Tournaments make for an exciting day or weekend of gaming, allowing you to match your wits against all kinds of opponents and armies at different levels of play. If you’ve never been to one, what you may not know is that there’s a lot more to it than that. For this instalment of Metawatch, our events guru Steve Wren caught up with Matt Lyons and J.P. Ganis. They each offer some interesting perspective into often-overlooked aspects of gaming tournaments – painting rankings and achievements.
Steve: Hi there, Matt, and welcome to Metawatch! It’s great to have you on to discuss my favourite part of events – painting, and looking at all the amazing armies that players create! Share some of your expertise on the topic.
Matt: Thanks for the invite. I’m the main host of the Pro Painted podcast. I’m addicted to Warhammer podcasts, so I jumped at the chance to create one with my two co-hosts (Ian and Rob) that focuses on the creative side of our wonderful hobby.
We have our own unique focus where we try to look at how players can improve their painting and army presentation with a focus on gaining Best Army nominations and striving towards winning a Best Army prize. Our discussions focus on things like specific painting techniques, visual army composition, display boards, theming, and conversions, which all factor into taking away those hotly contested trophies!
A natural evolution of this was creating the Pro Painted Rankings. These are essentially a duplicated version of the ‘Gaming’ rankings, except that they record results from the painting side of events in the same manner.*
Steve: A lot of our readers are aware of the competitive aspect of the hobby when it comes to gaming, but can you tell us a little bit about the painting scene at UK events and how it relates to the rankings?
Matt: It will likely surprise many people reading this, but the competition for painting trophies is as fiercely contested as those battling for supremacy on the top-ranked tables. Instead of a D6, these battles are fought with a paintbrush (possibly an airbrush, and maybe even some sponges as well), the main difference being that once the painter arrives at the event, their weeks or months or years of planning and dedication have come to an end and their fate is now in the hands of others!
This has created a thriving community of army painters who engage regularly on social media and messaging groups, and through their discussions, feedback, and encouragement the bar for army painting has been raised year after year. This is where having the Pro Painted Rankings comes in, as it acts as both a record of each painter's previous achievements and the focus for the current season's competition.
Steve: Events usually have a variety of painting awards, which can be voted for in different ways. Can you explain some of these awards and what tournaments look for?
Matt: The core painting awards tend to be the 1st- to 3rd-place Best Painted or Best Army, and these tend to be the most hotly contested. How you win them varies a bit, but it’s usually either player-based (where each player at the event gets to pick their favourite) or judged (this is particularly popular if an event is run by talented painters or where a respected local painter can help make the decision).
The presentation format normally remains the same, as all the nominated armies are displayed and everyone gets the chance to admire the visual spectacle of so many lovingly painted armies. These ‘main’ awards tend to focus on the overall painting and conversion standard of the armies, and those who master techniques like smooth blending and transitions, crisp highlights, and drybrushing are most likely to walk away with a trophy.
Another popular award at larger events is for Coolest Army or Theme – where a well-executed concept is the focus and may require less technically proficient painting, but more extensive conversions, unusual colour schemes, and elaborate display boards. We’ve even had players take it to extreme levels where they create fancy dress costumes and personas that match the theme!
Steve: For those of us looking to up our game when it comes to painting, can you give us any advice about how to improve the ‘wow factor’ of an army? Are there any specific areas that painters should focus on?
Matt: My mantra nowadays is ‘Bases, Faces, Bright Colours, and Dinosaurs’.
Basing has been a strong focus of army painters over the last few years, and the approach has become more elaborate as new techniques and materials have been created and discovered. I believe you can have either a basing style that creates contrast (light models, dark bases for example) or that is complementary to the models and creates a sense they belong in the environment (think winter-themed Sylvaneth on snow bases).
Faces refers to spending extra time on the main focal points of the models, such as the face or helmet, which naturally draw an onlooker’s attention. Extra time spent on faces can really pay off.
Bright colours doesn’t mean slapping Yriel Yellow all over a model – instead, it’s about ensuring that the ones you choose are clean, bright and really draw attention.
Finally, Dinosaurs is about including those big centrepiece models. Archaon Everchosen, a Megaboss on Maw-krusha, or a Lord-Celestant on Stardrake can really draw people to your army and offer a fantastic choice to showcase unique conversions and elaborate bases.
Thanks, Matt, for reminding us that there are lots of different motivations for attending gaming events besides, well... the gaming. You don’t have to be a top-tier player to earn the accolades of your peers, and much fun is to be had even if your dice are cursed.
Now let’s talk about the second topic of the moment – achievements.
Steve: Hey there J.P., and welcome to Metawatch. Tell us a little about yourself!
