(Lots) More 2010 Origins Coverage -- Saturday

Posted by Ranillon on 11. July 2010 23:03

Saturday was the time for the big Rogue Trader Tournament -- and the big prizes which you can see in the picture below.

 
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We had a larger turn out than last year, but one still not quite as big as it should have been as Origins messed up the tournament listing in its Convention Book, giving it the description for our "By Kids for Kids" Ork Pile game rather than the correct one.  This in turn caused at least a handful people that we know about to think the RTT was for teenagers and not attend (although when they stopped by the game later and found out the truth they were sorely disappointed).  Nevertheless, it was almost a full house.

Here are a few pictures of the tournament in the midst of the action:

There were a number of nicely painted armies, so I made sure to get copies of the ones that impressed me the most.  However, first a few notes on how the judging was done.

There were five painting judges that all individually went around to judge each army while the players were off at lunch.  We didn't join together to discuss armies this time around, instead just giving a score from 0-20 with 0 being bare metal and 20 a Grand Daemon level army.  Once we had finished the total scores were added up and then averaged out.  In the end there were two armies tied for first so we asked the players to put out their armies once again, this time for a group judging session.  The winner here ended up getting the top prize.

Speaking of which, first up are Dave Talbot's purple Necrons which went on to win Best Painting:

Dave's army had a nice unity of theme and the highlighting was quite crisp and tidy.  Likewise, his "lightning" effects on some of his Necron's weapons worked very effectively, better certainly than just leaving the regular green plastic untouched.

The main weakness of his army was that he just didn't give it enough time.  If you pick up the models and look at their bottom sides you see usually just basic, at times messy, coloring or in the case of the Scarabs only primer black.  Still, kudos for Dave at being clever at how he "hid" these defects so that from a view from above (the typical perspective) these shortcuts can't be seen.

Second place painting went to Hyde and his yellow Tyranid force.

Again, this was another painting job with a good overall theme that certainly fit what you might expect from a bunch of killer bugs.  The shading and highlighting technique was also nicely done.

However, in the end Mike's force suffered from the same basic issue as Dave's (not surprising as I believe they both did their armies together in a short period of time) -- the overall level of finish was mediocre.  This is more of an issue with Tyranids as they have a lot more pits and corners where the lack of time to finish well becomes all too noticeable.  There were as a result a lot of bare white primer in the recesses of the models despite the fact that everything else was done well.  This was the reason why the Necrons beat out the bugs -- too much unfinished detail work.

Still, first and second place look quite good overall, especially from the classic "five foot" distance.  Seeing what Dave and Hyde can do with just a few weeks worth of (a lot of) effort makes me eager to see what they could produce if they gave themselves, say, a few months!

Next up are Ken Boone's orks.  Really a nice paint job, so much so that they would have won Best Painting if Ken had been the one who painted them -- using an army that someone else painted automatically disqualifies you from winning Best Painting (although you get regular painting scores that are put toward winning overall).

One conversion and paint job I really liked was these Tervigons:

I hadn't seen this design before, but I really like it.  Definitely Tyranid, yet unique -- a sort of mix between Screamer Killer and monstrous crab.

And now for the winners of the 2010 Origins Rogue Trader Tournament

Best Sportsman -- Chris Kruso

Best Painting -- Dave Talbot

Best General -- Mike Hernandez

And, for the second year in a row...

Grand Champion -- Patrick Smith

Thanks to all who participated and especially Armourygames in Pickerington for supplying the prize support.

More to come...