Mounting interest..?
OK! Enough people have expressed an interest to make this thing inevitable rather than viable.
People are asking me loads of questions which I am struggling to answer. I am also replying to people at length on the PM/U2U facility. This is great, but it has the problem that I often don\'t know what I last said to you, as there is no \'email sent\' feature. Therefore if you have a long or complicated question would you mind using my personal email? At least I can then look up what I last said.
Thanks. PM/U2U is fine for \'quickies\'.
I am going to suggest a set of DRAFT rules and will leave them in place for a week or so. Contact me if you take exception, have a suggestion or anything else. It\'s YOUR competition, not mine. After a week I will incorporate as many views etc. as is sensible, amend the post and that will be that. (Until competition 2?!?).
Basic premise: The whole idea stemmed from the notion of taking something extremely familiar, possibly boring, and by dint of painting skill, turning it into something that could be called \'Art\'. The buzz phrase used to describe this in my area of work is, \'Value Added\'. The intention therefore is to take a basic Space Marine and try to enhance it as much as possibly simply by painting it.
Lots of questions have arisen, \"what series marine?\", \" Do I have to be involved in the \'prize\' notion?\", Can I use accessories from the basic marine sprue?\" to name but a few. Well, the draft \'rules\' are:
Model: Any BASIC Space Marine. No characters/scouts/apothecaries or any model that has excess detail cast into the sculpt. Plastic is OK. Metal is OK. Old, basic Beaky marines are OK - provided they are \'basic\'. Possibly a very unpopular rule: Helmet must be on. I am not sure if there are any basic marines which are \'helmet off\' but if there is then this would possible represent an unfair advantage.
Chapter: Model can be painted in any chapter style, known or unknown. Decals are obviously a \'no no\'. Hand painted insignia may well make the model a winner!
Basing: Standard GW style 25mm slottabase. Sand, static grass etc. is OK. Base should be painted in a single colour. Goblin green was originally proposed but any single colour will do.
Dioramic type basing, rubble, palm trees etc. are clearly not in the spirit of the event.
Adding extras: Almost by definition, this is not in the spirit of the event. If you believe you can add extra grenades, knives, haruspex\'s etc. WITHOUT going against the \'Basic Premise\' then OK. (for the moment - if people object then there may be a \'no extras\' rule in the final rule set. Don\'t superglue them on just yet...)
Posting: Someone suggested that they should all be posted with a particular title. e.g. \"VA marine\" (VA - value added) to make them easier to search for. This is a great idea, but, I suspect that entries will be few enough to allow us to search individually. As long as people let me know, so that I can add them to the list posted on CMON.
Deadline: Any minis posted after 30th September will not count as part of this particular litttle challenge.
Voting/Deciding winner: This is the real stinker. General public acclaim, i.e. highest vote is a really good measure, but does have certain problems: Fanboy/girl influence, date submitted etc, but probably most damaging of all: Misunderstanding of what this little challenge is all about. Can I suggest therefore that we have joint winners? Highest public vote clearly counts as a \'winner\' but, all the CMON members who started this thing off, vote privately, via email to me, ranking each model in order with regard to who has stuck most closely to the spirit of the rules and who has generated the most \'value added\'. I will then analyse the results and publish the top three on this thread. This is also where we could differentiate between those who would like to send/receive a MINOR prize of a pot of paint and those who don\'twant to be involved.
Does any of this make sense? Are you all happy? If not let me know!!! I will incorporate sensible suggestions, but suggest a cut off of 6/6/03. After that this post will remain unaltered (by me).