When it comes to proxies, where do you draw the line on WYSIWYG, money, and time?
Hi All, In my previous blog, I have discussed one of our hobbies most interesting aspects, DIY or scratch building. Now a DIY project is in somewhat one aspect of a proxy.
Don’t know what a proxy is? A proxy is something you use to represent a model that you do not have. As an example, I’m playing a warhamer 40k space marine army and I want to use a Rhino but I don’t have one. But, I do have a lego rhino model made that I will use until I get one. Or will I?
Now that is the question I want to talk about. How much is too much. Now there are many situations where you would like to use a proxy. Here are some of them:
1- Trying out a new unit. Maybe you won’t like it so you don’t want to go buy a model unless you know you’ll use it.
2- You made you own DIY project.
3- The model or unit is just plain to costly for your possible budget.
4- Customization
5- Unit fillers.
Now lets talk about these. #1 is fairly easy, or is it? I think we all have done it at some point for a model or two here and there. BUT, I’ve seen complete armies tested out this way. I’ve played against a warhammer skaven army where each unit was a flat cardboard the size of the unit with dices to mark how many there were left. The dude wanted to tryout the skaven before buying an army. Can you imagine playing against cardboard sheets…. Why did I say yes? OK, once in a life time, sure, I helped the dude. The problem is that he did it to 3-4 others in the group. I didn’t know at the time.
#2 and #3 can somewhat go together. Let me explain. A DIY project has 2 reasons to exist, for the fun of it is one of them. The challenges in doing one is just plain fun and what about the end result? The other one is to be able to play a model that is just plain to costly for our budget. Now, some people get so good at it that they plain and simply stop buying and start building everything.
#4. We all like customizing our minis but some may take it in a different direction. Let me explain myself. I know a 40k dark eldar army entirely made of ktoot models. For example, talos engines are krootoxes. See what I’m getting at. His revenant titan is a fantasy de dragon with no rider slightly changed to represent his army theme. I’m aware of it cause I did the commision work on the model and paint job. Let me tell you this is almost as confusing playing against the cardboard layouts mentioned earlier
#5. Some times units can be so big that you’ll want to use unit fillers. For example, in ranked units (Age of Kings or Warhammer fantasy for example), you could have a 30 strong unit but only buy 2 boxes and create a filler to save money. Sometimes they can indeed augment the army’s look factor.
When playing DIY/proxy models, I think we all can agree that it can sometimes occur. But what do we do in terms of over using? What I mean is that at some point, you have a full army and playing someone that has just to much “non real” models. You have taken the time to buy your army while you’re opponent has 100$ worth of paper/other. Yes ok, some of these are quite well done and splendid and you certainly won’t mind but how do you feel playing when you invested so much money to play the same game vs and adversary with cheap half-ass models. After all, if you can’t afford it, don’t play it right? Or in the case of the krootox, just plain “ewwww”! to play a proxy army like that even if the dude did invest a lot. Not everyone would be ok with it. What about you? Now keep in mind that certain DIY models are worth while to see and play with.
What is you take on proxies/DIYs?
