Paint Scores and Sponsor

We have received another supply of prize support, this time from RGD Gaming, which is an awesome supplier for all your Mantic needs, or a plethora of other tabletop gaming necessities. Here is what they've sent us for this year's Refugees of the Olde Worlde:

In particular I would recommend the paintbrushes. I won a set at Lady of the Lake this year and they are awesome. RGD Gaming carries a great supply of miniatures and hobby products that are high quality and at an excellent price, I can't recommend them enough, be sure to check them out here.

Now, onto the second part of our post and the somewhat elusive topic of Paint Scores. As we've covered in a previous post, each player will fill out their own paint score sheet during the first day of the tournament and will answer a series of questions worth a certain amount of points. Then, after the player has filled this out, a paint judge will assign their army a certain amount of additional points based off of their own personal discretion. Usually this will extend to how cool the theme of the army is, technical execution (i.e. Object Source Lighting or Non-Metallic Metals, things of that nature). All of this will be written down to tabulate the overall paint score for that player.

Therefore the player is largely responsible for their own score and can give themselves up to 25 points with the paint judge being responsible for another 15 to calculate your overall paint score (1-40 points). The player score is broken down as follows:

1. Is the whole army painted to a 3 color minimum? (1-5 points)
2. Does the army have a consistent basing scheme? (1-3 points)
3. Does the army have a consistent paint scheme? (1-3 points)
4. Are the models consistently shaded and highlighted? If so, explain how: (1-3 points)
5. Are there noticeable conversions on any of your units? Please explain any conversions: (1-5 points)
6. Does the army have a matching display board? A name placard? Is the display dynamic and themed? (1 point for each question for a total of 3 points possible)
7. Does the army theme extend beyond paint to include modeling, basing, and unit selection? If so please explain how these goals were met: (1-3 points)

The paint judge then has 15 additional points he can award to any army, but that generally focus around things like:

Advanced techniques utilized: 1-5 points
Storytelling in display (does your army look like it has a story behind it? Or is it a generic goblin/ogre/dwarf army?) 1-5 points
Overall appearance (does your army look cohesive, dynamic, or is it cool to be seen on the tabletop?) 1-4 points
Judge's choice (Only one army can receive this in the entire tournament) 1 point

So, that's the breakdown for the painting scores. The player who receives the most points will receive the coveted Best Paint Award, and all players will have their accumulated paint scores added together with their Sportsmanship and their Battle scores to calculate our Best Overall Award!

Stay tuned for the reveal of the Best Overall trophy, it's pretty awesome if I do say so myself!

Filling out that Trophy Case

Here we have the remainder of the trophies for Refugees with one notable exception. We don't have the  Best Overall Champion trophy... yet... that will come at a later reveal as it's cool enough to have its own post about it.

First things first! I wanna show off the trophy for the Counter Charger! I'm just super proud of how this one turned out and am looking forward to giving it away come October, have a look!

I painted this bad boy myself and I'm rather pleased with how he turned out. As a bit of trivia, Refugees of the Olde Worlde was the absolute first tournament to give a Counter Charger award, ever. Mark Zielinski suggested it when I first went on the podcast to talk about Refugees waaaay back when in 2016, and since then there have been Counter Charger Awards given out across the globe at Kings of War tournaments ever since.

Since the award is based off the Counter Charge Podcast (seriously, if you haven't heard of them, then you need to click on the link and give them a go!) and their mascot is Blaster the Goblin, I figured I would use their official model as part of the trophy for the award named in their honor.

The Counter Charger is an award given to the player who sits in the dead middle (rounded down) of the pack as far as generalship is concerned. This award is meant for the "Everyman" of this hobby, somebody who likes to play but isn't a hardcore veteran of the tournament scene. Because, let's be honest, those kinds of players make up the bulk of the player base for this wonderful hobby and they need to be celebrated, too!

As long as I run Refugees of the Olde Worlde, I will continue to have a Counter Charger Award. This event and this award are both celebrations of the community as a whole. Not just the most tactical, artistic, or gregarious ones, but everyone who makes up this great, global community of which we are part in playing this game.

Now we have the most orthodox of the awards, starting with Best General:

Best General is the player who scores the highest in Battle Points that is NOT either First or Second Best Overall Champion. My reasoning behind this is that Battle is worth the lion's share of a player's overall score, and so likely the player that wins First or Second Best Overall is already at the head of the pack with his generalship and doesn't really need another trophy to take home. However, I still wanted to honor the player whose primary focus was leading his troops into battle, and thus we have the Best General Award. This dynamic knight will watch over your trophy case, should you take him home, and guard against any posers seeking to steal your fame. He's a pretty cool statue all things considered and hopefully whoever wins him will be excited to show him off to your fellow players wherever you come from.

I will go into more detail later on Battle Points and Scenarios in later posts. For now just know that this award goes to the player who wins the most games with the most margins of victory.

Lastly, we have the award for Best Paint:

This guy lives to hold your paintbrush for you and will serve to remind you of your fantastic paint skills as you sit at your hobby table in the chilly months following the tournament.

