Gencon part 5 - the P3 Grandmasters Painting Competition

So, Privateer Press have put together quite an impressive painting competition at Gencon. Since it was started, it has continually attracted some of the best painters in the world (several of whom attend Gencon anyway).

The categories look roughly like the Golden Daemons- there are single mini, a warjack/warbeast, a battlegroup, unit and diorama categories.

So, sometime last summer, I decided that I wanted to attend Gencon with one entry for every category. It seemed very doable when I had a year to go, so I took my time, and worked on the Gencon pieces here and there.

Of course, I wasted so much time that I was scrambling to get them all done, and finished the last of my entries at 2 am the day before my flight left. That's procrastination for you.

There was something new and interesting this year. In every previous year, the P3 judges handed out Skully trophies to the first, second and third place entries in every category. This year, they completely scrapped the second and third place trophies in favor of a medal system instead.

Each entry was judged on its own merits and given either no award, or a bronze, silver or gold medal. The best in each category, and the best in show were awarded trophies as usual.

Each of my entries was awarded a silver medal. In two categories, this would have translated directly into third place, and in another it was possibly third place (each of those only had one gold medal awarded without a trophy). In the single miniature and warjack/warbeast categories, this didn't exactly translate into anything (there were several gold medals awarded to entries other than the winner).

So I have some mixed feelings about the new system. While I would love the bragging rights that you get from getting a bronze skull trophy, getting awards for some of my entries and not others makes it seem like my painting is hit and miss. In this system, it is plain to me that my painting was at the same level for all of my entries, and it just happens that some of the categories were more competitive than others.

Ok, so enough about that. Here are the minis I entered. I'm sure I'll do a blog entry for each one soon, so I'll just give you a pic of each here: