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What do you think about the hardboy armies not being painted:

Bad
Good
Indifferent

and why?

Perhaps if you have actually been to any hardboy round(s), what were your impressions?

Well, we don't have 'Ard Boyz over here, but I'd hate to see a tournament army unpainted. Fortunately, I haven't seen one like that yet.

Though I'm not a tournament player, I'm glad that GW has decided to split the tournament circuit to appease the different crowds.

The 'ard Boyz Tournament is focused purely on the win. Period. If you play by the rules (ie. don't cheat and use GW models) then winning is all that matters. They make it clear that this is what it is.

There are events that focus on other aspects of the hobby, so I figure everyone should be happy?

I think it's ridiculous and GW should be ashamed. Minimum three colors and based is not difficult. Have some respect for your opponent and paint your friggin' army.

Augustus wrote:What do you think about the hardboy armies not being painted:

Bad
Good
Indifferent

and why?

Perhaps if you have actually been to any hardboy round(s), what were your impressions?

My following answer is based on the assumption that "hardboy" tournaments are based on the gaming aspect as priority.

With that said , i chose " indifferent " as in its fine if its painted , you wont get bonus . And its fine if its unpainted , you wont get deducted points.

the_Armyman wrote:I think it's ridiculous and GW should be ashamed. Minimum three colors and based is not difficult. Have some respect for your opponent and paint your friggin' army.

I believe you should check out the dakka poll , only 26% of people that touches warhammer in painting aspect
and ontop of that , even less than that have a FULL army painted .

I think you should respect the other 74%'s reason to play / collect warhammer without forcing painting on them ( 3 color choice is bad for many reasons )
that is of course unless im wrong about what hardboy tournament is about.

Thanks for reading ^-^v

Part of 'ardboyz though, is playing with very large armies. Fantasy was 3500 last year, 3k this year.

It's a different format, and works fine.

I run about a dozen large tournaments at my shop each year. Always require full painting and basing. Hosting GW 'ardboy events doesn't detract from that.

meh IMO i rarely play a game without my army completely painted my first daemonhunters army was played with only 1 unpainted model =P
but i think that some people dont grasp/like/want/dont feel its worth doing. I respect that but i feel that it adds a lot to the game
to me, It adds to the game to see 2 painted armies, but i dont feel that people should be forced to paint if they dont want to

I don't really care either way. I usually field fully painted armies and I have several of them. I strive to paint all of my armies. I did, however, show up at 'ard boyz with a dark elf force that was maybe 10-20% painted at the most. I've seen some really horribly painted armies where the person at least tried. To be honest I would have rather those armies not be painted. They were that painful to look at.

I saw an Ard boy game this summer.
Needless to say I won't enter one until a more few years of experience.
That and so I mature alittle I picked a fight because someone went flying rodent gak over the fact I called him slowed for questioning how I was gonna use my defiler.
Summer was crazier then usual and I love how hot it is in southern BC.

the_Armyman wrote:I think it's ridiculous and GW should be ashamed. Minimum three colors and based is not difficult. Have some respect for your opponent and paint your friggin' army.

Then go play some tournment that has a painting requirement. Let folks that just want to play the game.....play the game.

I dont care either way myself. Painted armies are nice, playing is much better overall.

carmachu wrote:

the_Armyman wrote:I think it's ridiculous and GW should be ashamed. Minimum three colors and based is not difficult. Have some respect for your opponent and paint your friggin' army.

Then go play some tournment that has a painting requirement. Let folks that just want to play the game.....play the game.

I dont care either way myself. Painted armies are nice, playing is much better overall.

+1 baby! The nature of 'Ard Boyz is that it doesn't have to be painted.

A painting requirement at 'ard boyz is like a comp score at gold demons.

Pfft. Why bother painting anything? Houses are just for living in. Cars are just for driving from point A to point B. Why bother with anything aesthetic if the only reason is to look pretty? My point is twofold:

1. GW used to promote the hobby. 'Ard Boyz is a good example of how far they've fallen.
2. Just because 'Ard Boyz doesn't require a painted army, doesn't mean you can't take a little pride in what you have.

