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Hi all I am kind of new to the whole miniature gaming thing only been playing warhammer 40k for about 2-3 months now. In that time I have managed to get my hands on 2 x AoBR boxes and split them with a space marine buddy. This has meant that I have had plenty of painting practice in a short time, but my question is how would you grade a model well in fact this one. I have heard in some tournaments that you need to have a basic paint job including 3 colours and other games will give points on how good your army looks.

So I think I am doing ok but what does one look for in a model to make it really stand out and what could I have done differently or add to mine here to improve it

Cheers
Bops

Nice tabletop quality. Shade the trophy skull's eye sockets and you're good to go.

thanks lord_blackfang funny thing is I didn't notice it on the model until I took the picture and you pointed it out that my be a trick right there take a pic of something in macro to pick out the detail I have missed thanks for the feed back I will give it a wash with devlin mud and see how it goes

IMHO (said by someone that managed to finish 2 tanks to a bad standard in 12 years), maybe something can be done to the gun barrels.
Really a small detail anyway.

The model looks good, definitely good tabletop quality. The first tip that comes to mind is to put more time on the bases since they are a big part of gaming models, The bas you have is good, but a bit one dimensional. Even a few tuffs of (for example yellow) static grass would add a lot to it.

It looks like his right eye is unpainted. You might want to do that.

Slightly above average tabletop quality.

Looks good!

One very simple thing you could do to make it pop a bit more would to be to just use a slightly lighter shade of brown for the drybrush on the base. It would make the base pop a bit more.

Well done figure. You're getting a lot of nit picky feedback because 1) the figure is well painted 2) the photograph makes the fig 4 times bigger than real life. I particularly like the red/silver effects on the banner and power claw.

You're in fine shape if you ever play tournaments.

My only recommendation is to think about the base a little bit more. Plain sand is a good start. A few bits - bigger rocks, static grass would go a long way to making it look great.

Looks pretty good so far! not really much i can add, but if you want to try a couple of things, i can suggest, a wash of some description on the red cloth on his arm, perhaps devlan mud or black, then add another highlight of your base colour, and for his skin a wash of devlan mud or even baal red would help it get some more depth, that's really all i can offer as help to improve what already is a good and well painted model! ;-)

good luck

nerdfest09

I really like green skin you've done, lots of depth there.

As far as judging your models in a tournament setting, take a look at this Paint Score Rubric I drudged up: http://gt.bugeatergames.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Bugeater_PaintingReq.pdf. This is a fairly standard paint score rubric and it helps to keep some of this in mind while painting your minis. Overall, as said before, you've got a nicely painted - above average, mini there!

If you really want some punishment, try posting over at www.coolminiornot.com and see how the scores come out. They go far above tournament standards there and focus more on a GD level but it's always good to know where you stand, imho.

Wow thanks for the feed back guys I will add a few element to the base as those that said are right it does look very flat might even grab some kitty litter for different sized rocks as well and dry brush a lighter brown to bring up the highlights. I will also finish the trophy skull right eye. the whole model was finished with a coat of devilan mud but might give the arm band an extra coat to dull it down a little as suggested. then I might post it on www.coolminiornot.com which I know I am not anywhere near GD standard but hey might be good to get some ideas from those that are. Thanks to everyone for your feed back it helps a lot to have others offer constructive advice

Cheers

Looks really good to me.

It's always fun to see in how many ways this model gets painted. You've done very well, I like the shading on the skin and the drybrushed red metal looks very nice as well =)

If you're interested, here's mine for comparison (hidden so I don't steal your thread):

Like I said, fun to see the choices everyone makes with these models!

@amphsix Thats a nice looking model you have there love the shading on the cloth between his legs especially and the blue eye piece looks sweet too

Thanks...
Made me realize all my armies so far had blue as a minor colour, haha. ranging from dark blue to turquoise., bust still.

Tabletop.

Really good! Makes me feel embarrassed about the paint job on mine.

Good tabletop. Very nice for the amount of time you've been doing it.

One with orks is to paint the mouth red first and washing it before going back to paint the teeth.

Tabletop

One note I'd like to make, is that "tabletop quality" is in no way shape or form a bad thing, especially for how long you've been painting. It looks really good to have an army painted to that standard and it is far and away more than most people even bother with (unfortunately). The miniature you have here looks better than many armies I've seen in tournaments, and I've seen much worse from 20+ year veterans. If everyone that ever played in a FLGS properly blocked in the colors and gave it a proper wash l would be absolutely ecstatic.

Tabletop. I still like though

That's what I like to call tabletop champion. It's still tabletop quality, but there is more detail put in because the paint job is for an HQ choice.

That's better than a lot of what I've seen on the tables over the years, so I'd say a very high tabletop quality.

@ Oakenshield that seems like a good tip I will give it a go

@ Kalamadea "One note I'd like to make, is that "tabletop quality" is in no way shape or form a bad thing" thanks for the encouragement I think its easy to forget that we still want to play with these things and field a whole army too

@ killykavekommando "That's what I like to call tabletop champion. It's still tabletop quality, but there is more detail put in because the paint job is for an HQ choice. " that's kind of what I had in mind running ork and green tide ( cheap models) means I have a few boyz to paint and I am sure they all wont get the same attention as the Boss here

thanks to all for your comments

As others have said, good tabletop quality. Definitely loads better than most pre-painted figures. Armies painted like this tend to look better when seen as a whole army rather than individual pieces, so I think people will rate this more higher once it's grouped with other stuff painted with the same quality.

Tabletop quality is not bad, especially for horde armies like orks, which are meant to be seen as a big army anyway rather than individual pieces. It'd take one million years to paint an Ork army in very very high standards.