"Proxy Armies?" Topic

I'm sort of shepherding a batch of new 40K players who recently became interested in the game. Most of them are building 'normal' armies from the codexes, but one of them wants to do something different. She is a great fan of whales and dolphins and she wants do an aquatic-based army. When she told me this I was sort of gobsmacked, but then she showed me some figures from Mantic Games' Kings of War game, specifically the Trident Realms army. It's got a lot amphibians and such so we wouldn't actually have to try and play under water :). So I started thinking: How can I adapt this to 40K? And then I thought: well, the Tyranids are a 'biological army', what if I just took the stats from the Tyranids and just changed the figures and the names for already existing units? That way I wouldn't have to play test this to make sure it was balanced, Games Workshop has already done this for me. All that's changing are the figures. I started looking into it and I think I can make this work. Of course the Trident Realms are a fantasy army and the figures aren't carrying any sort of SF weaponry, so the players are just going to have accept what's there, but we're a friendly group with no intention of playing in tournaments, so this ought to work.

Anyone ever do something like this?

Long ago, we used Rogue Trader '87 and WHFB on a medieval world. The medieval forces got at maybe 25% more troop points. We also gave the medieval forces psychic (magic) powers to make it more interesting. IIRC Warhammer siege had some crossover rules for this type of situation. I'm not sure how to handle it in 40K 10th though. I think Age of Sigmar has some aquatic type army.

A mini is a just a representation of a stat card. You can probably use any army list and make it work. ie: the Riverguard would be close assault troops, jumping really far like SM jump jets, or warping in like Eldar. The Thull (which look really cool) would be your SM Librarian/Chaplain or Psycher. And the Ensnarers would be your line troops.

Scott,

In your last post I suggested Grimdark Future instead of 40k. Easy of play and it's cost are the major reason why. They also make their own line of 3D printed minis…may I suggest looking at them? The have a "Saurian Starhost" that may fit your bill….

link

Dave

To add to PzGeneral suggestion. The basic Grimdark Future rules are free as is the army building tool. They have skirmish up to large scale rules as well as Fantasy and Space ship rules. Advanced rules are only like $5 USD and are well worth the price. They do have paper standees available if you want to try out some armies. I will step down from my soap box now.

Imperial Guard come to mind, especially if they are bipedal. There's Idoneth Deepkin but they are water elves more than fish people.

Then there is Chaos, definitely fish mutant potential

Atlantic games does make a plastic kit of thirty Lizardmen.
The cool thing is they can be made with spears. muskets or Sci-fi guns.

I directly proxy Space Dwarfs as Imperial Guard. I made it easier by sculpting a range of Dwarfs to fit with the rules for the guard.

I see no reason why a fantasy amphibian army couldn't work… I'm sure there are miniatures in the range that could be carrying fantasy weapons that proxy for SF… Chewbacca carried a laser-crossbow, for example :) . With that in mind, you could go down the Genestealer cult route… or, as you say, Tyranids. As with all proxy armies, as long as you are clear what each mini/weapon represents then it should be plain sailing :) .