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Casper wrote:The biggest thing is clarity on how the painting is judged (how much for conversions, display boards etc). Most tournaments at my LGS (for 40k and Fantasy) use the same painting scale...and I'm currently scratching my head on how to add conversions to a mostly metal Eldar army.

I totally agree with you on getting the points breakdown from the judges to maximize your score. As far as your eldar army goes..alotta peeps will add in stuff from the various elf fantasy range of sprues to their 40k eldars. Hooded heads, capes/cloaks, that sort of thing. A bunch of my guardians have skirts from the plastic archer set. Just a thought, albeit off topic.

So you guys have got me rather curious about something. Let's say a golden demon winner paints up a snazzy army, and brings it to your local tourny scene. Let's say there's about 4 locations that do tournies. So anyways, this guy has said nicely painted army, and he submits the same army every time to every event. Because it's golden demon quality, he wipes the floor with everyone every time. This goes on for 5 years.

You guys are perfectly okay with that? There's no right or wrong answer here.

Necroshea wrote:So you guys have got me rather curious about something. Let's say a golden demon winner paints up a snazzy army, and brings it to your local tourny scene. Let's say there's about 4 locations that do tournies. So anyways, this guy has said nicely painted army, and he submits the same army every time to every event. Because it's golden demon quality, he wipes the floor with everyone every time. This goes on for 5 years.

You guys are perfectly okay with that? There's no right or wrong answer here.

Unlikely situation. In any real-world situation, adults would talk with the person in question to see if he planned on trying new armies, offer to have him as a guest painting judge, etc. i.e. many of the solutions offered in this thread. I wouldn't call him a bottom feeder anonymously.

But if it came down to it and the guy just brings the same army every time, is a good sport, plays his games, etc and keeps winning, oh well. I would think the same thing if the same guy won Best General for 5 years straight with the same list and no one was able to beat him.

And he would probably spur me to really work on my own army in order to have some chance of beating him in the future.

Necroshea wrote:You guys are perfectly okay with that? There's no right or wrong answer here.

Would you be perfectly okay with the same person winning each tourney for five years straight with the exact same army list?

it's the exact same situation.

What about if the person showed up with a new army at each tourney, all painted to the same high standard and kept winning that way? If other people can neither paint nor play to the recurrent champions abilities, do you go all Harrison Bergeron on them?

Portugal Jones wrote:

Necroshea wrote:You guys are perfectly okay with that? There's no right or wrong answer here.

Would you be perfectly okay with the same person winning each tourney for five years straight with the exact same army list?

it's the exact same situation.

What about if the person showed up with a new army at each tourney, all painted to the same high standard and kept winning that way? If other people can neither paint nor play to the recurrent champions abilities, do you go all Harrison Bergeron on them?

You're side stepping the question. Would you kindly answer it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

pretre wrote:offer to have him as a guest painting judge

That's a brilliant idea.

Necroshea wrote:

pretre wrote:offer to have him as a guest painting judge

That's a brilliant idea.

It along with a number of other, non internet slander, ideas came from earlier in the thread.

Necroshea wrote:So you guys have got me rather curious about something. Let's say a golden demon winner paints up a snazzy army, and brings it to your local tourny scene. Let's say there's about 4 locations that do tournies. So anyways, this guy has said nicely painted army, and he submits the same army every time to every event. Because it's golden demon quality, he wipes the floor with everyone every time. This goes on for 5 years.

You guys are perfectly okay with that? There's no right or wrong answer here.

I am perfectly okay with that. One does not improve ones own ability by competing against those of lesser ability. If there's someone there who wants to give me a non-moving target to aim for, that's great, I'll beat him and make him up his game.

Necroshea wrote:

Portugal Jones wrote:

Necroshea wrote:You guys are perfectly okay with that? There's no right or wrong answer here.

Would you be perfectly okay with the same person winning each tourney for five years straight with the exact same army list?

it's the exact same situation.

