Painting Scores

Ever since I began going to tournaments this year I have been impacted by painting scores. The basic concept behind them is sound: Assign a number of points to each player in a tournament based on how well painted their army is, the better the army the higher the score. At the end of the tournament this score is combined with battles points and sportsman score to give each player his/her total number of points earned at the tournament and thus their final position in the tournament. However this is one major issue I have with this and that is that it punishes bad painters.

I will be blunt, people who can paint well are artists, and there is no denying it. If you are reading this and constantly score highly with painting scores or win best painted at tournaments then you are a highly skilled artist, to argue this point is to debate semantics. However not everyone who goes to tournaments is an artist (myself included) and it is we who suffer the most from painting scores. We go into tournaments with a handicap to overcome, because we aren’t artists we have to do exceptionally well in battle points to fill in for the points we lose due to painting scores, we are at a major disadvantage even before we get to the tournament. 

Now people will tell me to SL2PB (Seriously? Learn 2 Paint Better), or some such unempathetic response, and this is one of the biggest problems with the panting score debate, that people who are excellent painters/artists often  can’t understand the opposing view and show a lack of understanding for people who aren’t good painters/artists. And that’s a problem. I know I am a bad painter, it took me seven years to get my painting to where it is now and it will most likely take me another seven improve it further, for me “learning to paint better” is a long term solution and one that I am not really sure I want to pursue. For me painting is the worst part of this hobby with the gaming part being the best and the conversion part 2^nd best.

Skitterleap was the first tournament I went to with my fully painted Wood Elves, and in that tournament I scored the lowest painting wise, earning 15 points total. After this tournament I began to seek out painting commission services for my next army. At the time of writing this I have already sent my next army up to Auckland to be painted to a decent standard in order to avoid being hit with handicap of painting scores, this has cost me in the region of 400 dollars. I would love to be able to bring my own painted army’s’ to tournaments but realistically this is not an option. In order to do well and place higher than the bottom 3^rd I need a decently painted army and that is something I cannot provide, I am not an artist, I am not a good painter and so I must seek out alternate ways of getting a well painted army.

To sum up I am strongly against painting scores. I am a huge fan of the first, second and third best painted army system at tournaments because I think that it rewards the best painted armies at tournaments without putting handicaps on bad painters. I know this post will generate strong reaction and I am more than willing to debate this in the comment section. At the end of the day I don’t want people to think this is an attack post, I didn’t write this to “go after” any one, I wrote it because I feel strongly about the issue of painting scores and wanted to say something about it.  Until next time

Rex Foote