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So Dave, if you guys implement this, do you think the system of "we'll just backtrack it and note if the painting is done by somebody else" would really work? I mean, I'd really like some way to enforce self-painting, but maybe you could prevent it beforehand?

Problem is practicality, like Centurian99 said. Say require everyone to upload pics of their army, including a few choice models (HQ or vehicles), for public view before each event. This will give time for people to check if everyone's army was painted themselves and it would be to everyone's self-interest to point out that someone else's army was not painted by him. However, the problem would then be the burden of proof required, subjecting offending members to lie detector tests which aren't foolproof, and having everyone at the tourney know what everyone else is playing beforehand. Impractical, but possibly more effective than relying players to point out armies that aren't self-painted?

Or you could just ask everyone how they painted their armies. Nobody ever shuts up about that.

Dead horse meet 40k. 40k meet dead horse.

Not possible.

How many people does it take to prove that the entire army wasn't painted by someone else? Can one guy stand up and say it to spoil a guy's chances of winning?

Really.. you want people to bring nice armies to a tournament because you want to play against cool looking figs. That is the long and the short of it. GW wants you to have well painted figs there so they can take pics and sell more tickets next year or get some cheap material for their web site or magazine. Is that bad? No, it's just the way it is.

Who cares if someone painted their crap or not? That's what the golden demon is for.

Then overall should simply be best general.

If overall is supposed to represent who the best 'hobby nerd' is, then it 'biggest wallet' shouldn't be a factor.

I don't much care either way, because I always paint my own stuff, but if I get a vote, I say people who didn't paint their own stuff should get a half score for painting or some other suitable penalty that removes their ability to win overall.

It's like a guy buying a new corvette and taking it to a car show. Sure, the vette's cool, but that guy over there that restored the 65 Avante is waaay cooler than the guy driving the vette and he's waaay more a 'car guy' than the fellow that can make the big payments.

My two cents on painting:

Cent no. 1) Why add a rule that's impossible to enforce?

Cent no. 2) If painting is to be part of the competition in order to encourage great-looking armies, then it needs to represent a decent chunk of points. They used a quantitative checklist that created very little "spread" in the past, and it just left players wondering why they should put the extra 100 hours in for a few points difference. IF it's important, there needs to be *incentive*.

I'm not advocating the current percentages of scoring as is. I'm just saying that painting isn't something they should do halfway. Either keep it an important category to encourage great armies, or eliminate the category and just have a rule about no unpainted armies. Anything in between is a waste of time for both the judges and the participants.

Disclosure: I suppose some of you would label me as a "painter," although I did reach table 6 at the GT until my lack of practice did me in (my GT games represented the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th games of 40K I played this YEAR). I may be one of the "idiots" with a display base, but I also like the 'Ardboyz tourney format and definitely would have participated if my schedule allowed. *shrug*

Okay, so that one was more like a dime or quarter.

In person his *army*, not just 1 model, looked horrid.

Again, I just don't think that's possible. This army scored a 40. Now, to me, horrid would be something like a 5 or a 10. Clearly that Fire Prism isn't a 5 or a 10. Is it a 40? Maybe not. But there's an AWFUL long trip from 40 down to 5.

I think you're letting emotion cloud your objectivity here, and that's not very vulcan of you.

You strike me as a very detail/rules focused person, to the point that you seem to even invent your own details and rules. For example, why didn't I paint all the gems on my Falcon? It never even occurred to me that way. If I didn't paint them like gems, then they're not gems... Right? They're just sensor blisters or something. I painted the ones I thought would break up the color of the body at appealing points.

So, given your outlook on painting (must paint all gems or none, didn't you know?) I can see why you'd have issues with the 40 point Fire Prism. It's got some bizzarely glaring weaknesses, and some very nice points. What the hell is wrong with the prism (as you point out). But, on the whole (and again, given that pictures are what I have to work with) it looks much better than yours. You seem to be less of a "take it in as a whole" sort of guy, and more of a "how many checks on the checklist" sort of guy.

And you wrote the checklist in your head.

I mean, there's an "all gems or none" rule? Why isn't there a "both windscreens have to be the same color" rule?

My army was next to his during paint judging, and I had people stopping at my army.

Maybe they were just stopping by to grab an extra set of turret vanes?

Btw, on my Falcon it was primed white...not black.

Whatever works for you. Mine was primered both.