What about if the person showed up with a new army at each tourney, all painted to the same high standard and kept winning that way? If other people can neither paint nor play to the recurrent champions abilities, do you go all Harrison Bergeron on them?

You're side stepping the question. Would you kindly answer it?

Sorry, I didn't realize my answer'd go right over your head.

If someone keeps legitimately winning, and the only solution is to hamstring them, then what's the point? I know there are people out there I will never legitimately beat in a game because I will not wring everything I can out of a list and the rules like they do. If I play them routinely for five years straight and whine about how they keep winning, whose fault is that?

Vonnegut reference ftw, btw.

If you don't like people showing up and winning a particular tournament by being the best at the thing the tournament is for, then don't have one.

Remember this isn't a question of "Who's a sore loser", it's a question of "Do you mind if the same person wins the same trophy in the same tournament with the same entry every time they enter it"

pretre wrote:Vonnegut reference ftw, btw.

It's appropriate. If this guy is so good that the OP and his buds, despite being good painters themselves able to win Best Painted on their own, can never beat him... it's not that guy's fault, and we only have the OP's less than objective statement that this guy doesn't even try and play, only showing up to get his hands on that cool $40.

kitch102 wrote:Remember this isn't a question of "Who's a sore loser", it's a question of "Do you mind if the same person wins the same trophy in the same tournament with the same entry every time they enter it"

No, not if it is all legal and above board. Not if they are participating in the tournament appropriately and a good sport, etc so on. Nope.

Don't you have local champions who win 80-95% of the tournament games they play? They do the same thing for best general.
Or really nice guys who always seem to win best sports?

One thing to consider, is if he doesn't even try during the game. That would be the 'battle' equivalent of showing up with just grey plastic.

If he's not really trying and engaged in the game, I could see the issue. It's the same complaint you hear about the people just trying for best general from another perspective.

pretre wrote:

kitch102 wrote:Remember this isn't a question of "Who's a sore loser", it's a question of "Do you mind if the same person wins the same trophy in the same tournament with the same entry every time they enter it"

No, not if it is all legal and above board. Not if they are participating in the tournament appropriately and a good sport, etc so on. Nope.

Don't you have local champions who win 80-95% of the tournament games they play? They do the same thing for best general.
Or really nice guys who always seem to win best sports?

I'm coming at this as an outsider, as I'm just getting back in to the hobby, so I can't really draw on personal experience (having never entered a tournament). The thoughts that I'm putting in are based on what I think I'd like to do were I a TO / event organiser. I'm all for competition and having a goal to strive towards, it just wouldn't sit easy with me if I thought people were avoiding my tournament because one person kept winning the same award.

Kudos to that person for their skill, though I think that as the 'gold award winner' for that category or whatever, they should be given free entry to the next tournament and some kind of buff, title, or entry in to a hall of champions (insert any number of other ideas here, the list could be endless) instead of being able to enter the same competition the next time round.

On the flip side though, I'd definitely have speed painting competitions that they could enter on the day so everyone can display their skill given the same time as others (that to me is skill, as I could spend an entire year painting one model and getting it to GD standard, but that's no good if I have to paint a unit of 20 models!)

skyth wrote:One thing to consider, is if he doesn't even try during the game. That would be the 'battle' equivalent of showing up with just grey plastic.

Objection, speculation.

If he's not really trying and engaged in the game, I could see the issue. It's the same complaint you hear about the people just trying for best general from another perspective.

Sure, if he's a bad sport or just checks out during his games, that's not cool. No indication of that though.

pretre wrote:

skyth wrote:One thing to consider, is if he doesn't even try during the game. That would be the 'battle' equivalent of showing up with just grey plastic.

Objection, speculation.

Over-ruled, this whole thread is speculative lol

I didn't say that was what was happening, but it is an interesting thing to consider.

