The Big Waaagh

The Big Waaagh is right around the corner!

There has been a lack of communication about the event over on the official blogs the last few weeks but Micah (the main organizer) is supposed to be back in town tonight to get everything straightened out.

Quite a few members of The Hogs of War will be heading down. Anyone else on here planning on going?

A lot of the Moonshine Boyz and CAWS will be going.

The complete lack of communication from the TO concerns me. The secret squirrel paint judging and gw-only requirement is also kind of a pisser for what is supposed to be an "indy GT".

The TO for the 40k side I agree had me a bit scared for a while.

What are you refering to about the "secret squirrel" paint judging?

I don't know about the 40k side but the fantansy side does not require gw minis.

The fantasy side is ran by CAWS. Checklist paint, bonuses for voting, true indy GT format.

The 40k side is run differently. GW models (iirc - strong anti-"proxy" stance listed) and all painting judged by 1 person with no criterion, and he refuses to give a criterion.

I assume by secret squirrel painting he is referring to the judges adherence to keeping away from any sort of painting rubric. The painting has increased in points from an overall 20 to 50 points this year, but the judge says he will not post or use any type of rubric.... which means it will be arbitrary numbers that he is giving out....


If I gave an assignment to my students and did not tell them what I was looking for or what I was grading on.... I would have some unhappy students and parents.

I'm actually one of the two people judging paint in the fantasy side. It's all check mark then Cody and I will get to give out 3 fav votes in order of 1,2,3 to break all the ties by the best of the best and for best painted on fantasy. I think Clay (maybe Micah) dosen't want to give a criteria for judging because (the way I understand it) hes been bombarded with people who just want to have a check list so they can go through their armies and get perfect check marks. On his stance about not wanting to have to judge on that I totally understand. Player A has a magnificant looking army best in the world but its a plain army just well exicuted. Player B shows up with. 1 glued bitz on bases. 2 multi highlights. 3 details. 4 more than 3 colors etc. etc. Player B gets a better paint score and his army could look like crap. Random crap on bases not well painted and doesn't fit the look of the over all army and poorly exicuted highlights. Player B would get more points. I also agree on his stance that painting shouldn't be "I got this this and this." There is much more that goes into an overall peice of art than what a check list could ever capture.

And now a bit of an opposing view. Problems that can come up is players going "well why did john get a 40 and I only got a 38?" It's going to be much harder to make people happy with their paint scores if you don't have a hard copy of why they got the 38 instead of 40. Also people could feel that the judge was just playing favorites.

I don't like the Idea of the check mark system, but I feel he could have found a better way to do it than just say it's all on me. They could have 3 people go around with their own opinions and rate paint 0-20 add them all up and paint would be out of 60 pts and have different views and be scored fairly. (in my mind anyway)

All that being said I think the huntsville gang has a good reputation and wouldn't just favorite someone. The three armies I faced would easily get a 40+ out of 50 on paint. So while it may seem ganky I think you all will be fine.

@wildeyed jester: If you were an art teacher woud you use a rubric?

Disclaimer : all opinions by littleboyblues are ALWAYS wrong.

My god - the ramifications of me teaching an art class .... Art would be on the completely wrong side of my brain. My painting is now only where it is at because of years of practice and learning. I don't have any talent for it..... If I was an art teacher my students would all be coloring by numbers and they would think the primary colors were those of red, blue and green (primary light colors as opposed to pigments)


I teach physics so I need solid numbers to look at to make me happy, but I see your point. Still one must be ready to justify ones scoring of materials, to show the 'student' where they need to improve. That is the true benefit of a rubric.

****Oh and BTW it looks like I was able to finally fix the stars appearing early under people's names. You should earn your first star at 50 posts... I think its fixed anyway****

Thing is, painting miniatures isn't an art, it's a craft.

Sure, there's Golden Demon level painters that enter the realm of artistry (not to mention the work in littleboyblues' avatar), but for the other 99% of us, it's a craft. We learn the steps needed to make our models look good on the tabletop, and just about anyone who can hold a reasonably steady brush can learn how to do it with enough practice. The checklist method (done right) rewards good craftsmanship, which I think is what most people look for in the painting department.