J.P.: Hi Steve! I've been playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles since the end of its 8th edition. My first big tournament was playing for Scotland in the Age of Sigmar 6 Nations in 2017, where we finished second. I've mainly stuck to competitive armies, but I do like to mix it up sometimes with my Nighthaunt and Gloomspite Gitz. Right now I'm working on painting up some Troggoths, which I can't wait to play at an event in the future.
Steve: Can you explain the inspiration behind why you set up the Age of Sigmar Achievements rankings site and what players can expect to see when they log in?
J.P.: After using some armies that are considered less competitive, I wanted to see if it was possible to have a website that added more incentives for fun goals to include in tournaments. There are always prizes for the top handful of players at events, but I think there's a lot of cool other stuff going on in games that’s fun to record for posterity and nostalgia later on. I came up with Warhammer Achievements from this core idea.
Steve: It’s a very unique concept! Can you tell us more about the thought process behind the achievements?
J.P.: The achievements were born by accident. I had spent so long looking at the stats in various ways that I started looking for interesting or fun things that had happened during events. I suddenly thought that if I found these interesting, other players might as well. There are always so many great stories from Warhammer events, and this is a great way to make a note of them – and, of course, I then started assigning points to them (we are wargamers, after all). I thought it could be a fun incentive to shoot for at events. We have plenty of prizes for people winning games, and that's great, but I wanted more recognition for the other shenanigans people are pulling off!
Steve: How do you decide on what achievements to include on the site? Is there a split between gaming and painting? Can you gain achievements based on list selection, for example?
J.P.: At first, I was sticking only to achievements that could be automatically filled out from tournament results sheets, etc. However, people have come to me with loads of fun ideas, and so I've started to expand the categories. Now there are achievements for gaming, painting and sportsmanship, with more things being added all the time. I've just added some new achievements for list selection. One of the ones I like (and one I just claimed for myself with my Legion of Grief) is the ‘Anklebiting’ achievement for playing a list where no models had more than 8 Wounds.
Steve: I love how you can use achievements like that to plan a list for an event. I imagine that there will be players who really buy into the idea. I like that there are some classic ideas, such as the ‘Highlander’ achievement, as well as ones that are really specific to players of individual factions – the ‘More More Mortarchs’ jumped out to me!
Steve: When I ran the Warhammer Achievements event, I found it tricky to find new ideas that could be kept generic enough for all armies to achieve. It looks like you’ve gotten around that problem!
J.P.: I definitely want the achievements to appeal to as many people as possible, so I try to keep a balance of achievements for both specific factions, as well as generic ones that players can grab with any army they might bring to an event. I’ve also added in a points system for achievements based on how tricky they are to achieve, and I hope that appeals to gamers' love of completionism.
Steve: How would you like to see tournament organisers and gamers engage with the site? Do you think that players will start attending events looking to improve their achievement rating?
J.P.: I certainly hope so! I hope the achievements add extra fun to events. Maybe you can't decide what your next army is going to be, and you see that you only need one more event to get the achievement for 10 events as Grand Allegiance Death so you decide to take your Death army. Or maybe you want to grudge** a friend playing Ossiarch Bonereapers to try and grab the ‘Headhunting: Katakros’ or find a Stormcast Player to battle against with your Nighthaunt to get ‘Forging a Narrative: Soul Wars.’ I've already gotten messages from people who have been inspired to try new factions or new lists due to the achievements, which I'm super happy about.
Steve: What are some of your favourite achievements, and do you have any more exciting ones planned for the future?
J.P.: A couple I like are ‘Calm Objective-based Gameplay,’ which you can get for winning a game with 0 kill points, and ‘Technically Possible,’ which is for ending a game in a draw,*** but I think my favourite is ‘Eye of the Tiger,’ which you gain for winning an event after winning game 5 vs an opponent who had previously won an event by beating YOU in game 5. Whew!
I have a lot of achievements on the drawing board, but one I'm excited about is ‘The Hail Mary’ – winning a game after winning the priority roll on turn 5 and rolling a natural 12" charge in the same turn. I personally haven't achieved that, but I'm super excited to hear the stories of people who have!
Our thanks go out to both J.P. and Matt for filling us in on some of the things going on at the periphery of gaming events. If you’re under the impression they’re all about hardcore gamers beating the pants off each other, you’re only partially correct. Hopefully, this will get you all inspired and fired up to pick up that paintbrush and have a go at some exciting new models for your army that you previously hadn’t considered! Head to the Warhammer Age of Sigmar Facebook page and tell us what you’re inspired to do next.
* For example, you gain points if you receive a nomination or win one of the major painting prizes. The points scale depends on the size of the event, and all of this gets recorded on the Pro Painted Rankings website, with the top 16 players getting an invite to the annual Painting Masters event which traditionally happens in January.
** ‘Grudging’ someone at an event is where you can set up a first-round match against an opponent you want to play (for any number of reasons...)
*** This is actually a lot more rare than you’d think!