Creating Characters

One of the reasons I feel that armies like Tau and Tyrannids, and especially necrons don't make it into the most popular armies, is they just CAN'T win hearts and minds. There's no personality there. Between communists, bugs and robots, where the hell are you gunna squeeze in a little character? As Imperial Guard, I'm the most human of all the races, literally. Thats far from why I chose it, but it ended up being one of the coolest parts of the job. See, with so many men, I have quite a few leaders. Each leader being someone I have based off a friend. Most of my friends don't play warhammer, and its an interesting thing when I say, hey, wanna see your model? and all of the sudden its far more interesting. Obviously, if you play orks, its hard to get that in there, but oh well, your characters will just have to be THAT much more creative. How do you come up with a character based off a friend? First off, you have to choose a role for your friend. Are they well liked? are they leaders? are they average troops? or specialist troops? can they fulfill their role well? or are they bad at it? if so, is it funny? Sometimes I'm tasteless about it, like all my dead friends are in a squad of men that are all dying, and the most leaderly of my dead friends is the sergeant who is looking on in horror. Its tasteless, but I still find it rather funny. (yeah, I have enough dead friends to fill a squad). Next up we have their weapons loadout. Most of them will be defined by their role, but sometimes, particularly the leaders can have a lot more character in their loadout. For example, my more reserved friends get ranged, my more intense friends get close combat. I like to make characters from the game, and fill their special rules for my friends, for example, Chenkov, is replaced with Wally, and he is able to have a similar mindset, and fits well with how I field my army. Lastly, how you use them on the table is up to you, but I find making the decisions you think that they would make, makes them roll better, and makes for a better story.