Freebootaz Open Report - Part 1 - Painting Competition

After the first game of the day (and during lunch) anyone who felt they had a shot at winning the painting competition could display their army for judging. I thought since I'd spent the previous day ensuring all my grey hunters were (almost) finished that we should enter and see if we got any votes. That is until I saw the standard of the miniatures already on display and I realised there was no point putting mine out!! Although I will do a post on here about them and a quick guide of the colours I used etc.

The first such collection I noticed was an Eldar/Fleshtearers army (forgive me if you're reading this but I've forgotten peoples' names). The guys ended up winning the tournament and I think it was in no small part due their opponents being hypnotised by the tremendous painting done on the Eldar models. I think the other reason was probably that he had a bike council supported by a Blood Chalice giving them feel no pain (USRs applied to both armies).

From a distance you may be thinking, "they aren't that special, some nice finishing but nothing to write home about". Well when you get closer you notice the guy has painting scales on all of the eldar vehicles and blue flames up the sides. From the almost perfect geometry of them and the consistency of the size you'd be forgiven for thinking they were a transfer but on closer inspection they are clearly hand painted!! 

I'd certainly never have the patience to do this. Clearly there's a low model count to his army but apparently it doesn't take him all that long to paint a tank. He reckons about a week's worth of painting a few hours a day. I find it a little hard to swallow when my Grey Hunters probably took about the same amount of time and they're far from this standard!! I think the reason they didn't win was because the Flesh Tearers didn't really match the standard. That's not to say they aren't well painted but just that they were outclassed by their companions. 

The winners of the competition were a combined chaos and orks army. There was a debate raging as to whether it was a legal army or not (by tournament rules) but that aside they were some beautifully painted miniatures. I think the winning features were the excellent ork conversions and the fact that the orks looked like they'd been corrupted by chaos, tying the army together nicely.

So that just leaves some honourable mentions. There were some really good looking armies. I particularly like the Squat and Grot army as it was nice to see the Squats after they got removed from the Universe by GW and it's always nice to see mini-orks! There was also a nice use of Asteroth as a chaos character and some really well painted Ogryns. For the full selection of pictures look here.