Changes to Appearance Scoring

With the shift to a narrative event, and away from a ‘competitive’ one, we have had the chance to make a lot of changes. One that we tussled with a lot was appearance scoring.

As you know – in the past Christian and I would spend a lot of time going over armies, painstakingly scoring them according to a rubric and trying to give folks feedback. This was nice in that we got to enjoy people’s armies, but it had some downsides. First, it took a LOT of time. Second, no matter how careful we were, there were always some folks (generally only a few) who simply were never happy with their scores. We’d try and explain to them that getting really high painting scores was hard, etc. but while most people were very reasonable, there were always some folks who weren’t happy. What’s more, they weren’t even always being unreasonable. Sometimes we were just too pressed for time and missed things. We tried really hard, but we’re human, and we make mistakes.

Another thing that came up, and this was a bit of a sore point, is that we weren’t playing against the army and so would have a different ‘experience’ of it than those playing. An unfinished model or squad at the very back of a display board we might not catch, but it might be very obvious to someone playing against the army. When we missed things like that scores were wrong and we’d have to try and correct them. Tough stuff.

With the event no longer being a ‘tournament’ we decided to try a different style of appearance scoring. In this iteration, each player will be scored on a much simpler rubric of 0-5, with the rubric right on the scoresheet. And they will be scored by their opponent during play, ensuring that all models played with are seen and really impressive models don’t get missed. With 5 games a possible maximum total of 25 points for appearance is possible and with a simpler rubric we hope that the scores will also be more accurate. This will add to each player’s ‘Best in Faction’ scores, rewarding players for putting in time and effort on their armies.

Remember, please score honestly and by the rubric. Don’t just give everyone fives, please. There are some armies out there that deserve all fives (looking at you Jonathan) but they are likely quite rare.

See you on the weekend!