The OP did mention that he hates playing and never wins anything...Could indicate that he's not even trying to win. Bad sportsman or just totally checking out would be the battle equivalent of coming in with just bases with legs glued to them

skyth wrote:The OP did mention that he hates playing and never wins anything...Could indicate that he's not even trying to win. Bad sportsman or just totally checking out would be the battle equivalent of coming in with just bases with legs glued to them

That's not at all what he said:

"Guy I know has an extremely well painted and converted army. He never wins a game, but always wins the Best Painted award. So for showing up, he gets 40 bucks. "

Portugal Jones wrote:Sorry, I didn't realize my answer'd go right over your head.

My apologies on being thick, I just expect people to be clear when they answer things. Forgive my insolence.

Portugal Jones wrote:
If someone keeps legitimately winning, and the only solution is to hamstring them, then what's the point? I know there are people out there I will never legitimately beat in a game because I will not wring everything I can out of a list and the rules like they do. If I play them routinely for five years straight and whine about how they keep winning, whose fault is that?

You're comparing being a general to painting, and it's not the same.

Being a general is a challenge ever game. Every game you must put forth new effort in order to win. With painting, the challenge occurs once, and afterwards requires no more effort. This is what I have a problem with. A lack of continuous effort. The one guy who keeps winning paints one time, and the people who keep losing can put months and months of effort into it and never win. Sorry, but I'd much rather award the people actively doing something.

Comparing being a 5 year long general to being a 5 year painting winner goes like this. At the first tournament, you move everything directly forward every game. You move straight forward, fire, rinse and repeat. You win the tourny doing this. So for the next 5 years you do the same thing. such a concept is ludicrous because it will not work.

My main point is winning a tournament by means of strategy requires CONSTANT use of skill. Winning a painting competition like the 5 year example required a one time expenditure of skill.

However, I do not plan on arguing this. I like to see people constantly improving. As it's been said before having a golden demon level painter "camp" at painting competition will do nothing but drive people away. Check out a new tourny, perhaps bring a friend or two. Want to win the painting competition? Well you won't because there's a GD painter here. Maybe after spending countless months getting better at it you might beat him, maybe, but doubtful.

This post turned out longer that it should be. In closing, I'd like to simply state if I was TO I would not allow the same entry to win for five years.

P.S. I'd also like to add if that same GD winner keeps submitting new stuff that dominates the contest, I would have no problem with that. Hell I'd ask for pointers.

People may agree or disagree with the OP. But if theres one thing that can be learned with hobbies with any form of tournament side, is that repeat winners can affect the playerbase to some degree. A constant, repeat winner who cannot be beaten by any amount of personal improvement is going to eventually cause problems. Everyone's breaking point is at a different level, so times will vary.

At this point its upto the TO to find a middle ground that doesn't hamstring the winner, but at least acknowledges the efforts other runner-ups made. Constructive criticism is a good thing, but at the same time people need to actually be thrown a bone otherwise we cannot learn and improve ourselves.

There is another alternative that does not hamstring the winner. Allow him to keep using his army. But take the prize money and split it up. A third goes to the winner, then a third to second and a third to the third. This way he still gets the prestige of winning, and two other people at least get honoured that their attempt to compete was acknowledged. As whats the point improving your army if your gonna be ignored anyway?

If he was a winner who was only interested in fun, then this repeat winner shouldn't be unhappy with this surely?

Exalted, both of you

pretre wrote:

skyth wrote:The OP did mention that he hates playing and never wins anything...Could indicate that he's not even trying to win. Bad sportsman or just totally checking out would be the battle equivalent of coming in with just bases with legs glued to them

That's not at all what he said:

"Guy I know has an extremely well painted and converted army. He never wins a game, but always wins the Best Painted award. So for showing up, he gets 40 bucks. "

He said it in a later post not the original post.

kitch102 wrote:Remember this isn't a question of "Who's a sore loser", it's a question of "Do you mind if the same person wins the same trophy in the same tournament with the same entry every time they enter it"

Nope. If they are the best/produced the best why should I mind?