I primed the top of the hull and the turret black, the rest white. Then I assembled it all when painting was done. I don't normally do it that way, but I think getting a really clean, defined line between the top surfaces and undersides makes a Falcon/Prism/Serpent look nice.

My camera: http://www.amazon.com/Canon-PowerShot-Digital-Image-Stabilized-Optical/dp/B000HATNH4

I agree that the over all winner at the tournamanet should get most of his points from playing the games. Right now it's a 52 to 48% swing where it should be something closer to 75% to 25%.

blood angel wrote:Dead horse meet 40k. 40k meet dead horse.

Not possible.

How many people does it take to prove that the entire army wasn't painted by someone else? Can one guy stand up and say it to spoil a guy's chances of winning?

Really.. you want people to bring nice armies to a tournament because you want to play against cool looking figs. That is the long and the short of it. GW wants you to have well painted figs there so they can take pics and sell more tickets next year or get some cheap material for their web site or magazine. Is that bad? No, it's just the way it is.

Who cares if someone painted their crap or not? That's what the golden demon is for.

Completely agree 100%.

Inquisitor_Malice wrote:

blood angel wrote:Dead horse meet 40k. 40k meet dead horse.

Not possible.

How many people does it take to prove that the entire army wasn't painted by someone else? Can one guy stand up and say it to spoil a guy's chances of winning?

Really.. you want people to bring nice armies to a tournament because you want to play against cool looking figs. That is the long and the short of it. GW wants you to have well painted figs there so they can take pics and sell more tickets next year or get some cheap material for their web site or magazine. Is that bad? No, it's just the way it is.

Who cares if someone painted their crap or not? That's what the golden demon is for.

Completely agree 100%.

completely disagree. it's not that simple and not quite as complicated as either of you make it out to be. this might be a dead horse issue, but if by beating on it, we come up with a new way to make glue, then let's beat the bajeebus out of the carcass. If people are complaining about something, it's a valid issue. Even if you disagree, your point of view is valid too. Gw should look at it, evolution of the tourney circuit will keep the comp creeps from doing as little as possible to gain the maximum while abusing certain rules set forth many years ago.

just my perspective and I am willing to discuss and consider all points of view. but don't just go around calling people out when you are doing it yourself.

blood angel wrote:I agree that the over all winner at the tournamanet should get most of his points from playing the games. Right now it's a 52 to 48% swing where it should be something closer to 75% to 25%.

Centurian99 did a good job addressing this point earlier. The actual weighting is more like 60-40.

Why?

Because while battle points each game may range from 0 to max (and if someone wins and the other guy loses, there WILL be a large swing in points between them every round), painting scores (barring outliers) range from about 20-40. So even if you don't spend many, many hours contemplating (how to paint) your Avatar's navel, you can still secure 1/2 the points available. Sportsmanship similarly has a smaller actual variance, vs. battle points. (I'm not bored enough to determine the actual standard deviation for the last GT for each of battle, sports, and painting, though.)

THH - Quite the different tone from --

and you are supposed to get a big fat goose egg if you didn't paint the army yourself. 9 will get you 10 that pete never said anything about who painted it, playing it off with the occassional, well no one ever asked me if I painted the army, so I never told them. (bushleague if you ask me)

http://www.ironfistleague.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9201&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30

A posters reach can be far and wide. I personally painted all of my models down to the last brush stroke. So from that point of view, I stand to gain in the arena where only models painted by you can count for overall. However, I do not believe you cripple players to the point that it is not worth bringing a top tier army whether they painted it or not.

One of the suggestions earlier was to decrease the overall points in softscores. As Janthkin and Centrurian pointed out, the actual weighting is about 60-40 on softscores when you account for statistical variance. Is the solution to change the ratio to 65-35 or 70-30? I believe that nudging it in this direction will help the system. It's just like any process control mechanisms. As you are trying to dial it in to the appropriate setpoint, you don't keep making drastic changes because otherwise you never establish a solid baseline to work from.

I really wouldn't mind it so much, if the 'entire hobby' aspect of your rating applied to the rest of the events as well.

For example, you should have to play games of 40k during Golden Demon, and they count 40% of your total score.

See, makes perfect sense.

gorgon wrote:My two cents on painting:

Cent no. 1) Why add a rule that's impossible to enforce?

Painting your own army has always been the rule, and this is the first year without it. So they are not adding it, but restoring it. And with the internet, it is easyier now to enforce than it ever has.

