Pimpcron: To Proxy or Not To Proxy 40k Armies?
Pimpcron explores reasons for making custom armies with proxy models.
The carpet of salutations unfurls to you good sirs and madams! Today I would like to “have the talk” with you about proxying models. For people who are perfectionists, it’s going to get kinda uncomfortable.
We’ve All Done It
So what is the most common reason for proxying models? Budget, obviously. All of us at some point of have proxied a model when we couldn’t afford it or it wasn’t out yet. You pull out your Shoe Box Land Raider and everybody groans. Then you set your crayon box Dreadnaught out and they laugh. In casual games, people usually have no issue with it as long as you are eventually going to buy the real model or are at least using a nice proxy model. Like a Rhino proxying as a Predator, or a Raider proxying as a Ravager. No big deal.
This is the old raider model, and the type I use so that it looks different from normal armies.
But that’s not really the reason I’m here today, most people don’t mind if you do that once in a while in friendly games. I’m talking about creating a custom army using an existing Army Codex and models from wherever you damn well please.
Maybe I’m Just Like My Mother, She’s Never Satisfied
(Okay, who gets that one? Too easy? Say it in the comments.)
So this is probably going to paint me as some sort of crazy person, but I already admit that I fall into the category “The Playa” in the Gamer Archetypes You Meet. I started out with Necrons, then added Vanilla Marines and Orks, then added Tyranids, then Guard, then switched my Vanillas over to Chaos. So to be clear, I had five full armies. But was that enough? Nope.
At that point I started flirting with Warhammer Fantasy as well because the idea of an all Vampire Army really appealed to me. So I got into it by buying a Vampire Counts army, played like five games, didn’t care for it and just stuck with 40k. Well I held onto the army for several months, feeling guilty for not liking the game, and kind of mad that an army called “Vampire Counts” contained about 7% actual Vampires. So I got the idea to make a 40k vampire army using an existing codex. Dark Eldar seemed to be a no-brainer for a Vampire based army (shut up Blood Angels players). And here we are today. I have roughly 3000 points of Dark Eldar that uses models from Vampire Counts, Dark Eldar, Wood Elves, and Dark Elves. All of it is painted in the same red-and-black vampiric scheme. I made up fluff to fit my army of course but I won’t bore you with that here. Suffice it to say I love my Vampire army so much that I didn’t stop there.
Maybe it should have been called Vampire Counts-As.
I Can’t Stop Now
After having a blast with the Dark Eldar Vampires, I started looking at other Fantasy races that had no 40k counterpart and I decided to do a Lizardman army using the Chaos Daemons Codex. Heresy! Just like Dark Eldar being a good analogy for Vampires, I found that it wasn’t much of a jump to see crossovers between Lizardmen and Daemons. Lizardmen have lots of magic and enchanted runes, so do Daemons. They both have tons of smaller hoard-like troops and Monstrous Creatures. So I claim that the enchanted brass jewelry and trinkets that adorn my Lizardmen are what give them their 5+ invulnerable save. I chose to say they are the Lizard race that is mentioned in a fluff story in the Space Wolves codex.
Then The Squats Arrived
I, like many people, have always liked the idea of Squats (even if their official models were goofy). It was at this time I decided to finally get back into the official “good guys’ side again and join the Imperium. So using Mantic’s Forge Father models, I made my own Squats army using the Space Wolves Codex. I actually do use the correct 40k vehicles such as my Stormwolf though. When looking at the Dwarves and Space Wolves, they both have a similar fighting style; being a mix of effective machinery and straight out brawling. I know that Squats were *supposedly* wiped out by a Tyranid invasion in the fluff, but my story for my army involves the Squats successfully saving part of their race and having a grudge against the Imperium for just leaving them to die.
So they started their own Astartes Gene Manipulation Program and I call them The Forgotten. They all display large black stripes on their vehicles (kind of like black arm bands) to remember all of those they lost because the Imperium didn’t see them as worth saving. I gladly fight against Imperium armies with them because of their grudge. They obviously are shorter than real marines by about a head. But this rarely takes me completely out of line of sight enemies. In fact, it has even kept my Long Fang squad from seeing out of the windows of a building they were in one time! So they are shorter, but they would be.
It’s no wonder they were killed off. Even lamer Guardsmen, anyone?
Are You Lighting Torches Yet?
So what you just read may have frightened or confused some of you. I have a few rules to my proxies.
- Always give the model the actual weapon that I am giving them in the wargear.
- Use models or change them in a way that they are roughly the correct size as the real models. If there is a squabble, always err on the side of the other player’s opinion.
- I don’t use these proxy armies in tournaments because I don’t want that kind of headache.
- Don’t use them against people who hate proxies, or against strangers.
I have had such a blast making and playing these armies, and I feel like they are my armies. And these are all codices I never would have played otherwise because of lack of interest in the models and/or fluff.
So how many of you have a twitchy eye at the thought of this? How many would play me and my counts-as nonsense?
Or contact me at [email protected] for the latest rules if you don’t do the Facebooks.
Editor: Topmost image is Michael Strange’s amazing full conversion ad-mech army.
