This question came up in a conversation at last night's game. I know sculpt modding/ painting (or using the wrong figure on a flight stand) was iffy/forbidden back in the day and there was some mention in the last tournament guide (which I also know no longer exists and hasn't been officially replaced yet), but another player swears he read in a ruling or document that a base without a sculpt was illegal at tournaments.

I was on hiatus when the last tournament guide was written and removed so I honestly never got a chance to read it so I can't say of it ever said that, but is a figure without a sculpt allowed today?
My initial thought is about switchclix and Ultron drones without the sculpts... I've had a couple clips from the sculpts break from switching so I don't like to have them moved. My second thought was the Indigo Lantern recruits... the bat wings and bent sculpts were so tough to place around that I ripped the tops off of them and tossed the bats for ease of use.

TLDR my response I am pretty sure the short answer is "no".

I know it used to be that if there was a custom or missing sculpt that your opponent could demand that you produce a copy of the figure with the original sculpt. I also have not seen that in writing in a very long time.

During the most recent WKO the concern was that the dial, not the sculpt was in a playable state(no significant distortion, torn dial sticker, etc). Else it was totally legal. It was about the same for sealed events at PAX according to their judges.

And for what it is worth, there seemed to be a ton of multibase figures during Worlds at PAX(specifically Flora Colossi and Merc Jets) that were almost completely missing or just the part that attached the figure to the base.

The only mention of this on WIN is for sealed events but I would imagine the last sentence also applies to constructed:

Oddly it seems the more experienced a player is, the more likely they are to play something with no sculpt. The less experienced, the tendency is to show up without a card. While I have frowned upon this, I have mostly allowed both, but will be making both official no gos at our venue in 2019.

I really have no idea, but I would think no sculpture should be against the rules in constructed. Can you imagine if you face a team with 6 characters but no figures on the base. Sure, it could’ve done, but with much checking and rechecking the blank bases to make sure characters are who you think they are. Now in sealed, I can see them being allowed just because it is unfair to penalize a player for a quality control issue.
Just my two cents.

I would personally love for every player to have equal unrestricted access to all playable pieces so you can truly compete wits instead of wallets. However, a lot of people won't agree with that, especially not WK! With the level of 3D printing available today, it would be very easy to create a template for a Base and just modify what is printed on top, and print your own dial on suitable card-stock. Having to template out the figure on top is a much bigger hurdle, until automated 3D mapping becomes more prevalent at least. I can't imagine WK would ever officially allow Bases only. Using a base with the sculpt broken off, but present with you however is a different story, though it's up to the judge and/or other player(I think many judges would at least ask the other player if they had an issue) to determine that.

I don't think this carries 'much' weight though it's still valid, but it can also make a difference in more quickly and easily identifying what those characters are, instead of continually needing to check the base and remember what all that figure does. That's why it's so great for players that spam bystanders to have printed disks instead of needing to remember what each token represents and needing to go back to it's card for the stats.(I don't do a lot of bystander spamming, as a result, I am one of those ill-equipped token users, and it's a headache even for me, so I try to avoid those team builds as much as possible.)

So there's nothing official, meaning it's judge's call in all cases... is that what everyone is agreeing on?

In sealed, it is definitely allowed. From that, a base only is a playable piece.

However, playable is not necessarily legal. As most things are becoming, judge's discretion.

Figure on the base means everything to me. I am playing the MINIATURE game because I am a comic guy. I do not play to compete against a set of numbers.

I want to punch Kalibak, not roll dice against a set of numbers. I want to KO Darkseid, not play against cards and data.

When I play I am playing a character against another character.

In your world, perhaps Captain Latestgreatest rolled a 3 against a Parademon. Now it’s time to curse your dice.
In my world I saw Captain Latestgreatest swing at the Parademon who dodged the attack. I never envisioned the two characters kneeling down shooting dice.

So there’s my view. Not worth much, but I have no reason to play otherwise.

I get this sentiment but there's an element of that's what games like chess are for. Both players play the same thing is "fair".

In heroclix fair is out the window between not all 50 point figures (for example) are the same (edit - added) to your access issue.

Heck, if you want that "fair" game of heroclix in a home game you just have to use the same teams for both sides. I say this & I can't really do it without playing generics because I don't keep dups but if you truly want to match wits in heroclix, that is the way to do it.

I've heard of judges that build like 10 teams & have players random pick for a special tournament. There are ways, it's just not in unrestricted tournament play.

More on topic, you can play Shrinking Violet without a sculpt (Also Atom & a few others I guess).

Despite all that I said above, I likewise would never forbid Invisible Woman nor Phantom Lady without a sculpt.

In another thread I told of a recent game where I built exact duplicate teams for all 12 players.
Was it fair? Ostensibly, as you say.
But not really. Some people can never make best use of certain figures.
Some have fantastic team building skills and are weak on tactics.
Others are absolutely lost without prob perplex outwit etc.
some needed to have had the team in hand a week in advance while others could hit the ground running with what I placed before them.

Clix is different from chess. There is no perfectly fair game of clix in the micro sense. In the macro sense it’s perfectly fair.

If there is no level playing field in micro due to different skill sets among players. Each game parameter will always favor one over another

For me, team building is an essential part of the game. To compare it to chess, it would be the opening moves, while playing the HC match would be the endgame. So having access to all the same pieces to build from would be the same as starting chess with all the same pieces.

I've seen where venues provide duplicate teams to compete with, we did that one time for one of the 'Sidekick' events, which I think is great for beginners, or if you are specifically trying to compete on playing skill rather than the all around game. I don't think I've ever seen this done, but I would love constructed with access to a limited amount of easy to access pieces. It would be very interesting to see what kind of teams other players put together given all the same choices.

For what it's worth, I have to agree with this... every figure and power has a counter (some hard, some soft). So whatever you play... no matter how cheesy, it can be beaten (although some have to specifically prepare for it, of course).

Also, I've seen your point about different people using figures better or worse than others first hand. We had a "surprise scenario" one week where our opponent would play our team, but we weren't told until we got there so it was a bit jarring. I had a couple horde tokens on my team to fill in points (and they were thematic) and my opponent treated them like bystanders, making them die faster then they should have. It was an interesting twist of a game... and the one guy that brought a team base really regretted it. Lol!

And to get back on topic, my only real concern (aside from broken sculpts) was if I wanted to play my Ultron army and if I could play the SRs with their drones (as the pair only come with 1 sculpt between them) or if there was a hard ruling that I couldn't. I'll ask the judge before I try to.

When AOU was Modern, there was an official ruling specifically stating that was not allowed.

But yeah, ask your judge.