Cent no. 2) If painting is to be part of the competition in order to encourage great-looking armies, then it needs to represent a decent chunk of points. They used a quantitative checklist that created very little "spread" in the past, and it just left players wondering why they should put the extra 100 hours in for a few points difference. IF it's important, there needs to be *incentive*.

Check lists are good for a guideline for the judges, and then the judges should have some ability to reward great armies.

I think the pro-painted armied should get a penalty. Nothing so harsh as a 0, but something to encourage them to bring a nice painted army, but something to give people who painted their own army a slight advantage.

IntoTheRain wrote:I really wouldn't mind it so much, if the 'entire hobby' aspect of your rating applied to the rest of the events as well.

For example, you should have to play games of 40k during Golden Demon, and they count 40% of your total score.

See, makes perfect sense.

Yes because Golden Demon signifies playing the game as well as sportsmanship. Speaking of which, why don't I ever see pictures of Golden Demon games?

Blackmoor wrote:Painting your own army has always been the rule, and this is the first year without it. So they are not adding it, but restoring it. And with the internet, it is easyier now to enforce than it ever has.

Just so I'm sure we're talking about the same thing...do you mean players were actually penalized in a major way for not painting their own armies?

I've been attending GTs since the first Baltimore tourney in 1997, and I have to admit this is the first I've heard this. It was common knowledge that one multiple GT winner back in the day sometimes used pro-painted armies. I have my old rules packets...I'm going to have to check them tonight, because this is coming out of left field to me.

Check lists are good for a guideline for the judges, and then the judges should have some ability to reward great armies.

I think the pro-painted armied should get a penalty. Nothing so harsh as a 0, but something to encourage them to bring a nice painted army, but something to give people who painted their own army a slight advantage.

I don't like formal checklists at all. To paraphrase Dead Poet's Society, we're talking about painting, not laying pipe. Army painting isn't art, but it is artistic and virtually impossible to quantify. Now just to clarify, I'm all for official guidelines and training so that judges are grading with as much consistency as possible. But ultimately we're talking about human beings.

gorgon wrote:
I don't like formal checklists at all. To paraphrase Dead Poet's Society, we're talking about painting, not laying pipe. Army painting isn't art, but it is artistic and virtually impossible to quantify. Now just to clarify, I'm all for official guidelines and training so that judges are grading with as much consistency as possible. But ultimately we're talking about human beings.

This is not modern art. We are talking about the painting of static miniatures. There are a finite number of techniques that you can use, and a number of criteria you can use to judge them.

example
here is lord Klymyshyn. He isn't a pro painted demon winner ,but he was painted for me by a friend. I like him and I use him when I want a generic lord in my chaos army. I haven't painted it myself so I should get docked points. that blows, so I will lie and field him anyways.

If they bring back the requirement to paint your own army I am all for that, as it helps to promote all aspects of the hobby, which to me is what a GT should be about.

- G

I don't have a all or nothing concept in regard to painting gems. To me, they're aesthetic pieces to be done with as you please. I was asking why you chose to paint some and not all, I wasn't finding fault.

So, makes the rest of that set of comments not worth replying to, and moving on...

You seem to want me to define horrid. So here goes.

The army looked like several armies welded together with a base.

The base looked like a 15 year old got a 3x3 piece of plywood, a 2x3, and 3 cans of industrial spray foam (the kind you use on doors and windows) and sprayed the whole thing with a primer, then painted on several strips of colors that almost matched the models he routed out spaces for. Attach a bronze plate and voila, done.

The troops did not match the vehicles.

Many of the basics like flocking/basing and shading weren't done.

For this army to receive a '40' was to me enough to make all of the faults really come out.

In contrast:

On the other hand, I played the guy who actually won Best Painted.

Excellent conversion work.
Paint lines so crisp if I didn't know better I'd think there was a seamline on the model.
Excellent shading.
Excellent dry brush work.
Excellent highlighting.
A wide variety of models, with a very coherent paint theme.
His 'tray' was exceedingly minimalist, meant for carrying then for displaying.

His talents at making a coherent army come together made my efforts pale in comparison.

See, you don't understand just how dispassionate I am. I saw his army, and we talked about it for 20 minutes--before we even played.

I saw the other Eldar several times that day, and no one took it seriously it hurt the eyes so bad.

