Official takes on "Counts As" for major tournaments?

[swarmofseals]

With the recent release of Cities of Sigmar there has been a lot of talk about using units as "counts as" for other units that are visually or thematically similar (for example, re-purposing Swordmasters as Freeguild Greatswords or Skycutters as Scourgerunner Chariots).

I was hoping to get a better idea of how major tournament organizers (GT level tournaments, including both indies and official heats etc.) deal with this.

I'd love to hear from anyone who has either been involved in running such a tournament or attends them frequently enough to have experience with this question.

Do major events typically allow these kinds of counts-as?

What about a more extreme case -- say someone making a Legion of Azgorh army that "counts as" Cities of Sigmar, with correct basing and sensible counts-as?

[Kyriakin]

I don't like "counts as" when the (unmodified) model that represents another is actually still elsewhere in the game. That's confusing for me.

I guess that would make the OOP High Elf stuff OK for CoS, but not the LoA stuff.

However, a "Big Hat" Chaos Dwarf army would be amazing as CoS, and none of those sculpts have their own warscroll elsewhere in the game.

Edited October 22, 2019 by Kyriakin

[EccentricCircle]

1 hour ago, Kyriakin said:

However, a "Big Hat" Chaos Dwarf army would be amazing as CoS, and none of those sculpts have their own warscroll elsewhere in the game.

This would never have occurred to me, because Chaos, but that would actually work really well!

The warriors and blunderbusses become Longbeards and Irondrakes respectively, the Sorcerers become runelords or battlemages, with the Sorcerer on Lamassu being a Battlemage on Griffon, and the Lord on Taurus a General on Griffon. The Rocket launcher and Earthshaker work as the two ironweld artillery pieces, and Bull Centaurs become Demigriff Knights! Obviously the Lords are warden kings, or maybe generals on foot, depending on the type. You could even use a Daemonsmith as a Cogsmith if you wanted to push it a little.

I think there would be some difficulty with base sizes, but it might actually be a better proxy for the models than trying to run them as Legion of Azgorh!

The Dwarf General in my is shouting "Heresy!" as I type this, but the Chaos Dwarf General is intrigued by the possibilities!

Edited October 22, 2019 by EccentricCircle

[Kyriakin]

12 minutes ago, EccentricCircle said:

This would never have occurred to me, because Chaos, but that would actually work really well!

The warriors and blunderbusses become Longbeards and Irondrakes respectively, the Sorcerers become runelords or battlemages, with the Sorcerer on Lamassu being a Battlemage on Griffon, and the Lord on Taurus a General on Griffon. The Rocket launcher and Earthshaker work as the two ironweld artillery pieces, and Bull Centaurs become Demigriff Knights! Obviously the Lords are warden kings, or maybe generals on foot, depending on the type. You could even use a Daemonsmith as a Cogsmith if you wanted to push it a little.

I'd be tempted to try and get the Lamassu and Taurus rider onto the back of the modern-day mounts (e.g. black dragon, griffon, etc.) for WYSIWYG reasons, as well as because large mounts are just so much better nowadays IMHO... Or failing that... https://publicinsta.com/media/Boq6tz5nlF4

The Big Hats themselves have aged really well, though.

Edit: It seems people were onto this for KO already, and fits CoS perfectly...

Edited October 22, 2019 by Kyriakin

[EccentricCircle]

26 minutes ago, Kyriakin said:

I'd be tempted to try and get the Lamassu and Taurus rider onto the back of the modern-day mounts (e.g. black dragon, griffon, etc.) for WYSIWYG reasons, as well as because large mounts are just so much better nowadays IMHO... Or failing that... https://publicinsta.com/media/Boq6tz5nlF4

The Big Hats themselves have aged really well, though.

Edit: It seems people were onto this for KO already, and fits CoS perfectly...

Wow, that's amazing! We've accidentally gone a bit off topic, but yeah, I'd think that the riders would work OK on the modern mounts. Although the creatures are larger, its not as though the actual saddles are. Both the mounted lord and mounted sorcerer have a slightly unnatural pose though, which works well with the older style of model, but might be a little jarring compared to the newer sculpts. They might also be a little top heavy, at least on a black dragon, since they are hefty pieces of lead!

[prochuvi]

I am not one of those big tournaments players but i an a dispossesed player and high elf that gonna play my deleted(and bougth less than one year models) models as proxy and i dont care if tye rival dont like because it is gw fault not mine.

 

But pretty sure that big tournaments wont let me do it,because those tournaments usually are 100% what you play is what you see.

