each Detachment must be clearly distinguishable from one to another such as a different coloured carapace.

There's more to the tournament pack than that.

Finally, you need to contact us to let us know about any conversions you are planning on using, and provide us with photos ofthe models in question where possible. Don’t worry –we fully appreciate spectacular modelling skills, but we just want to make sure everything is super clear for your opponent so that no confusion can arise during games.

 

If you contact us, please include pictures of the models in question. And don’t panic! We’re very friendly and we love creativity in modelling

I'm not sure you could get away with the tower shield bloodletters but the khorne nurgling blood monsters sounds like the sort of thing they'd be happy to approve.

I really doubt it. Obviously we won’t settle this without a GW TO here, but the part about different detachments needing to look different seems pretty clear to me and having a nurgle detachment and a Khorne detachment painted the same seems to pretty obviously fly in the face of that. That will trump any amount of skilful modelling and conversion.

 

Yes they like seeing cool conversions as Marshal Rohr points out but the rules and clarity will always trump that and my responses have been in relation to what the OP is proposing. I’m not saying conversions are never allowed, I’m saying what the OP proposes seems to contravene both the letter and the intent of the rules.

[MARK0SIAN]

 

 

If you’ve heavily converted something like armored blood letters with shields they’d be fine because a blood letter is a definitive model and changing it significantly with a shield and armor allows you wiggle room to be anything

A heavy conversion doesn’t give it licence to be anything for a tournament though, the conversion just gives it licence to not be a Blood letter anymore. It doesn’t mean it accurately represents the model on the entry. Shields are a piece of wargear, if I equipped my devastator squad with storm shields for aesthetics then to a random opponent it would look like that’s what they’re equipped with.

 

The point of the rules is to make it as clear as possible for your opponent with as little confusion as possible. I think the OPs idea would fall foul of that principle and the rules as written. Especially if the plague bearer blood letters are in a separate detachment as they would not have a clear enough visual distinction between the Khorne detachment and the nurgle one.

No demon units have shields and using shields to represent the increased toughness of a Nurgle unit goes back to like.... white dwarf when it was still half black and white. One of our own board members did it to make uncorrupted black legion plague marines once as well. Storm shield might be wargear but the random Age of Sigmar chaos shields are not.

But that’s kind of the point. You know that no daemon unit uses shields but not everyone will know that and for the sake of clarity I think it’ll be denied. The whole point of wysiwyg is that your opponent isn’t having to remember what unit is really what on the table as that’s confusing and tournaments need to be a level playing field.

[RandyB]

Only the TO for a given tournament can definitively answer the question. Everything else in this thread is speculation, however well-intentioned.

[Panzer]

Of course it's up to the TO, however MARKOSIAN is not wrong. If the TO thinks it's too confusing for the opponent, regardless of how well done and obvious to you it is, he's likely to say no to it.

[Sandlemad]

 

No demon units have shields and using shields to represent the increased toughness of a Nurgle unit goes back to like.... white dwarf when it was still half black and white. One of our own board members did it to make uncorrupted black legion plague marines once as well. Storm shield might be wargear but the random Age of Sigmar chaos shields are not.

 

But that’s kind of the point. You know that no daemon unit uses shields but not everyone will know that and for the sake of clarity I think it’ll be denied. The whole point of wysiwyg is that your opponent isn’t having to remember what unit is really what on the table as that’s confusing and tournaments need to be a level playing field.

 

 

How does that work in practice though? You say to your opponent "heads up, these guys that are visibly distinct to everything else in the army represent plaguebearers, the higher toughness is represented by the fact that they're carrying heavy shields, unlike all my other models" and they say... "sorry, I am unable to remember that, I am very easily confused". Like, if someone has trouble with that, how are they not having trouble with telling the difference between stock GW models?

[Panzer]

 

 

No demon units have shields and using shields to represent the increased toughness of a Nurgle unit goes back to like.... white dwarf when it was still half black and white. One of our own board members did it to make uncorrupted black legion plague marines once as well. Storm shield might be wargear but the random Age of Sigmar chaos shields are not.

 

But that’s kind of the point. You know that no daemon unit uses shields but not everyone will know that and for the sake of clarity I think it’ll be denied. The whole point of wysiwyg is that your opponent isn’t having to remember what unit is really what on the table as that’s confusing and tournaments need to be a level playing field.

 

 

How does that work in practice though? You say to your opponent "heads up, these guys that are visibly distinct to everything else in the army represent plaguebearers, the higher toughness is represented by the fact that they're carrying heavy shields, unlike all my other models" and they say... "sorry, I am unable to remember that, I am very easily confused". Like, if someone has trouble with that, how are they not having trouble with telling the difference between stock GW models?