Armies that are actually mutiple armies welded together by a no-effort display stand shouldn't be considered double the average score (which was a 20). No way that army was in the same range of skill and effort as that displayed by the Best Painted army, but according to GW it was.

This kind of subjective problem is what everyone is discussing, isn't it?

skkipper wrote:example
here is lord Klymyshyn. He isn't a pro painted demon winner ,but he was painted for me by a friend. I like him and I use him when I want a generic lord in my chaos army. I haven't painted it myself so I should get docked points. that blows, so I will lie and field him anyways.

Really we are talking about pro painted minis that are there to score in the 30+ range. When you score in the 20s and below, no one really cares.

Heck, if you can paint an army that can score 25 points, and you bring a friends army that will score 15 points, I want to encourage that out-of-the-box thinking.

But if you read the rules, and the rules state that you need to paint your own army, then I would get a new mini and paint it, or re-paint the one you have.

Obviously a well painted HQ model can boost the painting score for an army. Don't mind skippy as he is a well documented cheater.

- G

the painting "did you paint it" item is the only thing I cheated at and will do it again.

Blackmoor wrote:This is not modern art. We are talking about the painting of static miniatures. There are a finite number of techniques that you can use, and a number of criteria you can use to judge them.

I'm all for standardized criteria that judges should review and consider as they're reviewing an army. But if we're talking about boxes to check off -- 2 pts for this, 2 pts for that -- I'd rather see the whole category removed. A dipped army might look great -- should it be penalized because it doesn't have traditional "highlighting?" Do banners score extra points just because they're there? Should conversions push an average paint job past an well-painted army with few conversions? If so, to what degree?

It's all so subjective that trying to force things into some quantitative matrix is doomed to fail. They tried to create a quantitative comp system and it penalized anyone who wasn't playing marines. I just don't see how something as subjective as appearance can get a similar system. You'll end up with players determining (or demanding to know) the minimum number of conversions they need to max that category, etc. That way lies madness.

Even on the pro-painting topic, what if I send an army out to have the base colors done but handle all the converting, highlighting, basing, banners, etc.? What percentage of the army must the player paint? Should they be penalized for even a single brushstroke being done by someone else(to ground this example, let's say a friend only helped them paint eyes)? If so, how would anyone know? What if my wife helped flock bases...not even painting, just gluing down flock? Should I receive a zero in painting?

mauleed wrote:If overall is supposed to represent who the best 'hobby nerd' is, then it 'biggest wallet' shouldn't be a factor.

I agree with this.

Since few people are truly honest about who painted what in their army, I think it's impossible to keep things balanced so long as painting is a 'soft' score in determining a overall winner (but strangely, not best general).

Best painted should, imo, be it's own competition and the painting scores shouldn't be included as part of overall.

If the army has say a 'average' or the 'first six' on a checklist, it should be eligible for overall.

Keeping things simple should be the primary goal here.

Inquisitor_Malice wrote:THH - Quite the different tone from --

and you are supposed to get a big fat goose egg if you didn't paint the army yourself. 9 will get you 10 that pete never said anything about who painted it, playing it off with the occassional, well no one ever asked me if I painted the army, so I never told them. (bushleague if you ask me)

http://www.ironfistleague.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9201&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30

A posters reach can be far and wide. I personally painted all of my models down to the last brush stroke. So from that point of view, I stand to gain in the arena where only models painted by you can count for overall. However, I do not believe you cripple players to the point that it is not worth bringing a top tier army whether they painted it or not.

One of the suggestions earlier was to decrease the overall points in softscores. As Janthkin and Centrurian pointed out, the actual weighting is about 60-40 on softscores when you account for statistical variance. Is the solution to change the ratio to 65-35 or 70-30? I believe that nudging it in this direction will help the system. It's just like any process control mechanisms. As you are trying to dial it in to the appropriate setpoint, you don't keep making drastic changes because otherwise you never establish a solid baseline to work from.

reducing overal points might be a solution. as if you do read the link, it was pointed out to me that my assumption of said painting scores was incorrect. but with that said, ones effort should be rewarded and no effort to me is the same as no score. see where I am going? some effort would be some score, min effort would be min score, max effort would be max score. (yes those points are and should be variable and what they should be can be determined later.) but my point has been, if the overall winner is determined by overall effort, playing, sportsmanship, painting etc. then failure to achieve in any of these would be disqualification in the overall running. you could win, best general or best sportsman, but nothing else. (yes that is draconian, but so what. ) "the hobby" is what GW wants to grow, "the hobby" is not just pushing models across a table, if it were we would still be using those stupid paper cutouts form the early 80's. "the hobby" is not just about painting contests, if it were we could just have daemon awards. "the hobby" isn't just about being nice or friendly to your opponent. "The Hobby" is about a combination of all of the above. and therefore should encompass all of the above, nothing more or less should be expected.

