We’re big hobby enthusiasts, and big fans of competitive hobby scores as a way to bring out the artistic best the hobby has to offer. We believe that creative conversions and beautiful paint schemes are an essential aspect of the tabletop gaming space. To recognize this, the UTC support a whole new, artist-centered approach to hobby tracking and paint judging for our events.
Changing Perspective: By speaking to known artists and collecting their feedback we have created a new vision for what a hobby track competition means. Despite all that we plan to do to mitigate bias with this matter (including the implementation of a standardized rubric for scoring), we acknowledge that ultimately some aspects of final placings will reflect subjective judgements. When hobby competition is broken down by 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. place, this has led to talented painters losing out on deserving recognition for their incredible efforts. Our vision lies in reframing this idea. We seek to recognize all of our exceptional painters in attendance of our regular qualifying event using a new criteria called the “The Golden Medal Method”, described below.
The Golden Medal Method: Using our standardized rubric (available soon), TOs will judge hobby scores at our UTC events in context of their individual quality, not in the broader context of the other competitors at the event. What that means is a Golden Medal level painter will receive a Golden Medal, a silver, a silver, and so on.
Standings: Our Hobby Track leaderboards will be established based on the number of total Gold Medals a player has accrued over the course of their competitive year. At the end of the season, we will be handpicking 12 artists with 2 or more Gold Medals this season to compete in an end of the year invitational competition! Year-end finale invitees will be judged live by a panel of independent individuals and prizes will be awarded based on to-be-announced categories.
What do you mean by “handpicking” artists for the invitational? It is not expected that every UTC player has painted their own army. So a proof of work, or sufficient artist catalog, is necessary to qualify for the end of year invitational. This will be done as a guard rail against potential abuse.
Finally: It is important to note that we are not seeking to replace any individual Tournament Organizers agency in running their own hobby competitions. Rather the circuit places an additional opportunity on top of any individual event’s opportunity.