Necroshea wrote:Being a general is a challenge ever game. Every game you must put forth new effort in order to win. With painting, the challenge occurs once, and afterwards requires no more effort. This is what I have a problem with. A lack of continuous effort. The one guy who keeps winning paints one time, and the people who keep losing can put months and months of effort into it and never win. Sorry, but I'd much rather award the people actively doing something.

So, some guy maybe spends a year or two building, converting and painting up a masterfully worked army and he can only win best painted with it once? I don't know of anyone except perhaps some of the painting commission teams/guys who could knock out a high level paint job on an army in anything less than a month of solid painting - and that is essentially a professional painter with all the speed painting tricks in the book.

It's not the paint job on the day that is being rewarded, it is the weeks, months or even years of painting, and the weeks, months and years of work it took to be able to paint to that level on that scale which is being rewarded.

The only difference between best general and best painted is the battle for best painted is a much slower affair - someone comes in with a well painted force and it may take someone else weeks or months to either pimp their existing paint jobs or paint a new force which will beat the current "best painted", while it takes maybe an hour or two to play a game.

Additionally, "best general" isn't always a continuous effort. Many of the top players will be so far above and beyond the skill of other players (especially at local tournaments) that they could probably beat everyone there with an army of half the points, in the same way that a multiple GD winning professional painter is almost certainly going to knock out in a couple of hours models which most other people attending the tournament could never get close to without some serious commitment to bettering their painting.

But as I have mentioned before, bringing out the same army again and again and your painting score will gradually go down and down as people get bored of seeing your stuff. You see and hear about it all the time; great painted armies that wow everyone the first few times they show up, and gradually as people get bored of them and other people take up the gauntlet, their score drops and they get overtaken.

It's not the paint job on the day that is being rewarded, it is the weeks, months or even years of painting, and the weeks, months and years of work it took to be able to paint to that level on that scale which is being rewarded.

But when does the other people's weeks, months and even years of painting get rewarded? When it follows a rather arbitrary set of judge 'rules'? Why?

Or does that count as nothing?

Mr Hyena wrote:

It's not the paint job on the day that is being rewarded, it is the weeks, months or even years of painting, and the weeks, months and years of work it took to be able to paint to that level on that scale which is being rewarded.

But when does the other people's weeks, months and even years of painting get rewarded? When it follows a rather arbitrary set of judge 'rules'? Why?

Or does that count as nothing?

He addressed that in the remainder of his post. The part where he talked about army fatigue setting in (he didn't use that term exactly so don't look for it).

WTF are you all arguing about?

This is just plain stupid.

There is an award for best painted.

IT GOES TO THE GUY WITH THE BEST PAINTED ARMY.

Why is this so hard?

If you REALLY have a problem with it, simply eliminate painting as a prize category, eliminate pure battle points as a prize category, and go for a single prize consisting of the composite score, with battlepoints being weighted like 3x painting points (75/25), and just give out 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places, instead of Overall winner, battlepoints winner, and painting winner.

NEVER make rules that make it impossible for a player to win multiple times in a row... thats just stupid, because if you "adjust" the competition, its not a competition at all, its just you being biased against someone and not giving him a fair shot.

Mr Hyena wrote:People may agree or disagree with the OP. But if theres one thing that can be learned with hobbies with any form of tournament side, is that repeat winners can affect the playerbase to some degree. A constant, repeat winner who cannot be beaten by any amount of personal improvement is going to eventually cause problems. Everyone's breaking point is at a different level, so times will vary.
...
There is another alternative that does not hamstring the winner. Allow him to keep using his army. But take the prize money and split it up. A third goes to the winner, then a third to second and a third to the third. This way he still gets the prestige of winning, and two other people at least get honoured that their attempt to compete was acknowledged. As whats the point improving your army if your gonna be ignored anyway?

