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Your right Paul. As long as two armies of the same level can get 2 differant scores, then we do need to scale back the soft scores, but not get rid of them.

I completely agree. Soft scores should be a part of the game as I consider warhammer a social activity as well as competitive. It's the ratio that I have a problem with.

I am in agreement with both you Paul and Dave, the soft scores need to be tweaked and having 50% of the points not in control is pretty hard. Still most Tournament players will agree that Winning a GT combines not only skill but luck in the draw as well as the mission.

Here is another thing I found

Paint Scores:________________Baltimore GT_______LA Gamesday

Scott Simpson___________________25_______________25

Mike Mutscheller/Peter Elias_________40_______________20

Scott's army was scored higher in LA. and lower in Baltimore.



As a side note, I was going back through my scores, and I would have won the Las Vegas GT if I had bought an army that scored a 40, and would have been in 3rd place in Baltimore.

I was looking at the other parts of the army? The "new" parts, the harlies, looked good. The old stuff, didn't, like the Warp Spiders. The work on those was very sloppy. If you don't think so, you didn't look hard enough. The weapons on virtually the entire army were poorly done, lots of overlap, bleed, and glop. The colors on the rocks do not match the colors on the driver heads, it's a different blue. Or is "close enough" good enough for a '40'?

If that rates a 40, then that means you can ignore the faults for what reason?

FWIW, I painted the different colors on the Falcon for a reason--without the extra colors the paint job did not look complete. Why can't I have 4+ colors when Toby had 10+? What'd I miss in the great rulebook alot of you seem to be referencing?

He has white, red, black, and purple on his Falcon; I have 1 more major color but it's a bleed through from an actual paint job on the bottom--something his didn't have.

I used the same paint scheme across the army, with the same paints, at the same time. Maybe you thought it was great, but you'd be the first person to say so. No one there said it was great, and you seem to have left out the entire problem with the crappy base it was on.

Since it was judged while it was on it, maybe the point I've been trying to make should be looked at, instead of taking this as some kind of tit for tat.

The army doesn't rate 2nd best painted at a rogue trader, let alone a GT. For the reasons I've stated over and over...

Oops almost forgot, thank you for the link to the camera. I'll be looking for one at Best Buy or Circuit City this weekend.

FWIW, I painted the different colors on the Falcon for a reason--without the extra colors the paint job did not look complete.

Then perhaps what it comes down to is that you have, uh, unusual taste, while Toby's taste--whatever alleged sloppiness aside--is more agreeable to most people.

Like I said: Toxic Avengers Eldar.

Stelek wrote:
spaced out profanity it's equal.

Stelek, there's to be no profanity on the board. Getting around the profanity filters (which don't seem to be doing a good job anyway) is still disobeying the rules.

I know you've got that whole "vitrioloic martyr" persona going on, but please do it without the profanity.

The forum rules can be found here.

Thank you.

Selek,

1. the profianity is uncalled for, if you cant keep to an adult level of discussion you dont belong on a public forum.

2. you lost your credibility the moment you called his army crap. It is clearly a well painted army with a coherant and well executed theme.

3. you have a valid point that his army may have been scored above the level it deserved, 40 instead of 30-35 perhaps, but to go overboard slamming the army as "looks like it was done by a 15 year old" makes you seem childish.

I boil it down in my own eyes by the fact that I know I could replicate your prism with my skill level, but his eldar is clearly above the skill level I have and I am man enough to admire his talent and effort .

His army is clearly, obviously and easilly better than yours. If you cant see that you either need glasses or psychiatric help.

I will agree that the other army you liked to is better than his, but they are both on an entirely different level than yours ( or mine ).

Im sure you are probably a decent guy, and I think you may have let your anger and dissapointment cloud your view of things.

I guess you should try to consider what your attempting to accomplish with your posts.

If you are trying to sway people to your view, then you are going about it in the worst possible way.

If you are merely trying to vent your frustrations in a public forum, then I can respect that, and only ask that you please keep it civil.

