There are a number of things to note here: Mandatory Painting Requirement and the consequences of not having a painted army, and the Awards available to those who field armies they did not paint themselves.

As everyone who is competing at a Grand Tournament has put a great deal of time and effort into their army it is only reasonable to expect that their opponents have done the same. Therefore, it is mandatory that you bring a fully painted army to the Grand Tournaments. It is quite within the rights of your opponent for them to request you remove any units/models that are not painted from the table. Judges will be on hand to enforce this rule. Failure to remove unpainted models from the table will be considered unacceptable behavior and you may be ejected from the tournament.

While it may seem strange, some people will not read these rules before they attend a GT and expect that they can bring an unpainted army. The first time a competitor brings an unpainted army to a GT they will have two choices. The first is to play with an army we provide and receive only half scores throughout the tournament. The second is to voluntarily leave the event. The second time they bring an unpainted army to a GT they will be turned away, with absolutely no refunds given.

This will mean that those who did not read the rules before the event get a very clear message at the show, and will hopefully bring their “A game” to the next Grand Tournament.

There has also been much discussion about those people who bring armies they did not paint themselves, either because they feel they lacked the time and/or skill to paint their army. As the intent of the event is for everyone involved to have a fun, nerdy weekend pushing cool toy soldiers about over cool terrain against other enthusiastic hobbyists, anyone can field an army they did not paint themselves.

Before the tournament begins, everyone will be asked if they painted their own army. Those that did are eligible for all the awards we will present at the end of each event. Those that did not are only eligible for the Best General, Best Sportsmanship, and Favorite Opponent awards. All awards are described in the Scoring section of this site.

Note: We know there will be grey areas (people fielding the odd model that was painted by their son/wife/best friend) and if you converted and painted 95% or more of the model count of your army yourself, then you are considered to have painted your army.

Conversions, WYSIWYG, and “Counts As”
Non-Citadel miniatures are not allowed in the Grand Tournament and will be removed in the same way as unpainted miniatures.

Conversions must begin as Citadel miniatures and contain a majority of Citadel components. All other models will be removed from the table. They must be of the appropriate type for the troops they represent and comply with the “Counts As” rule below.

ForgeWorld miniatures may be used to represent models or options from the Codexes and Army Books allowed. This means you could use a ForgeWorld Demolisher turret or Death Korps of Krieg troopers in your Imperial Guard army but would not be allowed to use Heavy Mortars or Centaurs.

The army must be WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). This means that weapons, armor options, and upgrades chosen from the army list must be shown on characters and a majority of the models in a unit or squad.

Should you wish to field certain models in your army that “count as” something different in your list than the model that was originally intended you need to follow these basic rules: the models must be roughly the same size as those you are substituting them for (eg. you could not use Imperial Guard Ogryn to represent Imperial Guard Conscripts), you must be consistent throughout your army (eg. if both of your Space Marine Dreadnoughts have twin-linked heavy bolters - an option no longer allowed - you could field them both as assault cannons, but not one of them as an assault cannon and the other as twin-linked lascannons), and finally you must be very clear with your opponent prior to the game, going over anything that may cause confusion. It may be appropriate to create a “cheat sheet” for your opponent that has pictures of the units accompanied by a description of the units and it’s equipment.

Scratch Building
Games Workshop and Citadel Miniatures has a full range of figures to represent almost anything in their games. There are times when the rules are not represented by a current (or previous edition) model or figure from Citadel Miniatures. Therefore, the Grand Tournament will use the following guidelines to handle the lack of a current model.

Models may be scratch built for purposes of representing models that do not have a current (or previous edition) model. If the scratch build is for a figure then the figure must follow the guidelines laid out for conversions. If the model is a vehicle then participants will be allowed to scratch build the vehicle. A scratch built vehicle will either be a heavily modified current model, or a model that is built from the ground up. The scratch built model must represent the vehicle with all options. Judges will be the ultimate authority if a scratch build will be usable.