The paint on stock cars or the bright uniforms/helmets of sports teams have no bearing on their performance, but what kind of crappy place would it be to turn on the TV and see a NASCAR race with primer gray cars or a bunch of football players in white t-shirts?

Sincity wrote:A painting requirement at 'ard boyz is like a comp score at gold demons.

I'll probably get flamed for making this comparison, but it's a real shame that honesty and integrity don't have a place in competition. If you want proof, ask the people who entered the Golden Demons in Chicago...

Its not disrespectful to my opponent not to paint my army, I dont play the game for my opponents entertainment.

If you dont like it, dont play in it. I know youre going to come here and gripe about it anyway, but just stick to RTTs and GTs that require painting. I dont think painting should have anything to do with the SCORE because it isnt about how you paint its about who is the best player.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_Armyman wrote:Cars are just for driving from point A to point B.

Exactly, its why I dont wash my car.

I can't fathom how it is considered disrespectful to your opponent to bring an unpainted army to the table.

I've done it in the past. I have never been bothered to see a field of grey in front of me.

For a number of years when I first played I didn't paint anything. I had no desire to paint. I was into the fluff of the game and wanted to play against all comers to improve my game. I enjoyed seeing nicely painted armies but I'm always more excited about playing against different builds than the best painted armies.

I think the people who poo-poo about unpainted armies sound somewhat elietist. The hobby as a whole includes painting but the game doesn't really need to include it. I think most people who are in this hobby long enough eventually get around to wanting to paint.

the_Armyman wrote:Pfft. Why bother painting anything? Houses are just for living in. Cars are just for driving from point A to point B. Why bother with anything aesthetic if the only reason is to look pretty? My point is twofold:

1. GW used to promote the hobby. 'Ard Boyz is a good example of how far they've fallen.
2. Just because 'Ard Boyz doesn't require a painted army, doesn't mean you can't take a little pride in what you have.

The paint on stock cars or the bright uniforms/helmets of sports teams have no bearing on their performance, but what kind of crappy place would it be to turn on the TV and see a NASCAR race with primer gray cars or a bunch of football players in white t-shirts?

Sincity wrote:A painting requirement at 'ard boyz is like a comp score at gold demons.

I'll probably get flamed for making this comparison, but it's a real shame that honesty and integrity don't have a place in competition. If you want proof, ask the people who entered the Golden Demons in Chicago...

What aspect of miniature wargaming is most important to you?
Social life 16% [ 98 ]
Painting 27% [ 164 ]
Collecting 9% [ 57 ]
Playing the actual games 29% [ 175 ]
Background/Fiction 13% [ 80 ]
Other (Write in) 6% [ 34 ]

Stop k just STOP . Im having a hard time understanding why are you so intolerant or why are you having trouble accepting
not ALL people get into warhammer due to painting . Just accept the other 73%'s existence and move on.

Sincity wrote:A painting requirement at 'ard boyz is like a comp score at gold demons.

QTF

the_Armyman wrote:I think it's ridiculous and GW should be ashamed. Minimum three colors and based is not difficult. Have some respect for your opponent and paint your friggin' army.

So My Blood Angels should not be allowed in? Blood Red and Boltgun metal not good enough?

Seriously, some Armies DON"T HAVE three colours.

Jimi Nemesis wrote:

the_Armyman wrote:I think it's ridiculous and GW should be ashamed. Minimum three colors and based is not difficult. Have some respect for your opponent and paint your friggin' army.

So My Blood Angels should not be allowed in? Blood Red and Boltgun metal not good enough?

Seriously, some Armies DON"T HAVE three colours.

poor Necron players T-T

Let me tell a little story to our readers ...

Long ago , there was a poor farmer enjoying his salad after a hard day's work . it was delicious and refreshing.
his land lord dropped by and made fun of the quality of the farmer's meager meal before stomping off his fat elephant like legs out the straw door.

