Pretty Little Trophies, All In A Row

What would any tournament be without its trophies? Every championship must have some way of recognizing its champions and Refugees is no different. Last year we began the tradition of awarding trophies instead of prize support for players and we are proud to continue that process once again.

This year I have personally put together and painted the trophies for Best General and Best Paint and thought I would share what you might be striving for in your efforts to prepare for the tournament.

First off we have the Best Paint Trophy. The original sculpt is from MOM Miniaturas, with a slight modification from me where I cut off the warhammer and replaced it with a brush I sculpted from green stuff:

I won't lie, it's a bit intimidating painting up the trophy for Best Paint as it's sure to be the more criticized of all the trophies, but I think most of our artists would enjoy what has been prepared here.

In order to win Best Paint, players will compete with the appearance of their army in several categories. We will be following the same rubric as last year, as this seemed to work best.

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 painting 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

Next up we have the Best General Award. It's a bigger trophy, as befits the ego and accomplishment of the one who will be taking it home:

The player who has the highest battle score at the end of the tournament will take this trophy home with them. The only exception is that the 1st and 2nd Best Overall cannot be the Best General (don't be greedy with the trophies, geez!) and so if you take 1st or 2nd Best Overall, you cannot win Best General as well, and will instead go to the player with the highest Battle Score who did not take either of those other 2 awards.

That should do us for this time. Let me know what you think of these trophies in the comments below and I look forward to seeing you in October and rolling some dice with you!