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[GlyphGryph]

This is something that's really been bugging me for a while, and in big part is why I don't play any miniatures games right now. Card-gamers tend to be split - about half will hate you for using proxies, about half don't care, but I've never met a miniatures gamer (myself excepted) who was okay with their use.

Let me start with a story.
I was a naive youth in university, and once a week there was a Starship Troopers miniatures night. A bunch of players got together for small casual games, big epic campaigns, and a bunch of different things. I'd played a couple of times using borrowed armies, but really wanted one of my own. I love Starship Troopers, and badly wanted to join, but had no money to afford units. Even if I had, model building is generally, imo, incredibly boring.
So I decided to build my army from scratch. Using wire, cardboard, paper mache, some clay and paint, I spent two weeks putting together a little Bug army, built to the standard point value for casual games which is all I really wanted to play.
Maybe the pieces weren't the most beautiful pieces ever, but I was incredibly proud of them. It was also clearly obvious what they were at a glance. I still have a couple of them around, and they occasionally get appreciative comments from those not familiar with the game.
So, eager to get started, I bring them to them game night, expecting a positive reception. Nothing could have been further from the reaction I got. They weren't just unimpressed, they were downright hostile to the concept, as if it somehow insulted them. I was derided, laughed out, and, obviously enough, never returned.

Now, it would be easy to attribute this to just a jerky group - except the experience of building the units was so enjoyable and so fun, that I found a couple other groups of miniatures gamers with the idea maybe I could pick something else up and build another custom set and play that instead. Every single one I talked to was hostile to the idea, but none of them could say why in a way I understood.

So my question is, do people here have that same reaction? If so, what's wrong with using these homebuilt pieces? How do you feel about proxies in general, say mixed in with a regular army?

tl;dr
Are proxies and homebuilt unnoficial units ok with you, and if not, why?

[JoshuaFH]

Now, I have never played any sort of tabletop game involving miniatures, but I feel that these players you mention may feel that the proxies lack the authenticity or legitimacy of actual, purchased figurines.

To give an example of what I mean: I play Magic the Gathering, but I would never dream of just, say, taking any "Land card", the most basic and simple cards that are in every deck and can be acquired easily, and just say taking a pen and scribbling "Emrakul, The Aeon's Torn" on it, the name of an extremely powerful creature, and then expect everyone to take me seriously. Now, I'm not saying it can't be done, but you'd have to check if it's ok with your group, because people tend to dump alot of money into their miniature hobby and then find it a tad insulting when someone comes with a bunch of handmade clay figures.

Now, I admire your enthusiasm, and I don't think you should give up! Try to get people to understand that the miniature aspect doesn't appeal to you beforehand, and clear it with the group first. I'm sure your personalized army will become popular if they give it a chance.

[Detrevni|inverteD]

I think this is where the line between people who are into the hobby to maintain the miniatures and the people that are into it to play the game is most prevalent. I myself am only getting into 40K, mostly because I love the armies and want to paint them and stuff, but I have alot of friends who either play because they love the game or because they love the whole lore aspect and building the armies and miniatures, and there's a really obvious difference between their personalities.

For one, most people who play the game are quite competitive. They are playing to win, and are proud of the statistical side of the army they are trying to build. They've spent alot of money on units they feel will win them the game, and most of the time they are painted with as little effort as possible to get them onto the table.

On the other hand, I know people who modify and literally build new parts for their miniatures just for the aesthetic side of it. They still do play the game, but it's usually a very relaxed atmosphere and everyone spends most of the time sharing painting techniques and admiring each others work on their miniatures.

What I think that happened here is you've crossed this boundary. I'm not familiar with the game you speak of, but it sounds like these guys know the game very well and consider themselves veteran status, and are quite competitive, and when you bring in an army that you've made yourself and hope for their appreciation to the craftsmanship and effort and love you've put into it, they don't really get it because they aren't really interested in that side of the hobby, just the playing side.

I think it was just a group that had different interests in the hobby than what you had first perceived, I'm sure if you look you can find a group who are in it just for making the models and being creative.

[Sowelu]

I remember seeing a Penny Arcade comic about using proxies along the lines of "This horse is actually a dire worg, and so is that coin because I ran out of horses".  If you don't use the official stuff, they're not necessarily recognizable as what they're supposed to be.  Sure, they are to you, and they are to someone who takes the time to really look at it...but it can be a little, well, I dunno.  I think the normal feeling among opponents would be "Why would you make my life more difficult by making me puzzle out what those are".  I'm sure your stuff is very nice, but it's probably different enough that it might not be recognizable at a glance.

Same with magic cards etc.  If you printed a high-quality replica of the card you wanted it to be, and managed to paste that over the front surface of a land card, and put it inside a sleeve such that you couldn't tell from the back that there was anything funny about it at all...I think that would be a LOT more acceptable, because you are showing respect for your fellow players by using high quality materials that don't make them go "Wait, what was that card supposed to be again".

[Capntastic]

It really depends on who you're playing with, honestly.  There's not much more to it than that.

[Detrevni|inverteD]

Ah, I didn't see the question at the bottom.

Well, personally, I'm not a very competitive person by nature so really I'm looking for enjoyment over the self gratification of winning when I play games, especially something tabletop. If the other person was using homebrew stuff, I guess it'd be down to how much effort they had put into it. I can appreciate effort and love put into something, even if the final product wasn't up to my standards if I were to do the same thing, if they had worked really hard on it then I'd unarguably allow it to make the game more fun for the both of us.

[Soulwynd]

Pictures or it didn't happen.


I mean, I want to see the miniatures in question.

[Sowelu]

Clarifying my response, I would say that if I was sitting down with a friend as a social thing, or if I was fairly new to the game, then homebrew stuff would be totally fine.  If I was out to actually test my mettle, I would find it off-putting.  Hmmm...  Kind of like playing chess with one of those wacky novelty sets where each piece is, I dunno, a Simpsons character or something.  With a friend, you're not just playing chess, you're saying "Wow this is pretty cool".  With a random unknown opponent, that social foundation isn't there.  Proxies are the Simpsons chess sets of wargames and CCGs:  They can be pretty awesome, but if you tried to use one in a competitive setting, people would look at you funny.  The closer in quality and in FORM it is to the original, the less of an issue this is.

So, it's cool in a non-serious, casual setting.  In other settings where the game itself is the primary focus, I could see it being kind of annoying.

That doesn't mean that using them isn't justified!

[de5me7]

i second that post a pic, I havnt played any minatures games in years but back in the day if they cut the mustard in quality i usually found people were ok with it.

[LordBucket]

they were downright hostile to the concept, as if it somehow insulted them.

One more angle to consider, that I don't see mentioned by anyone else yet: some people invest a great deal of time and energy into "building up" their armies. When you come along with homebuilt pieces, in their mind you're trivializing all their effort. Imagine, for example, someone who plays a computer game for years, buys all the strategy guides, routinely has 12 hour playing sessions, and feels all happy and proud of themselves for getting a really high score. Then you come along with cheat engine or a hex editor and mod your game and tell them you got just as a high a score.

They might be annoyed.

The miniatures people are in a similar position. When they've spent several hundreds of dollars and five times as many hours painting and polishing their pieces, collecting them one at a time like precious gems to add to their collection...they're unlikely to be thrilled about playing their gems against paper mache and cardboard. Especially if they personally played for a year of constantly losing games because they had to slowly build up a decent enough collection to be competetive.

Are proxies and homebuilt unnoficial units ok with you

It depends on context. I've personally used homemade pieces for Alpha Omega and Spacehulk. But in both cases I was playing with friends either at my house or theirs. I wasn't showing up at a formal gaming hall where people play tournaments. It sounds like you did.

and if not, why?

Imagine a professional airline pilot showing up to fly your plane wearing an untucked hawaiian shirt and flipflops. Obviously it won't hinder his ability to fly the plane, but do you see how some people might be uncomfortable with it?

It's unprofessional.

In some environments that doesn't matter. But in some environments, it does. When people take a thing seriously, they usually feel more comfortable when the people around them also take it seriously and show similar levels of decorum.

[Soulwynd]

E-Peen, also present in miniature games.

[Vattic]

I'd say the quality is the most important part. My Dad is a miniature artist, mostly historical but he paints some 40k for fun. He heavily modifies most of his stuff but it still looks 40k in every way, had people say they own figures he scratch built and had taken to shows. I doubt he'd have trouble using them even though some are only 10 - 20% original. He's currently turning all the new Blood Angel Space Hulk miniatures into Deathwing ones, once painted they should be playable with.

Are there not rules for building custom ork vehicles?

I wonder if people would mind you using Mega Bloks in that Lego tabletop game.

[nenjin]

There are three kinds of miniature gamers:

1- Those who think What You See Is What You Get is a great rules system that everyone should play by.

2- Those who who have no insanely strong opinion one way or the other.

3- Those who actually consider model deception an off-table strategy.

Luckily 1 and 3 are either easy to spot, or rare. People that meta-game the table tend to not stay around very long, or erupt because they think others are. And in my experience, WYSIWYG people are only found at tournaments or the corners of game stores where they wait for a sucker to want to play them, because no one else will.

That said, fielding a 100% proxie army is kind of a pain in the ass for your opponent because they have to memorize YOUR army as well as theirs. A single proxie, I don't care, as long as someone put some time into it and it makes me smile. When someone slaps a snack-size cereal box on the table and says "there's my predator", that does kill the ooh ahh of a table top game. And that person is probably very young and unable, or unwilling, to actually invest in the game. What you did sounds awesome though, screw those guys. Anyone that put that much effort into their proxies, I'd play a game against them just so they could get the joy of having used them.

But yeah. Some of my friends home brew their own models. Have made some SICK greater demons of Nurgle with just a bucket of Green Stuff. Every Chaos Marine is loaded up with sculpted green stuff, each one a little story in and of itself.

The point is that they're memorable and there's no two identical pieces in the whole army, so it's easy to remember what is what because not only is it unique...it looks damn cool.

So, the moral: don't play against broke kids who just want to be part of the fun but can bring nothing of their own, and don't play the super aggressive tournament guys, who have made an art out of lawyering people to DEATH. I'm sure if they did a study, they would find that half or of hardcore, older war gamers are lawyers and/or bureaucrats.

And I guess be leery of college gaming clubs, since many of those people probably got their start in gaming stores. That's still a pretty sad story for a gamer, you'd think a gaming club is one place you could go where people would appreciate the effort.

[GlyphGryph]

Took pictures, but my comp isn't recongizing it. I've only got one of the model types left, and its definitely not the prettiest (it was the first of the batch I made, but was also the only piece that didn't need long spindly legs, which is why its held up all these years through multiple moves, while the others did not.) Anyways, come morning I'll use my girls comp to upload the pics. Don't expect to be impressed - these were made with what I had, and this piece wasn't one of the ones that got the clay smoothing.

I wish I still had the Warriors and Blister bugs... they were both a lot more impressive looking.

Also, I didn't mention it before because I'd forgotten, but many of the pieces also had hidden screws that gave them a few articulation points. I was really proud of that bit - but all of those pieces were trashed within a year. Apparently paper mache and cardboard aren't the best screw material Who knew?

The closer in quality and in FORM it is to the original, the less of an issue this is.

This may have been a contributing factor. While it was clear and obvious what each piece was, and the sizes were the same, the style was completely different.

The miniatures people are in a similar position. When they've spent several hundreds of dollars and five times as many hours painting and polishing their pieces, collecting them one at a time like precious gems to add to their collection...they're unlikely to be thrilled about playing their gems against paper mache and cardboard. Especially if they personally played for a year of constantly losing games because they had to slowly build up a decent enough collection to be competetive.

From what I've gotten, I think this is a big part of it. But I don't understand it. I play the game because I love the rules and the mechanics. I play the game because I love the strategy and the competition and the conflict of minds. I play the game because I love the lore and the world, and every one of my units has a story and an identity.
You make it sound as if people play the game simply so they can show off how impressive their stuff is.
I just can't understand that sort of mindset over something like a game, but I get the feeling there are a number of people who treat it like that.

Anyways, yeah, pics tomorrow, hopefully.

[Detrevni|inverteD]

The miniatures people are in a similar position. When they've spent several hundreds of dollars and five times as many hours painting and polishing their pieces, collecting them one at a time like precious gems to add to their collection...they're unlikely to be thrilled about playing their gems against paper mache and cardboard. Especially if they personally played for a year of constantly losing games because they had to slowly build up a decent enough collection to be competetive.

From what I've gotten, I think this is a big part of it. But I don't understand it. I play the game because I love the rules and the mechanics. I play the game because I love the strategy and the competition and the conflict of minds. I play the game because I love the lore and the world, and every one of my units has a story and an identity.
You make it sound as if people play the game simply so they can show off how impressive their stuff is.
I just can't understand that sort of mindset over something like a game, but I get the feeling there are a number of people who treat it like that.

Anyways, yeah, pics tomorrow, hopefully.

Some people can't be empathetic for that kind of thing. Similar to what has been said before, people play tabletop games for different reasons. It's a hobby with many different aspects that one can find enjoyable, whilst some people play it super competitively to win and beat everyone, others play it casually and enjoy building up armies and painting the miniatures.

It all depends on what kind of group you're in. Alot of my friends in real life play 40K, and they're all in different groups. I go to quite alot of games to watch and hang out with my mates(Though I'm only just recently getting into it properly so I can play for myself) and I get to see all the different kinds of people that go to them. Some of them are laid back, and don't even play the game, they just admire each others miniatures and share techniques about building and stuff, and others take the game really seriously and get super competitive.