On the way home the land lord was enjoying his happy meal , as he saw a giant limo drive by . Inside was some billionair dinning on his 20 course meal
with 30 bottles of best wines.

Do i seriously need to explain myself anymore after this armyman?

Jimi Nemesis wrote:
So My Blood Angels should not be allowed in? Blood Red and Boltgun metal not good enough?

Seriously, some Armies DON"T HAVE three colours.

aww, poor guy thinks a two-tone army only takes two colours.

seriously though, I'm not personally offended by unpainted armies. I'm embarassed for my opponent and his grey tide, but it's no skin off my back. I hide in shame on the days I bring a squad to the FLGS with a couple guys with unfinished basing, but that's just me. Y'know, come to think of it, I actually prefer when my opponent fields a grey army. Then I can prove myself a superior painter AND general!


I kid, of course; I'm mediocre to middling at both aspects.

I would prefer to play against and with fully painted, based, etc. armies. That said, allowing unpainted armies reduces barriers to entry for players and makes an event more competitive, at least in theory.

How about terrain of cornflakes boxes and a couple of crushed soda cans for maximum appeal?

I love the beercan terrain - some of my best (undercoated) Black Legion battles have been against Imperial guard that look shockingly like gaunts, gaining important cover saves from the Beercan forest!

Painting is fun.
Gaming with painted models is fun.
Gaming without painted models is still fun.

Nuff said!

Personally, I think everyone should make an effort to paint their stuff. That said, my Tau are still unpainted, though now that I've actually settled on a scheme I hope to get some work done this weekend...

I don't think there's anything wrong with not painting your army. Yeah, you probably should, but I for one realize that some people just aren't interested in it, or aren't good at it, or don't have time for whatever reason. I'm personally ashamed of my unpainted army, but I won't hold it against anyone else if they don't paint theirs.

Painting is fun.
Gaming with painted models is fun.
Gaming without painted models is still fun.

This. Except personally I don't think painting is all that fun.

I don't think unpainted models should be allowed in a professional tournament. I'm amazed this is even allowed. What you do privately under house rules is your own bag, but in a public tournament it's just not on IMO. For a start it looks bad in a number of ways. It's not great publicity if the tournament looks like a bunch of people playing on a sunday afternoon trying out their latest purchases hastily put together. I cannot believe they would ever use photos of unpainted miniatures in any promotional material later on. Secondly, tournaments should be a visual feast to immerse yourself in gaming. Unpainted miniatures have no soul whatsoever, just a mass of grey and silver. Might as well use crude proxies if that's the case, except you can't because you need to use GW miniatures. I think that turning up to a tournament with an unpainted army sends out a very bad personal image; you care only about putting together an army to win, so much so that you can't even paint your stuff, you're purely invested in winning. If someone looks over the tournament rules and says "There's nothing in here saying that you *must* paint the figures, ha! That'll save me a lot of unnecessary effort" I'd seriously question the probability of them playing the game in a good sportsman like manner.

Tournaments are booked months in advance so there's no excuse whatsoever to field an unpainted army, it's doesn't do your army service and it doesn't show respect for your opponent or the integrity and public image of the Tournament.

the stated purpose of the hardboyz is to simply find the best general supposedly. if that's true, then there is no place for a painting score. that being said, i also think that they should require that all armies be painted to a 3 color minimum (just not scored or factored into any victory points). the ONLY thing i have always complimented GW on is/was their insistance on painted armies in their stores and tournies (i haven't played/shopped in a gw store for 5 years so don't know if that hasn't changed).

Hey, I'll be honest. I frankly hate painting. I find it completely tedious and a waste of time that I could be using to go to the gym, work on my ballroom dance, run at the park, hang with a girl, or just about anything else.

Now, I do have two armies painted to RTT standards, but I only got them that far because I had to. The second army I finished by pulling an all nighter the night before the first tourney I played with that army. That should tell you how much I hate painting.

But that's just my opinion. I respect good painters a lot. One of the local guys at our store is the most amazing painter I've ever known. I never belittle his love of painting, and I often show off his stuff to new people to maybe inspire them to that part of the hobby.

Myself, I love the social aspect of the hobby and the actual playing of the game.

I don't belittle painters, I don't belittle fluff experts, I don't belittle the people who have to own the biggest possible army imaginable. That's what they like.

Why is it that the people who are all into the painting aspect of the hobby are the ones who bash those who don't love painting?

The 'Ard Boyz tournament is only around to sell more models. Most people don't own the correct 3000 or so points to make the ruthless cutthroat list needed to compete so they dropped the painting requirement so these people could run out and slap some models together for the tournament. They also don't have an entry fee to encourage people to do this and GW wouldn't make any money with that anyway. They also give out product as prizes which is essentially nothing to them.

Don't try to impose normal tournament standards on this farce. Anyone who thinks the 'Ard Boyz tournament is about anything besides selling more models is kidding themselves. That being said they are generally a good time and last Saturday I was 20 models shy of being painted...everyone else had a fully painted army.

I run a monthly tournament at my LGW store. For those I impose a minimum 3 color and based requirement for the entire army (I have been known to let a few figs slide for the first event of the series). Last event had 30 people - it was awesome to see 30 painted armies battling it out on the tables. The tournament also awards points for painting and composition of armies and at the end of the day awards an "Overall Champion" and a "Best General".

That said, 'Ardboys is a tournament to crown the best general, period. May the hardest list and the best tactical mind (along with a little dice luck) win. There is no requirement for painting because that is not factored into what the tournament is looking to find - and this is OK.

As was pointed out above, the vast majority of Warhammer players do NOT paint. For them it is not a needed part of playing the game (note I did note say anything about the hobby). These players still buy and play with GW miniatures and play by current GW rules, so why shouldn't they (and by they I mean thier unpainted armies) be allowed in a tournament that is clearly designed to test only how well they can compete at the game rules?

Not to be too mushy here, but everyone who wants to participate in this hobby/game should be allowed under whatever capacity they can. The 'Ardboys tournament is the one setting that some players can compete in because it has no painting requirement.

I do like the comparison to Golden Demon. Golden Demon is a painting competition, crowning some of the best painters in the world. Nowhere in the entry rules does it say that the model must conform to current codex rules and I'll venture to say that some of the entrants and some of the winners do not even play the games. They enjoy the painting side and have a competition to show thier skills.

'Ardboys is a gaming competition only and as such needs no painting requirement. Think of it as the Golden Demon of gameplay.

+1 to Saldiven for his "to each their own and let's all get along" stance, we could use more people like that in the hobby.

Personally, I have a lot of models to work with. A LOT (see signature). I'm lucky enough to have the expendable income to feed my habit of buying models, and friends that love to play both Fantasy and 40k. What I don't have is time to paint it all.. or even assemble it *Mutters about all the Tau, Marine, and Vampire sprues in the closet at home*. When our local group got back into Fantasy, the most intense and frequent competition I faced came from 4 players: Player 1 already had 6000+ points of Lizardmen, all fully painted, and wanted to play them all. Player 2 was new to Fantasy, sets his own work schedule, and picked up Ogres (Yay, 20-30 model armies), and then later bought an all mounted Chaos army from the FLGS owner. Player 3 had multiple armies to choose from, all painted, and all of at least 3000 points, because his brother used to play and still loves to paint, but not play. Player 4 has access to 2500-5000 points of every army in print, and could care less about painting, even for tournaments with painting scores. I picked up Empire (100's of models) and Vampire Counts (100's of models), having played both in previous editions and knowing the armies. I've since pretty much given up on my Counts as too cheesy to enjoy playing. But when my opponents don't care about painting or are already painted and don't care about mine, I'm not going to sit there and paint while saying "sorry, can't play yet", because I don't enjoy the painting. It's a good distraction when I find time at home in the evenings, but I'm in a wargaming hobby for the wargaming. Imagine that.

