A hot topic of late is handling the abundance of professionally painted armies that are appearing at tournaments around the place. For many years tournament organisers have been placing more and more emphasis on the quality of painted armies and the amount that having a well painted army contributes to a player's overall score. Whilst the original intention was to promote painted armies and therefore increase the general enjoyment of players there were a few overzealous tournament organisers that ran a few tournaments where the emphasis on painting was way too high and detracted from the events.

A bi-product of this was the increase in demand for good painters to paint armies for other people. The increase is so great that in the current environment it is not unusual for up to a 3rd of the tournament field to be using an army that they themselves did not paint. The steady rise in ability of the average tournament player has seen a vast closing in the gap between the top tier of players and the 2nd tier, therefore making more valuable any extra points that can be gained in the soft scores components of Sports, Composition and Painting.

Whilst we have enjoyed the increase in both well composed armies and sporting conduct there has been a certain amount of tension arising from players gaining an advantage by fielding an army they did not paint. There has been much debate from both camps as to the merits or otherwise of rewarding players for painting they did not do and I don’t want to rehash old arguments here. However I would like to comment on what I deem to be a worrying trend of severely penalising players who play with professionally painted armies.

In the last 6 months two of the biggest tournaments in Australia (Orktoberfest and CanCon) have placed harsh penalties on professionally painted armies. And the ConVic 2008 player pack just released similarly penalises them also. I think we are seeing an unfortunate trend where going full circle we are now over penalising these players. When so much emphasis is placed on whether you painted the army yourself or not it opens up an array of related issues including the cases where players have painted some but not all of the army, players have painted the army but borrowed a unit or two from a friend and players that just lie and say they have painted the army but in fact have not. In my opinion we are creating problem for the tournament scene out of nothing.

I agree that a player that spends hours and hours of his/her time to paint their own army has some grounds for grievance when another player who paid someone to do it gets a far better painting score and therefore overall position in the tournament than themselves. However I think there is a happy medium in between that system and one where the pro-painted army player basically has no chance of winning the event.

My suggestion is that the tournament system award 2 bonus points (to the painting score) if you have painted the army yourself. This is a small enough bonus to not be too much of a concern with regards to the earlier issues discussed, as if you have painted part of the army yourself you will get 1 point instead of 2 or 0. It is also small enough bonus that a player will be less inclined to lie about whether they have painted the army or not. However 2 bonus points will relieve the concerns of most reasonably minded players who paint armies themselves but not to the professional standard of others who pay for it.

Any other system (penalising either side) simply creates tension in the community and invariably could result in someone not attending a tournament and in the worse case walk away from the hobby. Both of which I believe we should all work together to avoid. Attending a tournament where there is a host of beautifully painted armies and playing games against those armies is a fantastic element of our hobby, and one that we should encourage, regardless of who painted them. I also get pleasure from talking to a player that has spent many hours painting their own army when their pride is evident for all to see. So lets not create a massive issue out of something that really should be treated sensibly.

The concept of having a simple painting criteria where most armies get top marks with a few bonus points for exceptional work (and/or painting it yourself) combined with a separate painting prize for the fantastic armies is the way forward. And working with tournament organisers so that their player packs follow this line of thinking will make the tournament scene a more enjoyable place for us all.