 

 

In practice it would work like that:

Scenario 1: You ask the TO whether your Khorne daemons with shields representing Nurgle daemons in a Khorne army is fine. TO looks at it and decides that both visually are Khorne daemons of various kind but rules-wise are not and get affected by different things and decides it's to confusing. Your opponent will never see them.

 

Scenario 2: TO decides it's okay, during play the match becomes a bit heated because it's late or it's a particularly difficult match or because the opponent is nervous or whatever. The opponent get confused and makes a decision assuming they are Khorne daemons with a better/different save (because that's what shields normally do in 40k) instead of Nurgle daemons with better toughness, FnP and a different set of Stratagems and psychic powers that can apply to them which costs him the match because they all look like Khorne daemons. He complains to the TO but he can't do anything because he already approved but will likely not allow it in future tournaments anymore which leads to scenario 1.

 

Scenario 3: Like Scenario 2 but TO doesn't care so it'll be allowed in future as well.

 

Scenario 4: Everything goes fine and everybody is happy (d'uh).

[Gederas]

I think TOs might raise some issues with the fact you

[MARK0SIAN]

 

 

 

No demon units have shields and using shields to represent the increased toughness of a Nurgle unit goes back to like.... white dwarf when it was still half black and white. One of our own board members did it to make uncorrupted black legion plague marines once as well. Storm shield might be wargear but the random Age of Sigmar chaos shields are not.

 

But that’s kind of the point. You know that no daemon unit uses shields but not everyone will know that and for the sake of clarity I think it’ll be denied. The whole point of wysiwyg is that your opponent isn’t having to remember what unit is really what on the table as that’s confusing and tournaments need to be a level playing field.

How does that work in practice though? You say to your opponent "heads up, these guys that are visibly distinct to everything else in the army represent plaguebearers, the higher toughness is represented by the fact that they're carrying heavy shields, unlike all my other models" and they say... "sorry, I am unable to remember that, I am very easily confused". Like, if someone has trouble with that, how are they not having trouble with telling the difference between stock GW models?

Phrased like that it’s quite straightforward but in reality there’s lots of things to keep track of during a game and although they're visually distinct they’re still close enough for a slip up from the guy playing against them. It’s also putting an extra burden on your opponent to remember that when they haven’t put a similar burden on you because everything in their army is wysiwyg.

 

However it’s not that major as one unit. The problem comes when it’s more than one unit. If the TO were to let one unit represent a different unit (plaguebearers in this case) where does he say stop. Is three units of bloodletters (albeit differently modelled) all representing different things ok? Is five units ok? Is 10 ok?

 

And what if they’re not all representing the same different unit? What if some are plague bearers and some are daemonettes and some horrors and some are actually blood letters?

 

Pretty quickly it becomes a heck of a lot for your opponent to keep track of and if I were presented with such a list in a tournament I’d feel it unfair and would lodge a complaint.

 

As I said, clarity will always trump creativity and in this case, I think what is being proposed is potentially too confusing for a TO to allow it. However I am not a TO and unless the OP actually asks GW I don’t think we will ever get a full answer.

 

@Gederas: I think you’d be fine. They’d either class it as an official DA colour scheme in which case you’re fine or they’d have to class it as a personal scheme in which case you’re also fine :)

[Bryan Blaire]

Just say everything with Nurgle green painted base rims are Nurgle stuff - boom, visually distinct and defined.

[Panzer]

Just say everything with Nurgle green painted base rims are Nurgle stuff - boom, visually distinct and defined.

 

That's an excelent solution to be fair.

[Marshal Rohr]

Personally, I’ve really wanted to do the mortals from Age of Sigmar in unnatural skin colors as Demon troops for the longest time but avoided it first because of the accusations it’s just copy/pasting and second because the ranges aren’t complete.

[Sandlemad]

I don't like the slippery slope argument because it includes the assumption that the creative modelling player could be doing this for dodgy reasons while entirely exonerating a player who bad-faith comes in saying "sorry, I don't understand, I'm going to take it out on the TO" for whatever advantage they can get.

 

It also includes the implicit understanding that every player has - or is expected to have - a comprehensive understanding of the 'official' GW range. What about the player who can't tell the difference between chosen and CSM, where the variation is likely to be a lot hazier? They're left to the wolves while someone who can't understand that the isolated distinctive case of bloodletters with shields have toughness 5, explained by the opponent, gets free reign to abuse this under the rationale that they can't cope and oh, we have to draw a bright line somewhere.