So this extended discussion on this topic has got me thinking. Hyena makes some good points about the same winner affecting the participant base. But at this point the OP hasn't gotten back to answer some of the questions I've posed....(Quoting myself)And how often are these tourneys run? Weekly, Biweekly, Monthly, Quarterly? What's the entry fee and how many people on average usually show up? How many games are played during the tourney on average. I'd like to get more of a feel about the tourney scene you're talking about. (/quote)...so we really don't know how long this guy has been winning or how many actual times he's won. Has this guy has been winning for years with his Golden Daemon-like skills or has he only been around for a 3 to 6 months. In either case I simply do not believe that the guy has no love for the game and just shows up to win the $40 (more like $25 =P) sidepot for best painted army as the OP suggests. To do so he's got to travel, register, and play a game with others for about 8 hours and I highly doubt that you're going to stick around and do something you hate for 8 hours (tourney time, at least 8 right) for a paultry $25. He might just be perfectly fine with being a poor tactician and having a poor tourney ranking, but "in it for the money" hardly seems likely.

If he has been winning with the same army for over a year (same army no new additions or progressions) then I'd say that the TO's take a great big picture of it, frame it, and give him honorable mention for the years to come. The honorable mention status would prevent him from winning the "Painting award sidepot" unless he's adding newly painted stuff to his army, and the player base should be appeased because there's not a same, constant winner. Here's the catch, if there's a painting score tied over to the general, overall award then it should be scored normally, and added normally to his overall score. (Because if this guy is going for an overall award, then his points for painting shouldn't have a half life).


Necroshea's initial query (mainly the unlikely 5 year and GD skills portion of it) and MrHyena's post got me thinking. Necro, the only problem I got with your initial query is the guy you're describing is a total ringer. But that being said, it did make me think your point over. That with Hyena's notion of the same winner adversely affecting a playerbase....hmmm. So I come up with my "honorable mention scenario"


But to be straight there's a ton of sour grapes from the OP, and I'd much rather see a guy knocked off his throne due to legitimate competition rather than mob mentality and rules lawyering against that person.

Mr Hyena wrote:But when does the other people's weeks, months and even years of painting get rewarded? When it follows a rather arbitrary set of judge 'rules'? Why?

Or does that count as nothing?

Well, I can't comment on the painting criteria used in the OP's case, but most tournament packages I have ever read have a guidline as to how painting will be assessed - 1 point for primed, 2 points for 3 colour, 3 for washes and limited highlighting, etc, etc.

It is not necessarily how good the result is at the end, but the fact that a painter has painted "to the rules". So long as your army features fully done bases with painted rims, highlighting, shadowing, etc, etc you will come out with equal (or near equal - depending on the scoring chart and judges) as someone who has won a GD for every single mini in their army.

As mentioned, if someone brings the same army week in, week out, and there are other people who have similar scores in painting, you will quickly find that they either pull up the extra few points, or the judges get bored of seeing the same army all the time and... not dock points, but just award less as there has been no improvement, meaning that others start to take first.

But again, how is painting any different from playing? Some people have either natural talent that puts them to the fore, or greater experience, or perhaps luck, etc, etc. At the end of the day, you are rewarding the "best". No matter what the government may want you to think, not everyone can be a winner.

I've heard as many, if not more words of praise for people in close fought second and third places than I have for the people who come first. I know I got a lot of good comments and suggestions when my army came in 2nd best painted that spurred me on to repaint a couple of units, touch up a few bits of sloppy work on bases, add in a couple of extra special models, etc. My army, I like to think, is now better than it ever has been. If I'd come first I probably would have been content to rest on my laurels (as I hate painting) and the next tournament I went to someone probably would have had a better looking army than me...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

OverwatchCNC wrote:He addressed that in the remainder of his post. The part where he talked about army fatigue setting in (he didn't use that term exactly so don't look for it).