On 3/10/2018 at 8:22 PM, ninclouse2000 said:

There’s is zero chance he is using that in an ffg tournament. Playing with that on a casual gaming night is one thing but not in a tournament setting. Same should apply to legion. Mod your troops as much as you want for casual play but leave them at home for tournaments.

We've had at least one streamed top-table game at an official FFG tournament where a Micro Machine Ghost was used instead of the stock model, so "zero chance" doesn't really fly.

Zero chance at Worlds, sure, but otherwise? Not necessarily.

3 hours ago, GreatMazinkaiser said:

We've had at least one streamed top-table game at an official FFG tournament where a Micro Machine Ghost was used instead of the stock model, so "zero chance" doesn't really fly.

Zero chance at Worlds, sure, but otherwise? Not necessarily.

The store I play at would not let that fly and the reason they give me is that if ffg were to be informed they would no longer be able to receive the kits and possibly not even be able to sell ffg stuff. All it would take is for an angry person to take a photo and send it to ffg to get that store destroyed.

21 hours ago, ninclouse2000 said:

The store I play at would not let that fly and the reason they give me is that if ffg were to be informed they would no longer be able to receive the kits and possibly not even be able to sell ffg stuff. All it would take is for an angry person to take a photo and send it to ffg to get that store destroyed.

That says more about your store than it does anything else (which as an independent business is certainly their right).

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Usually most games have no problem with a head swap. Even 40k, the king of IP issues I have never seen them care about a head swap. Some of you guys are just making up problems that wont be a problem. This is 50% a hobby, FFG understands that and conversions are part of that.

BTW, black storm troopers have been around long before Death Troopers appeared. I believe they were elite storm troopers called Shadow Troopers specifically guarding the Maw installation. A lot of 501st guys did them and as someone building a Death Trooper costume, there is massive difference from a normal TK suit and not just a simple head swap. Plates, undersuit and everything is different.

On a random side note. If anyone is making shore troopers, the commanders have blue on their shoulders.

15 hours ago, Col. Dash said:

Usually most games have no problem with a head swap. Even 40k, the king of IP issues I have never seen them care about a head swap.

BTW, black storm troopers have been around long before Death Troopers appeared. I believe they were elite storm troopers called Shadow Troopers specifically guarding the Maw installation. A lot of 501st guys did them and as someone building a Death Trooper costume, there is massive difference from a normal TK suit and not just a simple head swap. Plates, undersuit and everything is different.

I have seen Games Workshop stores ask people to pack up their models for having headswaps.

The differences in the armours from a cosplay standpoint are different from the differences from a modeling standpoint, especially on things painted black at a 30ish mm scale.

Edit: Shadow troopers are still canon, and would have completely separate in game states to a standard Stormtrooper. They were not included in Battlefront 2 because of the inclusion of Death Troopers. Death Troopers have kind of supplanted Shadow troopers as the "Elite guards of experimental weapons production and testing facilities."

On 3/11/2018 at 12:03 AM, Nihm said:

Didn't they say somewhere LoS is from unit commander when attacking?

The check to determine if the defending unit benefits from cover is unit leader to each mini in the opposing unit, if the majority would benefit from being obscured (their bases are behind terrain), then the unit has cover. The type of cover is based on how much of each mini is obscured (ie 50%) and then there is a separate LOS check for which minis can engage in the attack. (Base sanity check: attacker minis can’t be behind a wall unable to see the targets).

GW asking folks to leave a store may well be because they had used copyright infringing heads or some other issue other than just the head being swapped. GW has strange rules regarding what you can and cannot do here. Many years ago I built some Marines on Horseback with lances. I played them in a GT, in store and at another tournament or two, never once did the TO or opponents ever make a noise about them.

In general a player who is being nothing worse than creative isn't a problem, a head that is 1-2mm higher or shorter than what we have would disappear when viewed with the various sculpts crouching, kneeling and standing. Just the variety of poses will create a variance in model height, so this is a minor change to the models and not worth worrying about.

On the other hand there are instances where creativity is not the driver behind the variations to the models but some sort of "twisted rules lawyerie" attempt to gain advantage for modifying the models. Most TO's and Players figure out this one in time and it is easily addressed by saying good night to the player and sending him home early.

However, let's not limit one players creativity because another may break the rule of Wheaton.

One of the specifici instances that I witnessed firsthand was pig iron gas mask heads on Imperial Guard. "If you want gas masks you should have bought the ones from Forge World" was the setiment from the staff.

EDIT: To be clear, I want people to be creative but also mindful of future challenges, and that OP guidelines might have restrictions on conversions. Want to paint your Stormtroopers black? Go ahead! Just have some kind of plan for making Death Troopers obvious, even if it is just a vastly different coloured base. I play Bolt Action, where the difference between various kinds of infantry is often... A name and some rules. There is no requirement for marking squads differently, but an effort is still made by most players so everyone can keep track of what units are where, speeding up the game and keeping an opponent from feeling like you purposefully obscured information for an artificial advantage.

My son worked for GW. He said GW wants players to use mostly GW bits for modifications, but he didn't have a problem with third party products. I wish heads and maybe upper lower torsos were separate so I could at least turn them to face a different direction. I would like to tweak the models to give different poses so they were not all the same poses per squad.