It was a difficult painting challenge, but in the end, your votes and our guest judges decided the winners of the Great 2020 Terrain Contest!
Before we get to the winners, we wanted to give you a few notes. In most categories, there were 1 or 2 frontrunners across public, guest judges, and staff votes. With over 200 votes cast in total, this was a surprising number of clear winners. However, in the case of Best Painted, we had a 6 way tie, each having an identical weighted voting value. In two cases, we eliminated two entries because they had won in other categories, which left us with 4 tied entries. In this case, we asked our staff judges and a new panel of guest judges who had not been invited in the first round to judge the best painted terrain on the basis of which pieces were the clearest expression of a specific theme. While the results were close, this additional runoff vote created a clear winner. So, without further adieu…
Most Functional
Cameron Bender’s classic Games Workshop assortment of crates and terrain offers a functional twist on a classic terrain assortment. With lots of small freehand touches evident, this is a great example of terrain anyone can put their own twist on, but that is certainly functional in a huge variety of games.
Custom
Ross E Hisert’s multi-leveled Greek-inspired columns and water provides an interesting and cool combination of found parts and leftovers from kits, as well as custom water effects work that rocketed him to a clear victory.
Painted
In our most hotly contested category, Colin Hawkins Eldar-themed blast zone won on the basis of being strongly customized. Utilizing only a single partial Eldar figure, the use of a torch to melt the backing and then paint the scorching won our judges over on the strength of it’s theme and the simple, but elegant choice of color palette.
Overall
Coming in above all others, and demonstrating a merger of painting, form, and function, as well as strong customization from the original piece, Mike Fox’s lighthouse is both an excellent and towering centerpiece, but reveals much detail and care to make this 3D painted piece tower above the table.
Congrats to all our winners, and thank you to everyone that participated in this year’s contest! This was a super fun competition to organize and judge, and we look forward to doing it again in future years!