 

Seriously, it's not hard, I cannot comprehend how someone who gets flustered about that enough to complain would not have also made half a dozen other (potentially game-costing) errors based on similar misidentifications between other 40k models. Frankly this whole thing reminds me why tournament-centric gaming remains so alien and completely unpleasant-sounding to me.

[MARK0SIAN]

I don't like the slippery slope argument because it includes the assumption that the creative modelling player could be doing this for dodgy reasons while entirely exonerating a player who bad-faith comes in saying "sorry, I don't understand, I'm going to take it out on the TO" for whatever advantage they can get.

 

It also includes the implicit understanding that every player has - or is expected to have - a comprehensive understanding of the 'official' GW range. What about the player who can't tell the difference between chosen and CSM, where the variation is likely to be a lot hazier? They're left to the wolves while someone who can't understand that the isolated distinctive case of bloodletters with shields have toughness 5, explained by the opponent, gets free reign to abuse this under the rationale that they can't cope and oh, we have to draw a bright line somewhere.

 

Seriously, it's not hard, I cannot comprehend how someone who gets flustered about that enough to complain would not have also made half a dozen other (potentially game-costing) errors based on similar misidentifications between other 40k models. Frankly this whole thing reminds me why tournament-centric gaming remains so alien and completely unpleasant-sounding to me.

It doesn’t include any such assumption that they’re doing it for nefarious reasons, I haven’t (and I haven’t seen anyone else) suggest such a thing. We are talking about avoiding genuine confusion and misunderstanding. And the whole point of not allowing it is to avoid anyone being able to abuse it.

 

You’re also oversimplifying the difference between the units. Plague bearers are not just Blood letters with T5. There’s a whole range of differences including stratagems and psychic powers that go with them.

 

It’s also not really a slippery slope argument, there’s no slope. If the TO says it’s ok for one unit it has to be ok for many units or the distinction would be totally arbitrary.

 

Plus it’s going by what the OP himself says, that he wants access to the stuff from the other chaos Gods (plural) whilst maintaining a Khorne theme. That implies that he’s going to have Khorne models (admittedly differently modelled) representing the forces of at least 3 of the Pantheon and if he’s bringing them in detachments it will have to be multiple units and unit types from each god too. Please believe me when I say I’m not being facetious with this question but Can you genuinely not see how that might be confusing for an opponent to have to keep track of all that?

 

I know I would probably lose track of some of it at least.

[Panzer]

I don't like the slippery slope argument because it includes the assumption that the creative modelling player could be doing this for dodgy reasons while entirely exonerating a player who bad-faith comes in saying "sorry, I don't understand, I'm going to take it out on the TO" for whatever advantage they can get.

 

It also includes the implicit understanding that every player has - or is expected to have - a comprehensive understanding of the 'official' GW range. What about the player who can't tell the difference between chosen and CSM, where the variation is likely to be a lot hazier? They're left to the wolves while someone who can't understand that the isolated distinctive case of bloodletters with shields have toughness 5, explained by the opponent, gets free reign to abuse this under the rationale that they can't cope and oh, we have to draw a bright line somewhere.

 

Seriously, it's not hard, I cannot comprehend how someone who gets flustered about that enough to complain would not have also made half a dozen other (potentially game-costing) errors based on similar misidentifications between other 40k models. Frankly this whole thing reminds me why tournament-centric gaming remains so alien and completely unpleasant-sounding to me.

 

Something else being worse or just as bad doesn't automatically make it okay. Likewise being likely to having made other mistakes doesn't make it acceptable to have yet another thing to trip over.

I agree though that something like Chosen is a problem and that's something were GW messed up by not giving actual Chosen models in the first place. However that's a problem of it being part of an old model range and regular Marine units generally looking very similar to eachother, all the newer models, including Primaris, look vastly different from eachother and when they look similar they also have similar statlines etc.

Actually that's a good comparison. You wouldn't be allowed to paint Black Templars Crusader squads as Ultramarines either and justify it with "but actual Ultramarines can't mix Scouts and Power armored Marines in the same unit so it should be obvious they are Black Templars" or if we go cross-codex giving Ultramarines some shields and spears to use them as Custodes.

 

It's literally the same argument as for WYSIWYG. Don't be a dick and make your army as easy to understand for your opponent as possible with as little explanation as possible. If you want extensive conversions be prepared to get a no from a TO. If he allows it then great, if not then you knew that possibility was there. What you do in friendly games and for your own private army projects is your own thing, but tournaments/events are a whole different topic.