Hey everybody! Adam, FLG Head Judge and TFG Radio host, here to talk a little bit about the Paragon of the Hobby award.
In the last few years there has been a focus on the best general. This rewards the player that comes in first place in the standings without taking any other metrics into account. This is fine as most people’s concept of a tournament is that you reward the players that place in the top purely on their performance on the tabletop. There are other metrics that we award prizes and I talked a little about this already. One of the prizes we give out is Paragon of the Hobby. or simply Paragon.
Why the name?
Back in the mists of the lat 1990’s and early 2000’s Games Workshop used to run large events and gave guidance for the smaller local event (RTTs). Their main prize was Best Overall, which combined a players battle score, paint score and sportsmanship score. A player’s opponents would score their sportsmanship so that was how someone would get scored for that. Best General, pure battle score, and Best Painted. With the focus more on Best General, Best Overall was changed to Renaissance Man, or Renman for short, which a lot of event still use. We decided to change the name this past LVO due to the increase of players that are not men. We discussed a few different names but ultimately settled on Paragon of the Hobby, just Paragon for short. It best reflects what we are looking for in the players that place in this category.
How is it Determined?
Similar to old Best Overall, How well you do in the event, combined with your painting score determines your placing for the Paragon award. The placing is obvious. the better you do, the better your chances of placing well in this category. It makes it easy when players are far apart in the placings. It gets especially difficult when player’s placings are much closer together, sometimes only by 1 or 2 spots. This is where the second metric really comes into play. Your painting score is what really separates you from your competitors. There is a sportsmanship aspect to this award and it is simply that you do not receive a yellow or red card for the event in order be eligible for the award. So be nice and turn you army list in on time.
Some Advice
This last section is a bit of advice if you attend one of our events, or any event that has a similar award. I can’t really help you with how you place in the tournament, that is all you and whoever is actually helping you. What I can tell you is that to make sure that you get your army paint judged. Even if you think you army is not painted that well or you don’t want to be bothered getting up early to get it judge, just do it. I have seen players lament that they should have gotten their army paint judged because even though they didn’t win the event, they happened to place higher than some of the people that placed in Paragon and if they had gotten judged then it would be them on the podium. So be sure to get your army judged for paint, you never know how the weekend will turn out.
I hope you found this article helpful. Next week we will talk about reminders for the upcoming Bay Area Open. In the meantime don’t forget to buy your tickets for our events.
Also, if you happen to be in the Southern California area in August, sign up for my 40K tournament and try your hand at winning a Golden Ticket for GW’s World Championship in November.