The Power of Counts-as

We’re in a new golden age of hacks, fan supplements, and indie games. The options we have for gaming are staggering and it feels like there’s a packet or zine out there waiting for you that will cover anything you want to do in a game. I’ve had conversations with friends and hobbyists about how these rules documents can help support narrative gaming by injecting additional flavor and options into games we already enjoy. Content creation is the zeitgeist and many of us feel the need to emulate the output of people on social media, defaulting to supporting narrative play by creating more documentation. In that, I think we have lost appreciation for one of the most basic and primal of all tools a narrative wargamer has; taking one thing and using its rules to represent another.

Counts-as is the least invasive way to expand your options in a game. The Inq28 side of the hobby is home to a lot of hacks and fan rules, but they can be a lot of work. You need to have a very good understanding of the game you’re playing to create a brand new force and have it function well. You need to understand where the system can be broken and how the other factions operate. You may need to playtest and revise and accept feedback without ego. This is hard and time consuming in the best of circumstances.

Even trying to use existing house rules can be a pain in the ass. You’ll need to get consensus from your group to use them and it can already be a fight to get everyone to just read the core rulebook for a game. There could be bad feelings from potential balance issues, new rules they don’t understand or can’t remember, or a perceived competitive advantage. I’ve used units explicitly worse than existing options so I could use a model I like and faced complaints about power level. Simply existing outside the boundaries of the established rules will be a problem for some people.

After all this work, you’ll have a bespoke set of rules your core gaming group is familiar with and okay playing against (hopefully!), but what about playing with new people? Every new opponent will need a lesson in what is going on and need to provide permission. If you’re looking to join a Necromunda campaign and want to play Orks, it is a lot easier to get everyone on board with you using Ork models with the Goliath rules than it is convincing all of your friends to use a set of house rules you made or found on the internet. You simply show up with your models and start playing.

This is the most narrative friendly way to make a personalized and unique force for any game simply because you waste near-zero brain power on worrying about additional rules. All of those neurons can be used developing the visual identity of your special little guys and fleshing out the story you are trying to tell on the table. Does it really matter that you’re calling a bolt pistol a slugga? Does it really need a slightly different short range modifier to make it feel like you are playing Orks? That kind of minutia has no place in my narrative games, where the focus is the action on the table and my efforts with my opponent to give it context within our world of fantasy together.

Counts-as can, especially in the realm of GW games, promote inclusivity and open up our weird world to way more people. Corporations know that the average age of their customers is somewhere between 30-50 years old and that the demand for their products is largely inelastic. We are a captive audience who will grumble about prices, but our passion for the hobby will keep us coming back. I do a lot of counts-as when playing Warcry because I prefer older Citadel models, but if I were to buy the “official” models for my 11 man Soulblight Gravelords list, it would cost me hundreds of dollars because of the way they are packaged. That’s nothing compared to the cost of an starter 40k, AoS, or WHFB army. How is anyone new supposed to enter the hobby under these circumstances? Counts-as forces made of bashed toys, cheap plastic kits, or whatever a new gamer has is the only way we’re going to see young people replenish those of us who are aging out and keep fantasy and sci-fi wargaming alive.

This approach is not without its own pitfalls. Models representing different units need to be clearly distinguishable from others. You need to try to use plausible substitutes that are intuitively understandable to minimize friction, too. Using an Ork Nob with a big shoota as a juve wielding two swords will not make you a popular opponent, but using grots as appropriately armed juves may work. You also want to be sure that the rules you’re going to be using in your counts-as force make sense with its visual and narrative identity. A Nippon OPR army makes a lot more sense playing as Empire than Ogres or Chaos.

Rules are there to facilitate your narrative, not to take the place of your imagination. Stats, weapon abilities, and special rules are all just abstract variables in the mechanical soup of the game. The trademarkable names and themes layered on top of them can be ripped off and replaced at will. Once you start seeing the underlying gears, you can make these games anything you want.