Lt. Coldfire wrote:What!?!?
Redbeard may have had some cooler conversions, but I think GMM's is still miles better, especially the display board--there's just no comparison there. Honestly, if a army wasn't required, you should have just won with the display board alone!
GMM, you should hire a lawyer.
Haha.
I agree, GMM's display board is much much better than mine. And that's why he won player's choice, by a landslide. Having a really cool display is essential to winning the player's choice awards. He got my vote.
On the other hand, the display board counts very little towards army appearance judging. Do you have one? Yes. Is it more than just a flocked board? Yes. That's pretty much as far as the judges are interested in that. They're a lot more interested in the models than the display.
When it got down to the final paint judging, they had narrowed it down to four or five armies, and the group of five judges went around, as a group, back and forth between the finalists. I was trying to set up for a game, and they came by four or five times. And, by the final pass, they were picking up models and looking at the undersides of them, trying to make sure that the whole models were painted, even the bits not normally visible, and that the undersides of the models had been painted. (There's actually a case of a guy losing out on a painting contest where he had the most amazing eldar
BFG ship, but had neglected to paint the underside at all, just leaving it black, and that cost him the award).
It really was that close. And Brandon really pushed me hard to compete this year. I was still going back and adding in more details, more freehand work, and more weathering the day before the con. Seeing this thread, I knew that I had to step up my work, and being pushed like that is a good way to expand one's abilities.
Pictures are one thing, but seeing the models in person, you get such a better idea for them. Looking at GMM's display, I kept finding more and more neat stuff that was hidden in there. It really is an awesome job, with a great theme to boot. You can only ever spot so much in the photos, but I think I went back and checked out this board three or four times that day, and saw something new each time.
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