Proxy, and "Counts-as"

I am against proxies in anything but testing games. 

For a quick definition… a “proxy” is when you use a model as a placeholder for something else.  They are in no way what they look like, because they are being used to stand in for something else.  Frequently, they are part of a different project, or another unit that the user wants to test out, that they include because “why not?” 

If I’m wondering if I want to start a new army, or buy a new unit, I might proxy something to test them out.  The times I haven’t done this have been costly – buying a unit that I then never used or even painted because I put them together (the fun part of the hobby) and then used them to terrible results: 

--Will the Stalker/Hunter work as well against aircraft as my Mortis? 

-- Let’s throw one on the table using an old rhino chassis with a counter on it so everyone knows what it is, and see how it does. 

-- It couldn’t dent the enemy?  Glad I didn’t buy a new one… (or) wow, that’s just what I need!  I’ll pick one up next week!

With me, it was the Thousand Sons.  I put a lot of money and trades into getting a fully-formed force of at least 1500 points, and never won a game with them.  As cool as they were in 3^rd ed, they were just plain ineffective how I’d play them, and only got worse as a monobuild.  To this day, I have a whole unit as a potential painting project that I just let sit in storage.  Had I proxied my BT into TS models before buying, I’d have saved myself a whole lot of time and effort.

In terms of “counts-as” on the other hand…

I think that “counts-as” armies, if done properly, are the meat of the hobbyist end of the game.

I once saw someone using cold ones instead of Eldar Jetbikes for their exodite army.  They were some really neat pieces, and all their guardians were painted up in rough raggedy armor and holding glowing crystals instead of shuriken guns, almost like they were harnessing the power of the planet around them.  There was a mix of Wood Elf, High Elf, Daemonette (metal ones), and Eldar models to make the army fit the theme, and the paint job was amazing and unifying.  That’s not a proxy army – throwing down high elf archers unconverted and claiming they are guardians wouldn’t be acceptable. 

At the same time, my Dark Eldar Wych Cult was all about mixing in some dangerous-looking models.  My squad leaders were hags and assassins.  Half my models were witch elves from WHFB, most of whom were converted to be holding splinter pistols.  The paint job made it clear that they were all part of the same unit, that this was a deliberate choice.  I was told by one event ref that I couldn’t play the army, because “those aren’t wyches, they’re witches!”  and he didn’t understand the reason the main TO (tournament organizer) overruled him.

That’s really the issue, to me.  A proxy army happens out of laziness or budget.  A counts-as army is all about creativity.  A proxy army is what happens when you can’t play properly, whereas a counts-as army occurs when the individual puts more care and effort and time into their project, and makes it look more like a project.

If I wanted to play an army that has certain advantages, such as Ultramarines, I would be rather bored painting generic blue vanilla marines over and over.  I’ve seen this before.  And the primary red weapon casings look stupid on top of all that primary blue.  Why would I want that army?  What about doing a Sons of Orar army, then?  Should I be penalized because of my paintjob?  I want access to the special characters of the most common chapter ever, but I want my army to look distinct, so why can’t I play the character’s equivalent?  What about the master librarian of the White Consuls?  Why wouldn’t that person be as powerful and as skilled as Tigurius – they are, after all, the chief librarian of a significant chapter.

The main reason that WarmaHordes’ background interests me very little is the proliferation of special characters.  There are no squad commanders that aren’t these magical special snowflake individuals that seem to be everywhere at once.  Recreating skirmishes they might have been involved in is a moot point when according to how the game is played they’ve been involved in every war ever simultaneously.

If I bring a successor chapter that has, for all purposes, the exact same stats as the parent legion but a different paint job, it’s actually more believable that they would be including another Tigurius – after all, someone else that is bound to bring the boys in blue anyway, and there can’t be two Ultramarine legions with the same librarian named character.  It’s impossible for him to fight on two sides of the same fight.  So why not let my Aurora Chapter bring Chief Librarian Demetrian in his own legion’s colors?  I’ll even use the same base model and convert it so he looks more like he’s mine.

Why is the game dictated by those with little imagination or creativity?

Is it more realistic for two of us to fight and both use the same special character, with two nearly identical blue armies on the table? That’s not only lame, it’s impossible. That's one of the reasons that i mentally cannot get into Warmahordes -- every leader is a special character and is simultaneously everywhere, because there are no other options.

Nothing about the rules changes when you use the Praetors of Orpheus paintjob on Ultramarines models, other than dealing with the fussiness of your opponent... who might be fielding a Necron or Tyranid special character without having *their* army painted authentically either.  And Farsight Enclave tau better be in their colors too, or their characters can’t be used.  What’s good for one army’s rules is good for all of them.  Consider how ridiculous that is, and then tell me that I can’t play a Howling Griffons list including a well-converted SC HQ from their parent chapter – that I spent three times as long painting as you spent on your entire three-color-basic force.

The more complicated issue is dealing with cross-book representation.

In the tail end of 5^th ed, I got a hankering to paint again.  It didn’t last long – I got very frustrated with the tail end of that edition of the game, given that we’re still dealing with the imbalance issues coming out of that time period.  The project I was planning on working on was a conversion-heavy army with some interesting tweaks.  What I wanted to paint was that same Thousand Sons force.  But given the rules were not only mediocre at best, but poorly representative of the way their army used to play.

What worked better, though was the Grey Knights rules.  With psykers in every unit, it was much like playing a sorcerer-led unit of rubric marines.  The ridiculously cheap special and heavy weapons, and psybolt ammo, that GK models have access to were like psychic powers.  If any unit would have the “brotherhood of psyker” rules, teleport into combat via warprifts, engage in psychic body-modification, or be completely immune to intimidation like the GK army was then, it’d be the chosen of Tzeentch.  Had I continued, I’d have wanted to modify a Heldrake and a Maulerfiend into a Stormraven and some sort of larger combat Dreadnought, if only for the thematic approach. 

I know that the rules for Space Marines are so much more fleshed out than the rules for the Chaos forces – not the background, which was stellar in both books, but the capabilities on the table.  Still, choosing the models that best represent your concept should – if done properly and deliberately – be somewhat allowed.  It’s not perfect, though.  If I want to play Tyranids, but my models are all converted guardsmen (going for an old genestealer infiltration concept), I have to remember that I do not have access to allies, and I have to make clear exactly what my army is via conversions and paint.  If one’s ideas are better than one’s skill, it might not be clear, and thus might not be justifiable.  If one’s results are unclear, it can lead to issues when actually playing the game… and that’s the part that is completely within the domain of the tournament organizer.  My only advice on this to a player is to make sure that your end-result is clear, but that your goal is also clear – that you’re not just trying to take advantage of a new ruleset that has new toys in it, but that it looks like a deliberate project start-to-finish instead of merely a new way to use old models to your best advantage.

It seems like “counts-as” is a way of deliberately taking artistic license with your creation and its rules.  Often, they are better-painted, or better-converted projects if they are stranger than normal.  Whereas proxies are substitutions according to budget or laziness.  If you’ve decided that you want to put in the time and effort to make your army look neat, and you incorporate deliberate stylistic elements, but you army is wysiwyg and clear – why is this an issue?