How do you guys feel about LOS modeling?

Thinking about shaving down my flying stems.. Am I evil? I have played against people who have done this but I never really cared, however it would be nice to have shorter stems, even just to be more sturdy.

Most groups I've played with have been a bit annoyed wqith "movelling for advantage", and I can think of two occasions in tournaments I've heard the phrase (paraphrased) "Well you've modelled it this way, but the model SHOULD be about this tall, so I CAN see it".

I agree with Squidmaster - if you're doing something so it looks cool and don't try to gain an advantage from it, fair enough (ie you model a wraithknight kneeling down aiming its guns, but accept that someone can see it as if it were standing). I can't really see what you'd gain from cutting down flying stems in that regard however, except making reavers look like they're daisy-cutting (which might be pretty good actually).

As long as it's not abused I'm largely ok with it, after all if you model something lower down then it will be able to see less as well (actually, reavers benefit at the moment from the FAQ about being able to shoot 'over' other units).

This is something that Infinity does very well. They use 'Silhouettes' which are basically perspex markers that you put down in place of your figure and use to check LOS etc. They are a standard size for each class of model and so it doesn't actually matter how the actual miniature is posed, as you can always use the silhouette if needed.

How do I feel about it? I think it's cheating.

If you're willing to treat is as high as modeled for LOS, it doesn't matter. But if you do it to get an unfair advantage, that's cheating.

It might help if you could post a comparison of an unaltered vehicle next to one where you've shaved a bit off the flying stand.

I mean, there's a difference between shaving a millimetre or two off the stand, and cutting it so that the Raider is barely off the ground.

Jimsolo wrote:

How do I feel about it? I think it's cheating.

I would agree that it's modelling for advantage, unless all you're doing is making all models from a kit a uniform height that was available in the kit. For instance, I'm not sure about the new jetbikes, but the old eldar kit came with 3 different heights of stems. If someone modelled their army using only the small stems, I wouldn't have a problem with that.

I mean, who are we to say? Someone may have 100 jetbikes, and they just picked 18 from their army that are all the short stems. What's the difference between the guy that owns 100 and just uses 18 short ones, and the guy who just makes 18 short ones to begin with?

Sure, I suppose. Modeling it lower than it could be modeled on a standard base is when it becomes a problem.

I absolutely agree. I heard of some guy that modelled a wraithknight prone, laying on it's belly with D-cannons forward. Haha

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I absolutely agree. I heard of some guy that modelled a wraithknight prone, laying on it's belly with D-cannons forward. Haha

LMAO! Now thats funny. I faces some necron wraiths that were prone.

Interesting to see how people feel about this. To me its definitely a gray area seeing as if a template covers just one of my spikey bits on my raider, everyone inside is toast. If you can see my farseer's hand, you have LOS. My harlequins.... all standing on rocks for some reason... Just asking to get their head blown off.

There are lots of stuff that I think would just look cool to do, but not worth stressing my games over. Just sick of flying stems. They are so bad.