Using Non-GW Minis in local gaming

I recently listened to a D6 generation pod cast with Guest Jeff Carrol from Podhammer.

He was saying that for the past 2 years in Australia, there's been no GT's because Australians are pissed off with the way GW runs tournaments. Apparently, GW takes no feedback from the community, and comes in and tells everyone how THEIR tournaments are run. So with like 5 Australians showing up to GT's , GW eventually said Fuck it, and Australia said good riddance. Australia apparently has a very successful "indie" tournament scene just like the U.S. which has events like the Adepticon and Necronomicon.

Now because GW is not heavily involved on the tourney scene down under, Australians tend to play with large amounts of NON-GW products in their armies like Confrontation and Reaper miniatures. Jeff said that some people have "Warhammer and 40k" armies that are almost entirely composed of conversions made from non GW minis.

I've started to think more about this after spending some time looking at the Reaper area at Joel's store and seeing some of the awesome minis that the company actually puts out.

I think that as a community, we should be more accepting of using non-GW minis, even in our tournaments. Why should we care about the GW rule about minis when most of us don't even go to Games Day or Grand Tournaments. ?

What do you all think?

I agree mate.

Yeah screw GW... they only want money. That's why we are on the 5th edition!

Im a strong supporter of using anything that is cheaper GW is getting a bit out of hand.

Cheaper and unpainted! Right luis?

damn right baby .

Since most of my painted characters are Reaper Minis (especially my half-naked mage)...I'm all for it!

I think the only concern that people will have is that the mini needs to look close enough to the fig that your trying to represent. Otherwise I doubt anybody will have a serious problem with it. I don't anyways.

I'm fine with people using non GW minis. In fact, I recently purchased a Reaper Dark Elf Sorceress to use for my future DE army.

Yeah.. I'm gonna start looking at those reapers.. there are some awesome miniatures available for just about any race.

Reaper makes great character models...as far as rank and file...they get a little pricey and they don't rank up so well, either...

I too agree, lets allow and use Reaper and other models. So long as the size is in the ball park - 25mm to 28mm etc.

I'm looking to use a reaper mini as part of my War Altar of Urskin actually.

I've seen some RAWBERRY conversions of daemons using non GW models