There are two parts of the Best Paint category this year. The first is a self-evaluation of your army where you will be asked the following questions:

1. Is the ENTIRE army painted to a 3 color minimum standard?
2. Does the army have a consistent basing scheme?
3. Does the army have a consistent paint scheme?
4. Are the models consistently shaded and highlighted? If so, explain how:
5. Are there noticeable conversions on any of your units? Please explain any conversions in the space provided:
6. Does the army have a matching display board? A name placard? Is the display dynamic and themed?
7. Doe the army theme extend beyond paint to include modeling, basing, and unit selection? If so, please explain how these goals were met:

These questions will each have a different weight in your paint total. If the judge notices obvious discrepancies between what the player gave as a response and what their display shows, points will be removed as the judge sees fit up to and potentially including disqualification from the paint competition (and thus the Best Overall competition by extension). Be honest, but like the Player's Choice criteria, be kind to yourself.

After the self evaluation, the paint judge will add points at his own discretion based off technical skills in the areas of Paint, Modelling, and Overall Display, with a tie breaker for Judge's Favorite being awarded to a single army in the competition.

(A special thanks to Kris Kapsner, this is a liberal ripoff of the Lady of the Lake Paint Criteria that he used for his tournament, but it worked so well I thought I would steal it, with his permission of course)

So that's it. We've gone over the three categories: Generalship, Paint, and Sportsmanship, between this and the previous blog post. All three of these categories are averaged together (with a heavier emphasis placed on Generalship) to decide who our Overall Champion is. I'll go into more specific scoring for Paint and Battle at a later post as this one has already gone a bit long, but the general gist is that if you want to win Best Overall, you gotta do well in all three categories.

So sharpen your spurs! Perfect your palette! Gear up your gregariousness... That last one didn't work but you get the idea. This event is shaping up to be a great one, so don't miss out! Very soon I'm going to go over our prize support that every player is eligible to win! Sign up today!

Player's Choice and another Sponsor Spotlight!

This year has heralded a few changes to our regular format. One of the biggest changes is in the form of prizes. Usually in the past we have given away models for our top performers in each of the categories. This year, however, we have changed this and have decided to give out trophies instead. The reasoning behind this is that the players who are performing at the top levels in each of these categories likely already have a plethora of models and don't need new armies, but having something they can point to and say "I was the champion of this year" is something far more impressive and long lasting.

As such I'm going to start presenting the trophies for each category in various blogs and hopefully that'll get you hyped to play and win some of these awesome wares to display your prowess.

First up is the trophy for player's choice:

That's right, the lucky fellow who is voted to be Player's choice by all of you will receive their very own drinking horn, stand included. This is a fully functional drinking vessel that we hope will sit proudly on display near the winner's paint station or somewhere prominent in their home. I would recommend washing it before drinking out of it, but do so by hand as this is not dishwasher safe. I was very excited to showcase this trophy as I think it is a right good fun reward for being a good sport all around.

Remember that Player's Choice will be decided through the following method:

After each game you will answer the following 3 questions about your opponent:

1. Would you play this opponent again?

2. Was this opponent respectful towards you (i.e. they played a good, legal game and did not make you feel bad, irritated, or angry in the way they spoke to you or treated you.)

3. Was your opponent on time and did they provide a paper list for you of their army in its totality?

For each yes response given for each of these questions your opponent they will receive 1 sportsmanship point. Then at the end of the tournament you will rank your three favorite opponents, giving one opponent a gold award, one a silver, and one a bronze. For every gold award you are given by your opponents you will receive 3 sportsmanship points, for every silver 2, and for every bronze 1 additional point. Then, lastly, you can give a final nomination for player's choice which can be for any other player in the tournament besides yourself and this player will gain an additional 2 sportsmanship points. Whoever tallies up the most points at the end of the tournament will win the trophy, as chosen by the players.

We do ask players to be objective when giving out sportsmanship points. It's one thing to have a bad game because the dice weren't in your favor or your opponent simply outplayed you. It's very poor form to mark a player down because of those things. It is entirely a different matter if the player was dodgy in their movement, picked up their dice too fast for you to really see if they really did roll seven 6's to wound, or threw a tantrum when they didn't get the double 6's they needed to route your unit.

Please, be wise and generous in giving your sportsmanship points out.

Now, onto the second portion of our post: Another Sponsor Spotlight!

This time we'll be looking at the wonderful playing mat provided us by Killing Fields WarGame Battlemats. These awesome mats are made using teddy bear fur to simulate the long, flowing grasses of an open plain. They are truly beautiful and add a very cool dimension to your battlefield. Take a look:

This will be one of the tables for Refugees of the Olde Worlde this year. Originally Killing Fields sent this for last year's tournament but it didn't arrive in time, so we're making sure that they get the notoriety this year.

As you can see it offers a whole new look to your battles and is extremely dynamic. The teddy bear fur can be trimmed to your desired height if you prefer shorter grass, but the long, wavy stuff looks great on the table.

If you'd like to learn more or even order your own mat, you can check them out here. Let them know that Refugees of the Olde Worlde sent ya!