See, you don't understand just how dispassionate I am.

Maybe... Or do you not understand how passionate you are? I mean, you seem pretty friggin offended by this guy's army, and you're not holding back on the insults. It looks like it was made by a 15 year old, etc. etc.

For this army to receive a '40' was to me enough to make all of the faults really come out.

See, that's why I say there's a lack of objectivity. Either there are faults or there aren't. What it's scored doesn't change the paint job. Being scored great doesn't make an average army suddenly turn horrid, just like it doesn't make it suddenly turn great.

The simple fact is that you're cutting this army down because you're pissed at the score it got, not because it's actually such an offense to the hobby.

If they scored this army a 20, would you be telling everyone about the horrid trainwreck of Eldar crap you saw at the Vegas GT? No...

It's not a big deal, I just think that a guy who purports to speak the unvarnished truth about how awesome and wealthy he is, because it's the truth, should be equally willing to admit that he's taking it personally that an army he didn't like got scored better than he thinks it should have, because that's also the truth. Probably moreso.

You seem to have two categories for things:

1) Things you totally dominate.
2) Things which are crap and beneath you.

I think it's a lot of fun, and would like to see more commentary along these lines.

Also, I always want to know this of all the exciting new internet personalities I come across:

What do you do for a living?

What kind of car do you drive?

THH - having it be the sum of "The Hobby" is a great idea. However, your ideal of the hobby does not exist. Eliminate "The Overall". This because of the following problems:

1. Sportsmanship - This should not be included in any score. The second you put this in player hands to score, your entire system is flawed. In the current tournament environment you have:
a. The Politician - ie: you give me max scores and I give you max scores.
b. The Score Keeper - someone who reads the scores and applies it appropriately in an ideal manner.
c. The Poor Sport - somone who lost and sees all the negatives in the army they are playing against and takes in out in their opponents sportsmanship.
d. The Chipmunker - while not as prevalent - this is someone who will purposely mark scores down.
e. Mr. 'I Don't Care' - who marks everyone high no matter what.

This category is so flawed that it isn't even funny. It all depends on who you are paired with. Get rid of this category in overall scoring. It is completely worthless and has been for years. It should be used to as a minimum score to allow you to participate or like in the UK with their card system (ie: 2 cards and you are out). In the hands of the players, it is complete BS. All major tournament vets know this system is horrible.

2. Painting - This category has proven to be flawed in our current system and can be improved. I personally like the idea of a checklist. However, if you continue to use this system - it needs to be extremely detailed and the judges need to be trained and trained and trained again. Another option is to also go to the UK system where the top 10 armies are chosen by the tournamnet organizers and then voted on by the players. My opinion is that this score should not be counted towards your 'overall' score and needs to be completely separate. Having a separate score prevents the desire to purchase propainted armies since it can't influence an "Overall" award.

These two categories are biggest flaws in the entire system. Celebrating "The Hobby", eh. For the most part, working to achieve this idea called "The Hobby" is so conceptually flawed, that it is laughable.

I would like to say that the only event that has been able to successfully combine them to the best potential is AdpetiCon. Their sportsmanship scores are very detailed about being cordial (ie: did my opponent show up on time, did they bring the right materials to play). Not answers like "did my opponent hug me", which is how the current GTs are.

What I see with "The Overall" awards is all completely separate categories 1) sportsmanship, 2) painting, 3) best general. Do not combine them. We will probably never get to that system though.

Finally, I have to give the UK GT team a lot of credit. This is one area that they have a solid understanding of. Completely separate painting scores and best general not influenced by sportsmanship. All you UKers please keep in mind though that whoever is heading up your events team FAQ needs to get their head screwed on straight (and I am saying this nicely). The Yak FAQ (that AdeptiCon is adopting) runs circles around your group. Plus AdeptiCon itself runs circles around around the UK system. So you can come down off of cloud nine.

