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This has probably been discussed before, but here it is again.

I went to a tournament recently and for the painting aspect the people who had bought their armies from other skilled master level painters won top scores in the painting competition.

I spent hundreds of hours on my army and I will admit I am not the best but my work was my own.

Is it unethical to have a professionally painted army that is not your own work considered for painting scores in a tournament?

I say yes. To me that is the same as buying a fancy re-built car and entering it into a car show. Others disagree and say that when you buy an army your also purchase the right to the paintjob and can do with it as you please.

What do you think?

Entering a painted army in a painted contest (independent of a tournament) would be bs.

However, if the tournament has painting scores, so be it. They spent the money on it, and should get the points for it.

Where would YOU draw the line, Bod2182? Would you not allow me points if my wife painted mine? My neighbor painted them for free? My neighbor painted them for $$?

Where is the line?

I don't buy other painted units. but if I did I would feel the need to declare what was and wasn't my own work. Doing anything else and passing others work off as your own would be stupid. So yes I would call it unethical and against the spirit of such competitions.

I think if you need to get someone else to do your hobby for you just to scrounge a few points at a tournament then you really need to take your hobby less seriously. There are a LOT of extremely good painters out there (I am related to one of them) who put my stuff to shame, but if ever I enter a game, I want it to be my stuff, painted my way, and honesty, it doesn't matter if they win or not they are mine own creation, so I love them for that.

If people need to worry so hard about their tournament score that they hire a master painter to do their work for them, then they probably need to get out more.

I think there is one exception to this ruthless schmack-talk... time. I have in the past done assembly line base coating for my brother just doing the basics on his ork boyz because he needed a LOT of them in a very short time for adepticon a few years back. No shame in that, he still did all the finishing effort and artsy part I more or less just prepped them.

Paint your own stuff dude, and be proud of it. Getting all uptight about painting scores for figs that aren't even your own work is the first sign of TFG showing up.

To complete what I said, I only play with stuff that I painted.

I would not hold it against others if they played with painted miniatures.

Not everyone likes to paint.

Some tournaments require you declare anything that wasn't painted by you.

Not declaring would be unethical.

If, however, there is no such requirement then it you do not need to do so.

If you pay someone to paint your army and the tournament has a paint score, I see no problem with it, as painted armies are pleasant to look at.

If you pay someone to paint a model and then enter it in a golden demon that's pretty messed up.

Some people like me can not paint anymore because of positional tremors due to carpal tunnel or nerve damage. I like the look of a painted army, and I feel its disrespectful to not paint your models, I will generally not play people with unpainted armies. If you look at the criteria for a painted army in terms of paint score only 1 to 2 points are given for judges favorites. Everything else is like, did you use 4 colors, is the model based, can you tell squads apart, did they highlight, did they shade. I have no problem with people getting paint scores in an over all tournament like a GT or RTT. You spending money to pay someone else to paint for you is just a different investment (cash vs. time) but it is still investing in the hobby.

So in answer to your question, its not unethical, as your time is worth no more or no less then someones money. You have heard the expression time is money.

I disclose that I no longer paint my army and even tell people at the tournaments who does it for me. It limits my max paint score to 8 or 9 of 10 typically as I can not qualify for judges favorite.

If you guys are interested I have paintedfigs.com and www.bluetablepainting.com do work for me as well as a guy in our local play group.

If painting scores determine the final point in who places where in a tournament, then I think it is very not cool to score higher than anyone who painter their own work though. So at best you can get an 8 or 9 because it's someone else's work? That's not a nice message to send to the guy who struggled and cared enough to get a 5 but at least its his own work.

I never really understood the 4-color requirement thing. I guess if you include the black basecoating/washing and the white slight drybrushing on my red-and-silver doom eagles then it counts as 4 colors, but really they are just red and silver.

With your own army you have free rein.

With a prepainted army you have to probably proxy models cause they don't match your list. or modify your list to match the models.
this is not a good idea.

Even the worst painter can be a good gamer.
But the best painter in the world can't help you out when you need a model to have a powerfist and nothing in your army was modeled with one when you bought it.

Here is the last score card I have from a few months back.

1 - models fully assembled and base coated
2 - models painted with 4 colors or more
2 - models base is finished (static grass, texture etc)
1 - squads are distinguished (decals, paint scheme etc)
1 - used advanced techniques (highlighting, inking)
1 - used expert techniques (blending, light sourcing)
1 - Judges Favorite
1 - Overall Favorite (majority judges favorite)

I got a 8 of 10

Composition was also scored by the judges it went like this.
5 - 40% troops or more
2 - no unit repeats more than twice (excludes troops)
1 - no unit repeats (excludes troops)
1 - Judges Favorite
1 - Overall Favorite (majority judges favorite)

I scored 9 of 10 (I think one of the judges secretly hates orks)

Sportsmanship 10 points possible ranked by 3 opponents +1 at the end for your favorite opponent (consensus) (you had check boxes on the match results sheet and picked one)

0 - I don't want to ever play this guys again
1 - Was unpleasant but maybe he was just having a bad day
2 - Decent guy, had some disagreements, would play again.
3 - Great guy, would like to play again.

I got 9, I think the lowest sportsmanship score of the tournament was a 7, it was a pretty good day. No screaming no meltdowns.

General

We played three games, each game has a possible 10 points for 30 points total. It had points for win, draw, loss and special objectives.

There was 59 points total

I got best overall with a total of 52 points. Next place was 51 it was tight.

There was also best General, best Painted, and best Sport awarded.