 

I usually run my dragonlord as black dragon.

 

Dwarfs warriors as hammerers(2 hand axes are close to 2 hand hammers)

 

Arch mague as human mage

 

Those are proxys that people dont mind and aceptable.

 

Now i would like play my 30 ironbreakers as hammerers because ironbreackers are 100% useless now,but i wont do it because they are a playable unit where dragon or warriors arent.

[mmimzie]

As long as you've done something to make it different, iconic, or recognizable than it's genereally fine.  Went to that first LVO event run by GW (i believe???) when the ghb first dropped with my big zombie army and they had none issues. My zombies are various foot droops, eternal guard/ironwarriors/flaggelents/witchelves/etc all painted to be ghost.  

SO as long as you go through an effort to make them different and look like what they should be i don't think any one would care.

[tripchimeras]

My general experience with Tournaments are that unless GW has their hands in it, most tournament organizers are pretty liberal with their conversion or counts as allowances.  I think the big key is that it is clear, obvious, and does not serve to confuse your opponent/give you undue advantage in the game.  Using one army that is in use as another army, at least in the 8th edition days where I saw it attempted once or twice, is generally frowned upon unless it is lovingly converted and clear.  Generally speaking rule of cool is almost always going to sway an OT (and the players you face) to your side.  If it looks awesome, people are going to want to let you use it.

My rule of thumb on this is you really want to always ask a TO well in advance via email with attached photos about acceptability of counts as.  Again I would say 9 times out of 10 they are going to OK it, unless it is a case of blatant laziness, or something that is going to cause extreme confusion (calling executioners greatswords when they are in the same book and both legal, or using a unit that is a valid allie as a different unit in the book without any attempt at conversion).  In the case of using disposessed/high elf/empire/bretonian/wood elf models that did not make it into cities themselves as a unit in cities you are probably absolutely safe.  In some cases (high elves) some of these models are actually technically still legal within the game (swordmasters, dragon princes), however considering the clear indication they are on their way out, the roughly 0% chance you will still see them as is on the table, and the fact that they are not valid allies for the city book, the chances of confusion are essentially 0, and in most cases they look very similar to the unit they are parroting. 

If TO oks it, but you are still concerned about it, a very helpful thing I have seen some people do in the past is make tokens with the correct name of the unit they are "counts as" clearly printed and keep it next to the unit throughout the game and as always regardless of whether you do this be clear in explaining your list before deployment and as you deploy units, even in tournaments many players do not know every single unit in the game.

 

TLDR every TO is going to be different, so always ask, and don't be shocked if they say no.  But in the case of vast majority of cities of sigmar "counts as" models I have seen discussed I would be surprised if most TO's said no.

Edited October 23, 2019 by tripchimeras

[gjnoronh]

I run the largest AoS Tournament in the North East US this year is 72 players.  We're a cut below the biggest in the US (LVO, Adepticon, and NOVA) 

We wrote our guidance before Cities of Sigmar and I'm still thinking about how to refresh things for 2020.  It's essentially evolved from what our pack has said for years to reflect some changes in AoS (terrain!)

Here's what our pack says: 

Conversions

Conversions are encouraged, but should be clear to a new opponent and must be based properly. If in doubt send us some pictures to review. Player brought terrain must be the actual GW model no proxies allowed, minor conversions of a GW piece to customize it are allowed.  Forgeworld models should either be the actual GW model or have been previously approved by our team.

Non-GW/Proxies

Models from Non-GW ranges or Proxies are allowed, but should be clear to a new opponent and must be based properly.  If in doubt send us some pictures to review.  Forgeworld units and terrain are not allowed to be proxied.

You can not use the same proxied model to represent multiple different unit types in the same army. (Example: If you are proxying Sequitors with swords as actually having maces you can’t have some Sequitor units with swords who are armed as swords.)

[Kyriakin]

So, are Mournfang called Rhinox now?

That's a word I haven't heard in a while.

Edited October 24, 2019 by Kyriakin

[Realmhead]

12 hours ago, Kyriakin said:

So, are Mournfang called Rhinox now?

That's a word I haven't heard in a while.

I don't think so, since Mournfangs are ridden by Ogors, they'll have the OGOR keyword. The RHINOX keyword I think will only be relevant for the Gnoblar Scraplauncher

[TheCovenLord]

13 hours ago, Kyriakin said:

So, are Mournfang called Rhinox now?

That's a word I haven't heard in a while.

I was hoping for a re-release of the forgeworld rhinox riders but it appears to be reference to the scraplauncher and ironblasters only