Inquisitor_Malice wrote: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:

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 certainly agree that your points 1 and 2 are the biggest issues currently in the judging. I think if each was more clearly defined that it wouldn't be quite so arbitrary. I also wouldn't be adverse to having 5 seperate awards. thus allowing for all aspects of "the hobby"

FWIW, I painted the different colors on the Falcon for a reason--without the extra colors the paint job did not look complete. Why can't I have 4+ colors when Toby had 10+?

It's really not about the number of colors, it's about whether it works or not. I think your model would have looked better with fewer colors, and with less monolithic blocks of color, particularly the purple in the turret. Perhaps the picture isn't doing it justice, but that's my impression.

Would you care to post other pictures of your work, so we can see better the virtues you feel we're missing?

The vehicles weren't highlighted across the entire armor plate, like below

It's hard to tell what you're saying in this sentence. The picture you posted is a very nice, clean paintjob. If that's your work, then congrats, that's a very good job. It has edge highlights, and they're done very well. The whole surfaces aren't highlighted, just the edges. Is that bad? Or good?

That's a difficult effect to achieve.

What is? Gradients across panels? Or good edge highlights?

It's always difficult to do things well. Sure, it's easy to trace edges with a lighter color. But it's much harder to feather it out, and make the edge highlights look smooth and gradual. Doing a good blend is actually a lot harder over a small area.

Doing a real two brush or wet blend is certainly a more advanced technique, but it's not particularly hard to get a nice gradual effect without it. For example:



That guy has no real blending on his carapace, just layered highlights, but it looks smooth from anything beyond a few inches.

Drybrushing can also produce very nice blending effects, and is one of the most basic techniques there is.

It's not about using difficult techniques, it's about getting a great result. In fact, part of getting a great result is finding the easiest way to get the effect you want.

You say you spent a lot of time getting your Fire Prism to look like that. All I can say, is that if you wanted it to look tank brushed, then tank brush the thing. You'd have gotten the same result, but you wouldn't have all this stored up resentment to vent on the poor guy who had the misfortune of painting a similar looking army, but doing it better.

If my army is a 20, and Vaca's is a 40...

I think I've been pretty clear that his army doesn't rate a 40 IMO. I've said repeatedly that it's better than yours, but probably not 40 material.

That said the Iron Hands army is also nice, but not as superior as you're suggesting. It's got an interesting, cartoony feel to the paintwork. He makes a lot of use of layered highlights applied in a stylistic, rather than realistic fashion (dozer blades). I like the effect, but it's nothing I couldn't do. The bright edge highlights on black don't work for me. There's lots of custom work. I'm not a fan of the Dreads, but they're certainly unique. I like the NMM on the servitors and Dreads.

All in all, a nice army, but not what I'd call a 40 either, so I guess the judges are consistent?

Don't forget, the painting scores are always divisible by 5. There's not a ton of granularity there, and people have to "round off" their impressions. That means a 20 covers anything from, say, 17-22, a 25 anything from 23 to 26 and a 40 anything from 37-42. Maybe you were really a 22, the other Eldar a 37, and the Iron Hands were a 42?

I really don't understand the scoring system. If the idea is just to give a 40 to the best few armies at the tournament, then I would guess the Eldar army deserved it, since it's roughly on par with the Iron Hands. There are 162 armies there, and only 9 possible scores (assuming you can get a 0). You'd think there'd be more 40s.

On the other hand, if 40 is the type of stuff you find in the top 10 on CoolMiniOr not, then neither the Iron Hands nor the Eldar are even close.

I drive a 86 Bronco.

Hmmm. Not what I expected. But Sys Admin makes total sense.

lol what's that mean, total sense?

He's saying that you fit the stereotype of a Systems Administrator.

Interesting conversation...

The sad thing is the soft scores, particularly painting, can simply be bought too easily; and this, IMHO, ruins the experience for more "honest" gamers.

I have been to a couple GT's over the years, time and location permitting, and I always thought they were supposed to be a celebration of the hobby in all of its forms. But when Joe Tournament Player pays a pro-painter $1,000 to highlight, shade and base his army; then he arrives early on Friday to schmooze the judges; then he has a gaming group of 10-15 other people who also all go, and who give reciprocal scores to one another...then it pretty much removes the whole "fairness/objectivity" element to the tournaments.

