I've been putting together an amazon army that I will use the high elf rulebook (I don't play, just paint but I want to keep the door open in case I decide to learn). For the most part, the units have fit well with the HE rules but there are a couple ideas I have bouncing around that I think will look great, be appropriate for my theme but not have as clearcut a high elf counterpart.

My question is this; how close does a unit have to look in order to be alright on the table? If I had a unit that doesn't look like it's wearing heavy armor, using spears instead of swords, etc, would it be alright to have them count as that unit provided I mentioned it beforehand or do they really need to correspond better?

My answer would be depends.
If you're playing with friends or in a non-competitive happening, there shouldn't be any problem. If you've read the last Tales of Battle issue, there was a cool Bretonnian army made only of night goblins riding squigs, and it was a GT.
I guess though some GW-runned tournies could put some restriction on the models.

To continue the Italian wait-and-see policy the big question really is, how obvious is it?

If you have 3 units with spears that are roughly the same looking and then play 2 as Spearmen and 1 as Swordmasters, then it is a bit iffy.

There are really no rules to follow, only what opponents will feel comfortable playing against.

exactly


Personally, if you have to spend a great deal of time explaining and reminding your opponents, its probably not good. Maybe even annoying.

I think most people would give you a pass on the heavy armor. But weapon swaps aren't exactly difficult conversions. . .

Armour is pretty easy to play as whatever you want it to be as long as you tell your opponent before hand of course. A pretty hard and fast rule of 'counts as' though is that the unit uses the weapon that is represented on the model. ie. so no having daggers modeled on that 'count as' great weapons, or no spears that 'count as' sword and shield. This makes it a lot easier for your opponent, lets you use your sweet converted army, and doesn't give you some unfair advantage, even if that wasn't what you meant to do.

I cant talk in great lenght on tournaments because most of the tournaments Ive been to have been smaller ijndy events but Ive never seen or heard of a unit or model being rejected for not looking the part (I once based 6 x-mas angels to use as chaos spawns)
If you just make sure to clearly explaining to your opponent that this unit of short people in black robes with greenish skintones are infact Highelf Spearmen with Shields and full command you should be okay.
I havent had any issues with any opponents despite my DE army being made almost exclusively of HE and WE models.

The game is not very consistent on what is light and heavy armour. But passing off models without armour as wearing armour? Not good, given that their armour saves are based on what armour the model is/isn't wearing...

The same would apply to shields, although they are so bloody obvious (they either have them or they dont) that I would call foul if they didnt have shields and you were trying to claim a shield bonus.

The section on weapons p54 clearly states though that the unit counts as being armed weaponwise with whatever the majority is. This is commonly known as WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet (WYSIWIG). I would make the effort to arm the majority appropriately, or that rule can be called on you.

The counts as rule is not in the brb, and presumably comes from old GT rules. More or less, using alternate models is fine if you can basically tell at a glance what it is supposed to be. And if not, you better be clear what is what and not have similar looking units be something else entirely.

Good luck. Counts as armies can be fun but some people will look down on your creativity no matter what you do.

I prefer to think to meself as a finn-in-law :P

Basically, I'd like to make a unit of sirens but there's really nothing in the HE book like it so even though I'm going to make them for fun, I'm wondering if I should try to alter them enough to look like they could be considered a unit like phoenix guard. I had plans for a unit that would count as shadow warriors but maybe I should change them and go with the sirens as shadow warriors, etc, etc. Hmmm.

Thanks for the input tho, I'll put them on the back burner for now and think about it.