The “Counts as” rule in BB

[spubbbba]

Has anyone converted a team based on the typical look of players from another of the BB rosters?

I’ve seen a fair few armies do this in 40K and fantasy with an army of dead High Elves using the Vampire rules or an Ork army where every model is a grot, even the mega nobs are robots with gretchin at the controls. Of course this can be abused in a lame way by Space Marine Players using whichever codex is presently the strongest even if they are painted up as another chapter.

We actually have rules that encourage this with raise the dead or nurgle’s rot and I have seen great conversions or even models for sale that are zombie/rotter dwarfs, elves or orcs. Some teams are very similar in appearance anyway and you can easily make a generic good elf team to be used for wood, high or pro elves or add a few extra models to make undead, necro and khemri.

But I was thinking of taking the style of 1 team and applying it to the other, not only could this look cool but you may be able to use this as a different team if you got bored. Some teams suits as goblins or dwarfs have always suited comedy roles and chaos is very mutable as well.

Here are a few ideas I’ve been playing about with.

Chaos Orcs,
Since beastmen are separate from warriors in WHFB then using the orc roster would allow a more bashy and heavily armoured evil human team. I could see Black Orcs being the elite chosen Chaos Warriors with normal warriors being blitzers and linemen and a marauder as the thrower. If you gave the normal warriors horned helmets then they can still be used as Beastmen. Not sure if goblins and trolls fit into this team though.

Norse Dwarfs
There were models for these in fantasy way back in 3rd edition and I did like the idea of a slightly faster and less armoured dwarf team. Many fantasy Dwarfs already have a pretty strong Viking look so the conversions would be easy enough, in fact they may end up a little dull as linemen, berserkers and runners/throwers would all easily suit longbeards, blitzers and runners respectively.
So making slayers into mini werewolves would open up some cool conversion possibilities as would having the deathroller as a mechanical snow troll.

Goblins squig hoppers as vamps or slann.
There was an awesome converted team using the squig hopper models at the GT a few years back, I think they used the goblin rules. However you could convert the vampire hoppers to be dressed as 50’s style vamps or the squigs as giant toads for slann.

So any other suggestions or better yet pics of converted teams?

[Glowworm]

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[robsoma]

I think a bit of artistic licence is welcome in all games as long as there is a clear diffence as to what position is what. for me personally the squig hopper idea is best suited to a slann team (they all bounce/leap) than a vamp team (ok so he's on a squig and that makes him ag4 why?) as for the chaos orcs I think it works as long as you stick to just black orcs as warriors and boyz with horned helms as beastmen, once you start trying to shoehorn goblins and stuff in it just gets a tad confusing.

As a side note i did a halfling team years ago using nurglings and beasts instead of trees!

[Darkson]

When Moodygit first decided to go to a BB tourny (Spiky 2003), he took a converted Orc team.

He did crap.

So he killed them.

The following year, he resurrected them as a Necromantic team, with team coach Pip (a snotling wizard) as the Necromancer.

Pics can be found from here onwards: http://arbbl.webs.com/apps/photos/photo ... d=39099543

(Can't link to pics on webs unfortunately.)

He was going to take it a step further and make a Orc Khemri team, but the nerf they took meant he had no desire to play the team, and hence the modelling idea fell by the wayside.


In the same folder you can find Moody's dead halfling - skellies cut at the knee to reduce their height, and the "trees", which are doors (a dead tree is planks of wood).


BigBelcher made a lizzie team using parts from the plastic ghoul and new plastic clanrat sprues, with a converted rat ogre as krox. They were a lizzie team infected by Nurgle, so were Stinks, Sore-asses and a Poxigor, but I can't find pics of them. I took them to the WC last year.

[TalonBay]

One of players in our TT league has a Chaos team made using the Greebo horned frogs (Slann) team with a bit of conversion to add horns and spikes, it's a really nice job and works just fine.

[Daht]

I have a mostly batman-villian themed team (with assorted other converted 'villians') that was a norse team 20 years ago, some minis got lost, so I put a few more together but use it as an Orc team list now due to the makeup of characters, (primarily a converted halfling mayor as a gobbo Penguin), and having an 80's pro wrestler themed norse team in the works at the time (which are going to the Chaos Cup this year)

I like it when it has good fluff and/or modelling and it isn't difficult to tell the positions (I make sure to fully color the bases 2nd ed style in addition to the models to help).

The big Q on teams like this are: Could I take this to a tourney of folks that I don't play with regularly and not be confusing/an issue?

This is partly why I'm doing my wwe norse rather than Arkham Assasins for the cup, since it's my first NAF tournament east of Utah.

[spubbbba]

I think a bit of artistic licence is welcome in all games as long as there is a clear diffence as to what position is what. for me personally the squig hopper idea is best suited to a slann team (they all bounce/leap) than a vamp team (ok so he's on a squig and that makes him ag4 why?) as for the chaos orcs I think it works as long as you stick to just black orcs as warriors and boyz with horned helms as beastmen, once you start trying to shoehorn goblins and stuff in it just gets a tad confusing.

As a side note i did a halfling team years ago using nurglings and beasts instead of trees!

Yes that is always the most important thing for me when creating a unique team, can my opponent easily differentiate the positionals.

The squig hopper example was just a silly team as I liked the idea of them killing themselves, slann does suit them better and you can even have a giant fat squig as krox or maybe a troll with a goblin king riding it (hence why he has bonehead over Really stupid).
But for the vamp team you could be really clever and have 2 large squig hoppers as trolls and some sort of conversion for the other 4 to have secret weapons. The thralls would be either 1 or 2 goblins with various herding devices which gives them the extra strength and limits their ability to dodge. So it would be easy to tell them apart with squig = vamps and goblin = thrall.

These probably work best with teams that have different races instead of positonals. So with chaos humans as Orcs you have your basic human sized marauder with horned helm as beastmen/orc linemen, blitzers and throwers. The warriors/Black Orcs would be much bigger, more heavily armoured and with bare heads or non-horned ones, there was a fantastic chaos team that won best painted at the GT and they used converted plastic Black Orc bodies for Chaos Warriors. Then the troll/mino would be a big mutated chaos human with a horned helm. So again if used as a chaos team it is easy to tell who is what.
Goblins probably wouldn't work unless you used some of the chaos imp familiars maybe?