WTC Painting Competition

Hello

It took me two weeks to write this report, so I hope you’ll enjoy it. There’s no official info about the painting competition at WTC, so I hope my report will fill the gap.
We were responsible for organizing a painting competition. Since WTC is an event mainly for competitive players, we decided to abandon the “Golden Demon-like” formula and do something different. Every tournament player was a participant, and our goal was to find the best painted armies among them. There were four prizes, three for WTC and one for the side solo tournament.
Here you can find all photos we took during the competition.

First cut

Our first task was taking a look at every army. We had exactly 318 of them, so we needed to do it during both tournaments. Of course, there wasn’t an option to disturb players during games. We all know that WM/H is an extremely demanding system, so there was no way to ask any questions or comment on anything. It took us something around six hours, but it went better than we expected. The hall was pretty big, but in some places very crowded; doing our job unnoticed was quite tough at times.

We finished the first cut with thirteen armies, so it was a very rough cut. At this point we just took an overall look at the army. Some of them had fine single miniatures, but it wasn’t enough to get into the army painting competition. I’m very confident that we chose the best painted armies in the hall.

Voting

As we had the best armies, it was then time to make photos of them. It took few additional hours, but we had a chance to talk with the players and exchange our opinions about participants. From my point of view, this part was the most fun.

After a photo shoot, players were able to take their armies, so we were able to take our time on final voting without keeping their miniatures. Of course I couldn’t make such decisions by myself, so voting was conducted by our jury.

Jury:

Beata from Made by Shizune
Tomas Hoffman from Team Muse
Mateusz Bermes (aka myself)

We had time to take a closer look, but we still decided to focus on the overall look, coherence in style, and a “wow” effect. We weren’t focused on technical painting skills. After introductions, we had three strong candidates for the podium. We were pretty sure about fist place, but second place was tougher and we had to conduct an actual voting process for it.

Winners at WTC Painting Competition:

First place:

Mechanical Legion by Tomas Mennes (Belgium Otter Team)

This was my personal favourite from the beginning. I think the photos speak for themselves, but I would like to explain our decision anyway. The strongest advantage is conversion work, which is awesome mainly because of the bold concept with very good execution. In each case, you exactly know which Legion model is represented, even when it has almost no original parts. Tomas did a very good job in planning the whole army. You can’t miss it when you wandering around the tournament tables. The colour scheme is very consistent, which is also very good. Technically, the painting could be better, but in this case it wasn’t an issue at all.

Second place:

Khador by Mikkel Ernst (Denmark White)

This one wasn’t as eye catching as Legion, but still a great army. Almost every model was painted with the same level of quality and care. Personally, I love the “military green” colour scheme on Khador, and this one was beautifully executed. Even Vlad’s miniature looked good among them. Technically it was very good paintjob; it’s even better upon a closer look (which is pretty unusual for gaming miniatures). It won in voting by two to one and took silver in our competition.

Third place:

Cygnar by Albert Adolf (Hungary Green)

Albert explained that this army was painted by his friend. He just didn’t have enough balls to play Constance on the international tournament (which is completely justified). This one is another converted army, not as heavily as Legion, but still pretty nice. All models in the roster are made to look like Morrowan units, which is an awesome idea. Some details could be done better, but it still presents an extraordinary level for gaming miniatures. Also, it has pretty diorama, used as transporting platform.

Winner in Solo Painting Competition

Cryx by Krzysztof Hawryszczuk

There was no FPA requirement in the Solo tournament, yet we found some great pieces. Unfortunately, we could only give one prize.

Again, we had a strong favourite in this competition. Great conversion work and detailed paint jobs earned the prize for Krzysztof. I loved his idea for Druges.

I would like to congratulate all participants and winners. Playing against painted miniatures is a great experience and playing against armies of such quality is even better. I hope one day my personal army will be as awesome as one of these were.

A big thanks for Beata and Tommas for their help in making good decisions and for all the hard-working people who made this event possible!

Take care! Mateusz