I tend to commisserate with Stellak in this regard. Some people call this metagaming; some call it gamemanship; and others call it cheating. IMHO, it really all depends on the level and the degree that you take it to.

To a certain degree GW cannot control what is being done. All they can do is put the rules out, and then it is the individual players who find a way to bend, break and get around those parameters.

Where I think GW has failed in this regard is with their kaleidoscope of rules changes for their tournaments from season to season. While they have taken some steps to improve cetain areas, there have been others that have gone the other direction.

IMHO, the old 2006 season rules (for the season that was cancelled) had what I thought were the tighest rules set, and really worked to alleviate some of the "soft score abuse" that had seemed to become a hallmark of GW events.

I also give GW kudos for the Ard Boy events, which I much prefer to the GT events (and don't even get me started on the GD events...).

lol I do? And you don't even know me in the slightest.

Oh, I disagree Stelek. From your 71 posts here on Dakka, we have gotten alot of insight into who you are. Yep, you fit the stereotype.

Darrian

Stelek wrote:lol I do? And you don't even know me in the slightest.

lol Are you talking to me? I was merely clarifying.

lol ok.

It's not so much that Stelek fits THE stereotype of a Sys Admin, it just totally fits.

How so? You ask yourself, "how does this guy even survive in this world, being this ridiculous and abrasive?" The answer is that he's a Sys Admin.

When an organization has highly technical and critical systems (computer networks) they're typically very terrified of them going down, and not having the "IT guy" around to fix it. This means that no matter what a social slow somebody is, they will be tolerated so long as they do something arcane and confusing involving "the server room" and "command lines."

I think on some level social retardation is almost valued in sys admins. I think managers associate it with the sort of nerdy intelligence they think is necessary to the job. Really all it requires is reading a lot of white papers and being willing to carry a pager, but management doesn't know that.

As a software engineer, I get some of the intimidated management respect myself. But since we're required to meet with clients, talk during meetings without launching into a tirade about how terrible all Microsoft, etc. etc., we're a different breed.

Phryxis wrote:It's not so much that Stelek fits THE stereotype of a Sys Admin, it just totally fits.

How so? You ask yourself, "how does this guy even survive in this world, being this ridiculous and abrasive?" The answer is that he's a Sys Admin.

When an organization has highly technical and critical systems (computer networks) they're typically very terrified of them going down, and not having the "IT guy" around to fix it. This means that no matter what a social slow somebody is, they will be tolerated so long as they do something arcane and confusing involving "the server room" and "command lines."

I think on some level social retardation is almost valued in sys admins. I think managers associate it with the sort of nerdy intelligence they think is necessary to the job. Really all it requires is reading a lot of white papers and being willing to carry a pager, but management doesn't know that.

As a software engineer, I get some of the intimidated management respect myself. But since we're required to meet with clients, talk during meetings without launching into a tirade about how terrible all Microsoft, etc. etc., we're a different breed.

As a guy who not only is a sys admin, but manages a bunch of them, I have to say.....spot on.

Upper management that is either too stupid or too lazy to learn some basic stuff to ask the right questions always falls into the trap of treating IT like black magic and hence hiring only voodoo doctors to run it.

In most of the rest of business just regular old incompetence is rewarded. But you have to be a special kind of incompetent to get ahead in IT.

As much as I'd like to jump in here (this has gone to a topic near and dear to my heart), I'd like to nudge this discussion back on topic. GT results and all that.

mauleed wrote:
In most of the rest of business just regular old incompetence is rewarded. But you have to be a special kind of incompetent to get ahead in IT.

Balls.

Oh right, stay on topic. Hmmm. I think if I win a GT, I should upgrade to a sports car to better fit my 'image' I've been assigned by strangers on the internet.

I wonder if I paint it myself if that'll improve my soft scores...

Request granted, Stelek! (You did want this thread locked, right?)