The rules of conversion

[MidasKiss]

Hey all, 

I've been planning to get a bit more creative next year with my army. I'm planning a lot of 'count as' models (Dragon blades/princes as Blood knights) which seems accepted. When it comes to more serious count as / conversions though, are there requirements I need to make sure I meet to be good to go to most tournaments, etc.

The big one's I'm aware of is right base size and right weapons. But, from my example, could I use normal sized vampires as vargheists if they were on 50mm (and didn't look stupid), with claws, fangs and wings?

[Arkiham]

I do plan on using forsaken as two hand weapon chaos warriors of Tzeentch, in a spawn/mutation themed list , that's probably borderline.

As I have a theme, and background to the army if required I might get away with it. 

The problem is you're using a unit which has rules and models within that alliance,  opposed to making a model.

[Mohojoe]

Yeah I would think base sense and weapons is the important stuff. The whole WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) rule is the most important though if you are playing with mates you could go so far as using chess pieces if they were ok with it. 

[KHHaunts]

I have heavily converted some chaos knight horses with Brettonian knight riders with the back half of the horse ghostly like the mortis engine so it looks like they are just becoming corporeal. 

 Going to field them as blood knights as I badly wanted the profile but want them to fit into my spectral ghost army. So they have a 4 horsemen of the apocalypse vibe.

They have the same weapons and are about the same size. And fluff wise I just replace the blood drinking with soul stealing

[KHHaunts]

, I have heavily converted some chaos knight horses with Brettonian knight riders with the back half of the horse ghostly like the mortis engine so it looks like they are just becoming corporeal. 

 Going to field them as blood knights as I badly wanted the profile but want them to fit into my spectral ghost army. So they have a 4 horsemen of the apocalypse vibe.

They have the same weapons and are about the same size. And fluff wise I just replace the blood drinking with soul stealing

[AAL]

You should be ok as long as base size and weapons are met but it would be a good idea to check in with a few tournaments to get their view on this in case they have stricter limitations

[Payce]

As long as you can easily see on the model that it is an incarnation of what it's supposed to be once you say "this is such and such", there aren't really any rules, except the Rule of Cool.

 

(and possibly Rule 34)

[Joe]

If you intend to go to a GW event you're better off emailing and asking. They have pretty strict rules about it, like no Hobbit models and it has to be very clear what it is supposed to be

[MidasKiss]

2 hours ago, Joe said:

If you intend to go to a GW event you're better off emailing and asking. They have pretty strict rules about it, like no Hobbit models and it has to be very clear what it is supposed to be

Thanks everyone! I'm in Australia, so there isn't a lot of tournaments happening here. I'm kind of hoping that some TO's from other places might chime in on this thread with what they would allow / not allow. Most of the "clubs" here as well are just groups that head into different GW stores. I didn't realise they would be against other GW models like hobbit models, which I had actually considered so that's a good point I will have to check for general play.

The one I had thought of in particular was trying to have Vargheists that were less ugly. My theme generally is that the army will be lead by a disciple of Abhorash, who seems like he was a bit more of a lawful evil kind of vampire haha (I never really knew much about the fluff, so going off discussions and the wiki). I was looking through the GW models for stuff I could still use in store and thought that the Dark Eldar Scourges could be a good representation of Vargheists that were a bit more at the beginning stages of turning into those beasts. I only just realised how big the Vargheists were though (nobody at my store plays death), and one of the guys thinks that the size difference along might be something that people take issue with.

What do you guys think? Talons and fangs are on the warscroll. Obviously there would be no guns. They definitely have talons if you use the right models (see the picture) and some of the weapon bits you can get are like metal claw/talon things. All vampires have fangs that can come out as far as I'm concerned (and the vampire models themselves vary with how much fangs they are showing at any given time). I would tilt them more into a flying pose so they didn't look ridiculous on the much bigger base, and probably make the bases quite scenic as well to help.

Ultimately though, they wont look like giant viscous beasts so I'm not sure it's ok...