Every tournament I enter with a painting requirement, I pick my list at least two weeks in advance, and do my very best to paint everything that will be used in that tournament. For my Empire, I didn't quite make the cut last time, as there's a lot of models there to paint, but I'll have it done next time. For my 40k Orks (also 100's of models), it's a lot easier, because I caught up at 1850, and at that point value, against local players, my list changes very little, at most by one unit per tournament, making it easy to paint in those two weeks. Do I want to paint my armies? You bet. Not because I'm good at it or will win any awards, but because I have pride in my armies (and don't want to be beaten in painting scores as bad as I beat others in round scores).

Did it bother me to assemble Kommandos on site of the semi's last year to use that day, or Zaggstrukk the night before this year's semis? Not at all, because I hadn't needed or wanted them before, and I bought them specifically for the tournament (the whole goal of the 'ard Boyz: get us to buy more models). Was I embarrassed to be in the battle bunker this year for the 40k finals with 3 plastic-grey Battlewagons, a handful of my Nobs and Lootas unpainted as well? Maybe a little, but only because of how well done some of the other armies were. But I'll be -ed if I'm going to leave any of my units at home for a national tournament, with no painting scores, just because I haven't painted them yet. So if those same exact models aren't painted next year, tell me I'm a bad hobbyist, and I disrespect my opponents by bringing my "green with some grey tide" to the table. But otherwise, who are you to judge me for not having a finished paint job when it isn't required?

(Please excuse the following semi-sarcasm / Devil's Advocate section) Should I think less of my opponents with the immaculate paint schemes and an army list typed into notepad with no details, stat lines, or page references? That has a much larger effect on me and my gameplay than their paintjob. I guess I'll go start a thread on how ArmyBuilder should be required at 'ard Boyz tournaments. And at the Hardboy tournaments too, wherever those are.

Zero_Cool wrote:I run a monthly tournament at my LGW store. For those I impose a minimum 3 color and based requirement for the entire army (I have been known to let a few figs slide for the first event of the series). Last event had 30 people - it was awesome to see 30 painted armies battling it out on the tables. The tournament also awards points for painting and composition of armies and at the end of the day awards an "Overall Champion" and a "Best General".

That said, 'Ardboys is a tournament to crown the best general, period. May the hardest list and the best tactical mind (along with a little dice luck) win. There is no requirement for painting because that is not factored into what the tournament is looking to find - and this is OK.

As was pointed out above, the vast majority of Warhammer players do NOT paint. For them it is not a needed part of playing the game (note I did note say anything about the hobby). These players still buy and play with GW miniatures and play by current GW rules, so why shouldn't they (and by they I mean thier unpainted armies) be allowed in a tournament that is clearly designed to test only how well they can compete at the game rules?

Not to be too mushy here, but everyone who wants to participate in this hobby/game should be allowed under whatever capacity they can. The 'Ardboys tournament is the one setting that some players can compete in because it has no painting requirement.

I do like the comparison to Golden Demon. Golden Demon is a painting competition, crowning some of the best painters in the world. Nowhere in the entry rules does it say that the model must conform to current codex rules and I'll venture to say that some of the entrants and some of the winners do not even play the games. They enjoy the painting side and have a competition to show thier skills.

'Ardboys is a gaming competition only and as such needs no painting requirement. Think of it as the Golden Demon of gameplay.

QFT, this needs to be stated over and over, at my FLGS we have many an army that is in process of being painted or just someone doesn't have the time to paint them, I love to paint myself but i have had a backlog of a 5500 point black templar army i am trying to get done, it is a long road but will get done some day, but the elitest 'must be painted' mentality will chase new gamers away, we must help those new to the hobby and game by encougement, not back handing them because they don't have a painted army or ecen a fully painted army. hell, I know one persone that doesn't even have a single model primed, he has alot of magnets in the army, but not a single drop of paint, why? he loves the game and doesn't enjoy the painting, so he goes as far as he wants and plays in 'ard boys every year and does well, Bravo Zulu to him and all the other strickt gamers, and for those in my shoes, Bravo Zulu to you for at least putting forth an effort, and those that don't field an army pre-paint Bravo Zulu, they are beautiful and a joy to play against.