AoS Can you chose and pick your army from different warscrolls?

Nah, rant away. I'm curious, and it won't hurt anyone because you've just been given permission to rant.

 

Hahaha well thank you for the permission! Allow my brain to vomit out some text for you...

When I say it's open to abuse I mean that there is potential for people to do some slimy things. If I wanted to I could sit 5 Slann behind a wall of self-regenerating undead and spend the whole game summoning Ripperdactyls and Carnosaurs. Or I could throw some Dwarf cannons into my Bloodbound army with a Lord of Change summoning more Lords of Change and a few Engines of the Gods to push for an extra turn. Or just an army consisting of multiple Archaons.

Really though to make a GOOD army it needs to be balanced. Synergy plays a huge part. I was recently trying to convince a friend of mine to get his Bretonnians up and running and there's a lot of benefit to using Bretonnian and Empire units as the "Free peoples" keyword is on both. Some Bretonnians also benefit from "Paladin" units being nearby, and some Stormcast units have the "Paladin" keyword. Careful planning could mean that a combined Empire/Bretonnian army with some Stormcast elements would be a force to be reckoned with - but just throwing down the most "powerful" unit en-masse would not be as effective and would miss out on rerolls, dice modifiers and bonus attacks generated from the benefits units grant one another.

Seraphon are the same - although our space lizard daemons are a tad racist and don't really benefit from being around other factions and like to keep their buffs to themselves. You can see it in almost any post that's along the lines of "I'm a new player and need help", "what makes unit X good?", "should I use unit X or unit Y?" it all comes down to what other units you're using, what your playstyle is and what your gaming environment is like.

 

What if I made a conversion ie skink handlers controlling a dark elf hydra? Would I be able to argue that the model should have the Skink keyword and so be open to all skink buffs?

 

I don't think you can do that by just changing values on warscrolls. But If you where to use the Hydra counts as Salamander or Razordon then I don't think it's a problem.
But using both I guess your Hydra also misses out on the dark elf handler bonus (is there any?)

 

If your gaming circle allows it. Writing your own Warscrolls is actually not too uncommon, we do it now and again at my circle when we want to convert models to fit our themed armies. Such as one guy who didn't like the Orc Wyvern so he got a LOTR Fell Beast and converted it into an Orc mount, then stuck a Black Orc on top of it quite nicely, going on to change the warscroll to make it faster at the cost of being more fragile due to its lithe body. Same guy also got some LOTR Eagles, painted them like pigeons, and stuck Skaven on top of them before adapting the Terradon warscroll to be more Skaven-y. One staff member did a similar thing with a Fyreslayer Runeson and a High Elf Phoenix. So long as your warscroll remains balanced and your friends are cool with it, you can do it.

 

Cool thx