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I pose an insteresting question to the dakka community;

Which do you admire most, and why?

a) The guy who has expertly painted all of his armies, but has never won a game, and his conversions/posing are nonexistent/stock standard.
b) The guy who wins all of his games, but hasn't painted a single model, and his conversions are nonexistent.
c) The guy who has expertly converted all of his armies, but has never won a game, and his paintjobs are nonexistent.

Please go into detail as to why you admire one and dislike the others.

For me, personally, I think it is a mix of all 3 and I try not to view things in such black and white terms. WH40k is always described as a hobby, and to me that encompasses all spheres, from painting through to gaming. In my own hobby, I try to paint everything, convert some stuff and play well, although it doesnt always work out like that!

I admire paintwork and conversions over wins.

I think there are different grades of admiration for painting and conversion though. It is a lot easier to see the great painters than it is to see the great converters, as more people paint than convert, and a great conversion can be ruined by a rubbish paint job.

So I would probably say that I admire the really good converters more than most painters, but I admire the really good painters more than I do the really good converters.

If that makes sense

filbert wrote:For me, personally, I think it is a mix of all 3 and I try not to view things in such black and white terms.

That would about sum it up for me, as well. I admire skill. The focus of it is less relevant than the application.

Painting, then converting, then gaming.

Any schmuck can run a competitive list they found on the internet, but it takes hard work and dedication to get miniatures looking real nice.

I personally fall more into the 'wins all his games' category, but am working towards a fully painted horde.

I guess I would most admire a combination of 1 and 3. But, given a choice, I'd choose 1 because, although I absolutely love conversions, I wouldn't want to play against an unpainted army....

Painting and conversion show dedication in a different way to playing since they're both things you do for yourself, in your free time. You can post them on the web for discussion and their worth isn't dependent upon anyone else.

Winning every game MAY be because you dedicate your free time to list writing, but it also may be because your regular opponent is rubbish, or your local metagame is tipped one way or another. And, of course, if you're ONLY concerned about winning, why assemble plastic models in the firts place? Just use tokens....

i admire the guy who cant paint, cant convert and cant win, but still plays.

I've no patience for "B". There's just no soul playing unpainted miniatures.

If the conversions were excellent, I'd be distracted enough to play a couple games against person "C". That would get old pretty quick after it dawned on me that the "green" was not an in-progress paintjob.

Out of the 3, I'm most impressed (I don't admire) person "A".

Outside of your 3 examples, I:
-Couldn't care less how many games someone has won
-I'd much rather see a simple paintjob with some conversions than a great paintjob with no conversions.

So who do I admire the most between 3 guys who rock in 1 way and suck in 2 ways?
None of them. >.>
They'd have to be at least decent in 2 things and excel in the 3rd to be deserving of my admiration.
I also tend to have more respect for painting/converting than for winning, since the latter doesn't always have to do with talent (an awesome list could be taken from someone else and luck with the dice doesn't require one to be a tactical genius).

I have manlove for whoever I want to game with at the end of the day.

a) The guy who has expertly painted all of his armies, but has never won a game, and his conversions/posing are nonexistent/stock standard.
I know a guy who has expertly painted all his armies, but doesnt have much conversion. He wins most of his games though, as in Ive never seen him take less then 3rd at a tournament. Looks good, plays well, whatever.

b) The guy who wins all of his games, but hasn't painted a single model, and his conversions are nonexistent.
This is me. I have all my stuff painted to 3 colors, but just. Its not that I cant paint well, but I wont. I love to read and play classical guitar, painting is boring and tedious, so I dislike it. I probably paint 15-20 days a year, and its all in spurts, like ill get 3 colors on about 1500 points in a week, and I dont paint for 3 months. I figure its a hobby, do what you enjoy, I like to play not paint.

c) The guy who has expertly converted all of his armies, but has never won a game, and his paintjobs are nonexistent.
never met this guy.

I admire the rarest of players, those with the fluffy themed army with a decent paint job. However, spotting one of them is like getting a glimpse of Bigfoot.

I'll take the guy with the best painted, then the guy with the best modeled, ending with the guy with the most wins. I feel most for the modelers and painters, since I tend to fall under the painter category myself. I don't win very often, and to be truthful that can be very trying when I'm trying to stick with the gaming aspect. It's easy to keep playing and collecting 40k if you're good at it. It's not so easy to stick with 40k when you're just buying overpriced models to paint them.

I tend to be the one with half her army painted, and the other half in grey, silver and green. Occasionally minus an arm. In two cases I've been playing one legged wyches for the last few months. With the amount of leaping and somersaulting they do I'm not sure how much of a hindrance that would be.

I also have one mostly converted raider that is fully painted, in the wrong colours. Yay for second hand. I'm not going to strip it until I've run out of things to paint, it still looks half decent and I figure less grey is good.

A combination of all three. Taking the time to carefuly convert the more important models (such as HQ, squad leaders) to make them more unique and a decent paint job is great. It's always more fun to play against theses armies, I don't mind if I win or lose (I'll still try to win ).

But watching them win several games, maybe have several models get promotions or something like that seems good. But I guess I'm going into the fourth one you didn't mention.

D )The guy that has named every model, has a decent and reasonable background story to the army and still adds to it as the army goes along. But never wins, no models are painted and there are no conversions.

Of course if they go to that effort they'll probably be painted up, maybe even having the more important models converted to reflect a campaign or something in their story.

Culler wrote:
Any schmuck can run a competitive list they found on the internet...

Sure, they can run one, but it doesn't mean they'll "win all of their games" as mentioned by the OP, or even anywhere close to it. Sure, if the schmuck only plays against other schmucks (I assume we're using that word to mean about the same as noob or scrub?), then his internet powerlist will win him the day a good bit of the time. But a bad player with an internet list will not win over a good player who knows his army and has put experience into building and learning it, at least not most of the time. Winning "every" game (or at least a large percentage) is very difficult if you play against other experienced/"good" players, no matter whose list has an advantageous match-up. The "schmuck" would particularly be unlikely to do all that well in a tournament scene no matter how broken the internet army, unless he is very very skilled (and thus probably not a schmuck) or very very lucky.

For my answer, I guess I would most admire (a), because it's the one I'm least good at. Generally speaking, I'm probably more likely to admire someone for being good at something I can't do than for being good at something I can do. If I'm simply seeing someone accomplishing something that I can accomplish, any admiration would probably only come about if they were head and shoulders above my own ability at the task. On the other hand, I can't paint for jack, so a very skilled painter is something that I can admire, as it is someone who is very good at a skill that I lack.

I suppose I admire the painted army because it takes more time and effort to get even 1000pts of SM up and running than converting / detailing the same point# of IG.