Best general went to a guy with a base coated DE army he got all 30 points. The guy that got best painted lost all 3 of his matches but had a very cool light-sourced necron army. Everything was painted as if the rods were emitting an glow on the model, it was very cool. Best sport when to my buddy you had a 2 wins and a draw with a vanilla ML/Flamer marine army.

That is my result card and what I remember of the tournament.

I draw the line at passing off someone else's work as your own.

I think as long as you are up front about it, so be it. I may not like it as a personal code. If it doesn't go against tournament rules that's ok too. I might get grumbly if there is some prize for painting, and they get voted top spot, but you can't get too upset at that because its a vote. This kinda goes along the lines of "i won't play against an unpainted army" which is that you are forcing your army/hobby standards onto your opponent(s) which isn't fair to them. I have played in plenty of Tournaments where the army the won barley had a base coat. I would play those people over and over again because of the challenge and their sportsmanship, the game itself is what makes tournaments fun for me.

fox-light713 wrote:I draw the line at passing off someone else's work as your own.

seconded

Obsidian Raven wrote:

fox-light713 wrote:I draw the line at passing off someone else's work as your own.

seconded

Third....

Again this depends on the tourney organizer....if they declare that you have to specify if you painted your army, then the player should not lie....

I paint all my stuff, although I ask my wife to do some letterings for my tanks though, since she has better "handwriting", but that's it...

This is why soft scores fail to "balance out" the game because all that happens is what is powerful shifts to something else. Instead of using good units in a well put together list and playing a top game being the only thing decided the tournament people can buy a painted army off ebay to gain an edge. If you are going to throw a painting competition for a whole freaking army it should be for things that were bought in the game shop thats holding the tourney 30-60 days before it happens to boost sales and promote fairness.

When I started playing again, a guy on a forum offered to send me a squad of unpainted Swooping Hawks. What he actually sent me was 2800 points of painted Eldar which distilled into the 2000 point Sunblitz Brotherhood listed in my sig. Even here, I openly declare that it was a gift, not my own army. I would never even enter a tourney with it. I might choose to do that at some point with my other Eldar army, but I am still working on them. I much prefer painting my own, but a very generous gift got me playing six week earlier than I would have otherwise.

I like to paint my own minis, as I feel it makes them my work (as it were), but I wouldn't care too much if someone had commissioned models. It's their army, after all.

I think painting is boring, so I don't have a problem with someone paying to paint, but I don't enter tournaments. So I really don't count.

I say it's asinine to make up your own rules, then criticize people for playing in a competition according to the real, published rules, and that there's nothing unethical about playing a game according to the rules. If the tournament doesn't forbid it, it's not unethical to have some or all of your models painted by someone else, have someone do all or parts of your conversions or bases, have someone do all or part of your assembly of models, or have someone do all or part of making your list, and it doesn't matter whether they do it for money, as a favor, in exchange for you doing something, because they enjoy it, or whatever other reason.

I think the idea of tying in 'overall winner' to painting scores is a really silly, and this illustrates part of why - people will get help or use 'artificial' means to do well on the paint score. It's like the listed comp scores that help MEQ armies (yay 40% troops) but brutalize less played armies (boo 40% fire warriors) and encourage silliness (change 1 piece of wargear so I'm not duplicating a unit). Soft scores pretty much never do what their proponents want them to do, mixing up game play and painting or making 'composition' restrictions isn't really going to make the tournament into more of a hobbyist event, it just makes people play the comp score and/or painting game if they want to win, and often discourages the very things it's supposed to promote like painting your own army or playing less-common armies or less optimized lists.

Bodacious2182 wrote:Is it unethical to have a professionally painted army that is not your own work considered for painting scores in a tournament?

Depends. Do the rules say you cannot? If so, yes.

Now with that out of the way we come to my pet peeve: "Best Overall" in the classical GW category next to"Best General", "Best Sports" and "Best Painted". If someone buys a painted army to meet the *REQUIREMENTS* to play, I have no beef with that. You did what you needed to do to play in the tournament. More power to you. But that should not count towards "Best Painted" and most certainly should not count towards "Best Overall". I feel like these two categories should be reserved for those who actually put paint to model and view purchased paint jobs in these categories as cheating.

Hell, if I can pay someone to paint for me why can't I hire Dash, Stelek or some other veteran player to sit next to me and coach me through games? Why can't I hire hookers to blow my opponent while we are gaming to get top sports scores?

The Green Git wrote:Why can't I hire hookers to blow my opponent while we are gaming to get top sports scores?

Got time for a game?

My view is that scores in a tournament are supposed to be for the person who has entered.

As such, to give them points for having bought a nicely painted army makes as much sense as giving them points for hiring a ringer to run it on the tabletop.

That said, I don't see an effective way of stopping people from entering ringer armies in the painting competition. It is down to honesty and self-respect. There will always be a small number of players who are prepared to cheat and lie to win.

Stop trying to turn tournaments into the Golden Demon then. Maybe this kind of thing wouldn't happen so often.

Your army should be painted as a requirement to play and nothing more. You start giving points for it, which can affect whether or not you win the tournament, and this is what happens.

kronk wrote:Entering a painted army in a painted contest (independent of a tournament) would be bs.

However, if the tournament has painting scores, so be it. They spent the money on it, and should get the points for it.

Where would YOU draw the line, Bod2182? Would you not allow me points if my wife painted mine? My neighbor painted them for free? My neighbor painted them for $$?

Where is the line?

It's hardly a conundrum...

Did you paint the Minis? No? Then you aren't responsible for them being painted.

As for my own opinion... so long as people own up about it, I guess it's okay.

But masquerading is wrong on a moral level.