Special or custom HQs?

So I saw a post in another thread, and it got me thinking: Do people in general prefer to have their armies lead by a named character, or a personalized generic character?

My personal preference is the latter, which is one reason I love Autarchs: you can outfit them with a lot of options, thus making your army's leader a unique fit for your playstyle. Make the leader fit your army, rather than tailor the army to fit the leader.

This is one thing I would like to see changed and expanded upon in the codex. Because Dark Eldar are not an army in the modern sense, having the leaders have plenty of customization options (rather than being forced to conform to regulations) sounds like a great fit and was actually a major selling point for me back in the day, as both 3rd and 5th edition gave us an expansive wargear section to customize our Archons and Wych Lords to our hearts content. Going away from that has really hurt my love of the Dark Eldar.

Definitely custom HQs. Being able to personalise armies is one of the things that still draws me to Games Workshop's games over their competitors.

Both, of course.
When i played WHFB, there was a consensus : never use special HQs, because they were mostly unbalanced, and crafting your own HQ was fluffier. But in 40k that's not really the case, and some armies don't even have a choice (SoB ?).
Others armies get both custom HQs and special HQs, it's really not much to ask for both.

Both

Both is preferred, but I really want the ability to customize. Makes the conversions that much more fun

I don't personally have a preference, I just want us to have abilities on our HQs that make me smile with their dastardly uniqueness. (Phil Kelly, come back to us.)

To lead the army I prefer a named character, seconded by several custom characters.

Named character for the most part.

40k is like most franchise universes for gaming. I already know who the important people are. If the characters I'm making up were as or more important, then the stories and novels and movies and whatnot would be about them, not the canon characters. So I face the choice of creating a ridiculous Mary Sue, or an irrelevant nobody.

I enjoy playing the big guys on the field.

(That being said, sometimes I enjoy playing ridiculous Mary Sue characters or irrelevant nobodies as well, just not as frequently.)

There are characters that have a certain uniquness that enrich the faction as a whole. Right now we got this "super Succubus", "super Haemonculus" and "legendary Incubi" characters. The latter is interesting as he brings the aspect of Phoenix Lords into the Dark Eldar. But from a story/character perspective, the former two are not nearly as interesting.

But with crazy and colourful characters like the Baron or the Duke we see aspects are often overlooked. They show that there is more to us then raiding, being merciless warriors and pain junkies. Those HQs make us seem less generic as a faction and when they had rules, they brought unique traits that no other (generic) HQ could have had.

But in the end, all I really want are HQs with wings, Jetbikes, better weapons, better auras and more options all round. I want my HQ to match my army, not vice versa. I love special HQs, but I don't believe in GW's balancing capabilities.

Both, I started in 7th when my HQs were bad and my named characters were worse. I remember looking at older codexes and drooling over how bloody cool the named chars were in previous editions, and wishing I could customize my Archon to be a murder machine just like you used to be able to.

Given that GW apparently gutted the Autarch's options, I am not hopeful for custom options for our Archons.

I don't care how much better a special character may be than the "generic" options, being able to create my own characters and stories is a lot of why I'm involved in this hobby in the first place, so I categorically don't use them.

Regular characters aren't necessarily nameless though. You can give them names.

I much prefer personalised generic characters, for much the same reason as @Calyptra. I do like to have the option of taking a decent named character, and enjoy their stories, but I only rarely field them.

The twin demons of 'not in the box, not in the book' and 'not a popular faction so you don't get much in the box' are my least favourite things about 40k currently. Bring back 2ed wargear lists and kitbashing! Their arms and weapon options are modelled interchangeably, let the rules support them too!

[/rant]

I typically prefer to build my own generic character but, if they brought back characters that allowed access to special rules such as Baron I'd be interested.
We just got all of our HQs in plastic so I don't see us getting a jetbike option or anything fun like that.