WYSIWYG

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WYSIWYG (pronounced "whizzywig") is short for "What You See is What You Get". The basic principle says that you should be able to tell exactly what a model is and how it's equipped at a glance. This both reduces the mental workload of wargaming (since you don't have to track everyone's equipment mentally) and makes it harder for an unscrupulous player to cheat by assigning which equipment/troops are where on the battlefield once they find out where each is needed. Most miniatures games have some level of WYSIWYG. Exactly how much it's enforced and what that means very much depends on the community and company that own the game.

In a "Strict" WYSIWYG game like Zona Alfa you're expected to have almost every piece of equipment and upgrade modeled in some way. A specific bit on a sprue or model will always represent an item, nothing else is supposed to be used for it, and some even have penalties like potential disqualification in official events if you use un-approved model parts. Most games, however, have a little wiggle room for things like grenades and concealable technology like binoculars. It's very common to allow a holstered pistol on the model to represent any kind of available pistol regardless of what could fit. Likewise, a bipod-mounted version of an infantry rifle might be able to serve as any one of a Designated Marksman Rifle, a Squad Automatic Weapon, or a generic Assault Rifle/Carbine with some kind of accuracy skills. Modern Games Workshop games tend towards strict WYSIWYG, with Necromunda's latest edition even preventing you from upgrading a particular ganger's long guns once a campaign starts to avoid WYSIWYG issues.

Paradoxically, some card-based games with fixed model profiles like Mercs, Star Wars: Armada and X-Wing can be less-strict because your opponent will always know what a model represents, and can verify the cards easily. "Miniatures-agnostic" games like Frostgrave, Oathmark, Kings of War, or This is Not a Test will usually have a set of profiles and guidelines for representing any special equipment. These just want you to be consistent with

There are also games don't really care what you put on the table as long as it's the right size/Silhouette and you're not using the same model to represent two different things - Battletech and Infinity are particularly well-known for this. These games are often referred to as "Proxy-Friendly" or "non-WYSIWYG", despite still having some rules enforcing it. This is especially common in mass-battle games - where just being in a unit means that you automatically have certain gear, and the opponent will know this - or in miniatures lines like the aforementioned BT and Infinity where many profiles and even whole unit types that never really got a model.