Any other method is either arbitrary, or simply a secret checklist, either of which isn't very fair to the participants. Does the judge like NMM, or metallics? Will I get points added for using resin bases, or subtracted for not doing my own work? At least with the open checklist, the guy in littleboyblues' example with the well painted but simple army knows going in that he's going to lose points for the simplicity. The checklist should be available far enough in advance that he can take steps to fix it if he feels it necessary. Meanwhile, the guy whose army looks like crap, maybe he simply doesn't have the skills of the first guy, but at least he can hit the checklist and get a decent score. You can always add a few points for "artistic merit" or other arbitrary factor at the end to allow judges to have some subjective input if you want, but don't make it the whole thing.

World's End Radio had a good discussion of this kind of thing a couple of episodes ago. It's worth listening to if you haven't already.

I am seriously jealous. 5 40k people and only me for Fantasy.

I have a feeling I'm playing 40k next year with this small of a turnout for Fantasy. Outside of Matt Gunter, I can't get a solid tournament practice game most weeks.

The 40k players I've met locally at least seem less inclined to whine about armies in general. If I'm going to a Fantasy tournament I expect to play against rock hard Demons, 15 dice Undead, and tweaked out Dark Elves; I'd prefer to play against them for testing than combat Dwarves and random TK/ Ogre Kingdoms. For the 40k equivalent : imagine people locally whining about Eldrad mech, Vulkan mech, and Shrike terminators over and over, instead of at least trying to play against them.

To be fair, it sounds like the balance issues are a bit more severe on the Fantasy side right now than on the 40K side, although I'm only going based on what I hear on the podcasts since I haven't touched a fantasy model in ages.

I agree on that, write now both systems have balance issues( with crons and the inquistor codexs being so outdated). But fantasy is way more out of balance because at least in 40k the older books have one or 2 lists that are still really strong where as some of the armies in fantasy dont have a thing going for them(OK, OnG that i can name easily).

I would accept that argument more if the last Northeast Indy GT wasn't won by Orcs and the last Colonial by Ogre Kingdoms. =)

I got curious, so I did some googling, and what I found shows that the 2009 Colonial GT was won by a Daemon player. I don't even see Ogre Kingdoms on the list, although there are a few blank entries as high as 8 and 9. I couldn't find any hits for a "Northeast Indy GT."

Forum entry with a link to the results of the Colonial

It does look like two Ogre Kingdoms lists placed in the top 10 last year, although only one of them on the strength of its battle score, the other had the lowest battle score in the top 30, but some maxed out soft scores pushed it into the top 10. Still, VC took the top spot.

My apologies, I had to google to correct myself:

Quake City Rumble, Overall, Adam Clark, Ogre Kingdoms (best general was dwarves with minimal shooting)
Buckeye Battles, Overall, Mike Marko, Orcs and Goblins

I totally fail at remembering this stuff.

I know it's been a while, but I somehow never noticed your reply.

Quake City Rumble: Best overall had a decent battle score, but won because of having high soft scores: tied for highest painting, tied for second highest comp, and only five points off of highest sportsmanship. Since soft scores counted for more than 50% of the total, this made a big difference.

Best General: They award this based on sportsmanship and battle, not just battle. He did great, but best battle went to a VC army. Still, I have to admit that he had a great showing for what is generally considered to be a 3rd or 4th tier army.

I'd have to say that they had a very nice mix of armies in the top 10, but that seems to be largely due to their emphasis on soft scores. If you sort that list by battle score you'll see it dominated by the usual suspects, with that Dwarf army being a glaring exception.

The same general pattern with the Buckeye Battles. Best overall got a respectable battle score, but won best overall by having the highest combined soft scores in the top 25 (tied for second highest overall).

Again, sort by battle scores and the usual suspects are dominating.


Not to demean the accomplishments of those guys in any way, but I think when you look at the details of the scoring it supports the idea that Fantasy is more unbalanced without soft scores, rather than being evidence to the contrary.