Post by Hi I'm Derek on Jan 10, 2020 18:51:44 GMT -5
Here's a question for all you Devoted of Sigmar out there: how do we all feel about WYSIWYG in Kingston?
It wasn't so long ago that Sigmar had some pretty egregious warscroll design philosophies. Every model can be a standard-bearer or musician - not only could they be, but indeed they ought to be since you lose the benefit if the model dies, and there's no cost imposed for having the added gear. I can't imagine anyone bothered to model their gigantic stabba blobs with everyone carrying a totem or drum, but that's exactly what the rules encouraged. Outside of the the most cutthroat tournament environment easier to just assume the unit had the benefit of the command models and not worry too much about it (and now of course most of those sorts of units would be illegal since the kits don't support building them without extra bits). This sort of modelling silliness really turned me off Sigmar until very recently, and encouraged the kind of ridiculous-looking army that would make a bunch of proxies actually look better than their WYSIWYG-compliant counterparts.
Now obviously Sigmar is designed foremost as a WYSIWYG game. Modern Warscrolls largely provide options ripped straight from those available within the kit, and generally impose the same limits as the kit. So for the most part it's probably a good idea to use the equipment in the kit as intended.
But how much does it actually matter? WYSIWYG is largely a factor of the need for an opponent to be able to identify with reasonable accuracy what miniatures are equipped with. Many miniatures games are not particularly bothered with WYSIWYG. Infinity's all-pewter range defies conversion, and there is not a miniature for every possible unit you could deploy. You could argue that the game's scale is totally different, but equipment also matters considerably more in Infinity, with individual units often being customization out the wazoo and cosmetically similar kit doing wildly different things.
For a long time Games Workshop games included entries that required conversions to denote them on the battlefield, and the very notion of conversions defies WYSIWYG being a rigid set of rules since individual players might make wildly different judgments about how a unit might be portrayed (remember flying land raiders?). As a result I've always had a very fluid, open-ended view of WYSIWYG. If I can tell what a unit is at a glance, we're good. If I can't, I'll ask, and if you have a concrete answer (or even better a paper army list for reference) I'm happy. If a unit is something other than what it appears to be and my opponent volunteers that information, then all is well. Perhaps at the most extremely competitive level I would concede that things should be the proper official GW thing but even then that would discourage converting, which is to me one of the most singularly enjoyable elements of the hobby, from simple head swaps to full on counts-as third-party-manufactured armies.
And until fairly recently, converting wasn't merely something you could do if you wanted - it was virtually required to have a finished army!
Then there's simple cosmetics - let's use a specific example: I'm building a group of Gore-Gruntas for my Big Waaagh! army. They can have a long lance-like weapon with a goofy name or a hand weapon with a goofy name. For a non-competitive player that doesn't play Orruks, you could probably extrapolate that the long one has better reach, but you'll probably need me to tell you what they do or look at the warscroll since the names alone convey little meaning. I'm a big stickler for aesthetics of a model before any other considerations, and I like my orcs to look non-uniform because that sort of ragged, irregular look emphasizes their animistic savagery. So if I build my gore-gruntas with an assortment of ragged looking salvaged arms (maybe even from other kits for more variety!) and tell my opponent "they have the hand weapons" does that present a problem? Do people think "That's fine for a casual game, but for a tournament they should be built properly".
Is this topic even mildly interesting to anyone? I'd love to hear people's thoughts.
It wasn't so long ago that Sigmar had some pretty egregious warscroll design philosophies. Every model can be a standard-bearer or musician - not only could they be, but indeed they ought to be since you lose the benefit if the model dies, and there's no cost imposed for having the added gear. I can't imagine anyone bothered to model their gigantic stabba blobs with everyone carrying a totem or drum, but that's exactly what the rules encouraged. Outside of the the most cutthroat tournament environment easier to just assume the unit had the benefit of the command models and not worry too much about it (and now of course most of those sorts of units would be illegal since the kits don't support building them without extra bits). This sort of modelling silliness really turned me off Sigmar until very recently, and encouraged the kind of ridiculous-looking army that would make a bunch of proxies actually look better than their WYSIWYG-compliant counterparts.
Now obviously Sigmar is designed foremost as a WYSIWYG game. Modern Warscrolls largely provide options ripped straight from those available within the kit, and generally impose the same limits as the kit. So for the most part it's probably a good idea to use the equipment in the kit as intended.
But how much does it actually matter? WYSIWYG is largely a factor of the need for an opponent to be able to identify with reasonable accuracy what miniatures are equipped with. Many miniatures games are not particularly bothered with WYSIWYG. Infinity's all-pewter range defies conversion, and there is not a miniature for every possible unit you could deploy. You could argue that the game's scale is totally different, but equipment also matters considerably more in Infinity, with individual units often being customization out the wazoo and cosmetically similar kit doing wildly different things.
For a long time Games Workshop games included entries that required conversions to denote them on the battlefield, and the very notion of conversions defies WYSIWYG being a rigid set of rules since individual players might make wildly different judgments about how a unit might be portrayed (remember flying land raiders?). As a result I've always had a very fluid, open-ended view of WYSIWYG. If I can tell what a unit is at a glance, we're good. If I can't, I'll ask, and if you have a concrete answer (or even better a paper army list for reference) I'm happy. If a unit is something other than what it appears to be and my opponent volunteers that information, then all is well. Perhaps at the most extremely competitive level I would concede that things should be the proper official GW thing but even then that would discourage converting, which is to me one of the most singularly enjoyable elements of the hobby, from simple head swaps to full on counts-as third-party-manufactured armies.
And until fairly recently, converting wasn't merely something you could do if you wanted - it was virtually required to have a finished army!
Then there's simple cosmetics - let's use a specific example: I'm building a group of Gore-Gruntas for my Big Waaagh! army. They can have a long lance-like weapon with a goofy name or a hand weapon with a goofy name. For a non-competitive player that doesn't play Orruks, you could probably extrapolate that the long one has better reach, but you'll probably need me to tell you what they do or look at the warscroll since the names alone convey little meaning. I'm a big stickler for aesthetics of a model before any other considerations, and I like my orcs to look non-uniform because that sort of ragged, irregular look emphasizes their animistic savagery. So if I build my gore-gruntas with an assortment of ragged looking salvaged arms (maybe even from other kits for more variety!) and tell my opponent "they have the hand weapons" does that present a problem? Do people think "That's fine for a casual game, but for a tournament they should be built properly".
Is this topic even mildly interesting to anyone? I'd love to hear people's thoughts.