This category is so flawed that it isn't even funny. It all depends on who you are paired with. Get rid of this category in overall scoring.

Seems like a good alternative here is "rate your opponents." If you play five games, then you get a 1-5 rating from each player you face. If you're great, you get all favorites, if not, etc. etc. Clears up all the problems you cover in your list.

I think this same system could help with the painting as well. Have each player rate the armies they played from best to worst. At the end, you can take the top five (or 3 or whatever) painting scores, and have a vote for first and second.

Also, why not put some scoring variables on the signup forms? Ask the players doing the playing what they want battle, painting and sports to be worth. Take the average, and use that to weight the scores on gameday.

There's no reason formulas can't be used here... It's the information age, we don't need scores to be divisible by 5. Just publish all the formulas at the start of the event.

People can complain about the math, but math is math, it's not hard to figure out. And even if you're not able, the trick to winning a GT is still to beat everyone you play badly, make them love you for it, and do it with a pretty army. That's not going to change, no matter what the formulas are.

I have played at RTTs with both armies, so I am familiar with the 2 armies that got a 40 paint score at the Vegas GT.

Stelek wrote:I don't have a all or nothing concept in regard to painting gems. To me, they're aesthetic pieces to be done with as you please. I was asking why you chose to paint some and not all, I wasn't finding fault.

So, makes the rest of that set of comments not worth replying to, and moving on...

You seem to want me to define horrid. So here goes.

The army looked like several armies welded together with a base.

The base looked like a 15 year old got a 3x3 piece of plywood, a 2x3, and 3 cans of industrial spray foam (the kind you use on doors and windows) and sprayed the whole thing with a primer, then painted on several strips of colors that almost matched the models he routed out spaces for. Attach a bronze plate and voila, done.

The troops did not match the vehicles.

Many of the basics like flocking/basing and shading weren't done.

For this army to receive a '40' was to me enough to make all of the faults really come out.

Here are the 2 Prisms again:

And again, your Prism:



When you see the prisms together, lot of things stand out. One thing is that your prism cannon is much better.

But when you paint, you want 2 colors that compliment each other, and then neutral colors, or a minor tertiary color that compliments the first 2. On your falcon, you have the blue which goes well with the orange, but you did not stop there…you then added green and purple, and that is just too many colors.

Look at Toby’s, he has red and the purple, and then has the neutral colors of white and black, with the tertiary colors of green that goes well with both red and purple. Also notice that all of the gems are painted (as far as paint scoring goes, I think the details really matter). He has clean blending throughout the vehicle, and good highlighting

I saw the other Eldar several times that day, and no one took it seriously it hurt the eyes so bad.

Armies that are actually mutiple armies welded together by a no-effort display stand shouldn't be considered double the average score (which was a 20). No way that army was in the same range of skill and effort as that displayed by the Best Painted army, but according to GW it was.

This kind of subjective problem is what everyone is discussing, isn't it?

I saw that Eldar army up close, and it was a great army, I guess we will have to disagree about the quality of the paint job.

Here is Toby's army:

I'm a little confused right now. Clearly there is a theme to that army. There's a red-orange/purple/bone theme in all the models, it's very consistent and distinctive.

Even the blue in the basing rocks is complemented in the canopies on the Prism.

What are you even looking at Stelek?

You're losing objectivity cred with each passing second.

Janthkin wrote:

blood angel wrote:I agree that the over all winner at the tournamanet should get most of his points from playing the games. Right now it's a 52 to 48% swing where it should be something closer to 75% to 25%.

Centurian99 did a good job addressing this point earlier. The actual weighting is more like 60-40.

Why?

Because while battle points each game may range from 0 to max (and if someone wins and the other guy loses, there WILL be a large swing in points between them every round), painting scores (barring outliers) range from about 20-40. So even if you don't spend many, many hours contemplating (how to paint) your Avatar's navel, you can still secure 1/2 the points available. Sportsmanship similarly has a smaller actual variance, vs. battle points. (I'm not bored enough to determine the actual standard deviation for the last GT for each of battle, sports, and painting, though.)

You aren't thinking like a winner. You need to think that if two people maxed out their battle points and one of them was on the short end of the stick in a system where almost half of the points are SUBJECTIVE - meaning that two equally painted armies can still receive two different scores and mother Theresa can still get a zero for sportsmanship because she crammed a guys army in the box on turn three - then it is a bad system.