Matt Baugh, proud owner of the very first space marine army we painted, received 38/40 at last weekend's AWC Approved Tournament Tracker tournament. This was not a joint second place as reported earlier, but a joint sixth place.
"I was very pleased to score 38 out of 40 for appearance," said Matt to me later. "At a painting cost of $2.50 per space marine, 38 out of 40 is something I would never have dreamed of when I sent those off to you for painting."
This made me happy to no end -- the first reported, impartial assessement of one of our armies in a tournament setting. This wasn't a tournament series I was familiar with, so I asked my partner Luke what the scale of this event was, and how much our score really meant.
"Let me put it this way," he began bluntly, "we're in the same league as Brian Carlson, who won six Best Appearances and Players Choice Awards in the last year. We were just two points behind the winner, Tom Ortman, who won the 2005 Tracker Season overall. ""This event was significant Navin," he continued. "Half of the participants were either Adepticon award winners of some sort or arganizers and judges at Adepticon."
We since learned from the tourney organizers and participants that even though the raw scores would suggest this, given that so many people tied for first place it is a little meaningless to try draw any kind of assessment on painting quality based on the 38/40.
So has our painting come a long way? I think it has (just take a look at our more recent work like our 100+ model dwarf slayer army) , but high appearance scores may not be indicative of quality (we got an A+ on test -- but since so many others did it doesn't have any real value).
Still, rocognition is recognition, and its good to know that our very first, table top quality, space marine army was quite tournament worthy. It's been an achievement not just for my painters, but also for our clients who have been loyally spreading the word about us to their friends, our quality, and our low pricing.
From myself and the painters, thank you for everything.Navin
