The following rules have been compiled to act as a series of guidelines to consider and work to when you begin designing and painting your entries for the Historicon Painting Competition.

Categories

This year, ten categories cover almost all the wargaming scales, periods and genres you might find at Historicon. These are detailed later.

Sci-Fi Single Miniature

A single figure, foot or mounted, for non-historical genres including science fiction, Weird War, and post-apocalyptic.

Sci-Fi Unit/War Machine

Any unit of 3 or more models or a single vehicle or a war machine with crew, for non-historical genres, including science fiction, Weird War, and post-apocalyptic.

Youth

A single figure, foot or mounted, any period or genre, for painters 16 and younger.

Diorama

Any scene including miniatures of any scale that presents a situation and tells a story, up to 6″ x 6″ x 6″, any period or genre.

Open

Any model of any scale, up to 6″ x 6″ x 6″, any period or genre.

Prizes

We will award prizes for First, Second, and Third place in each category. In addition, there will be a trophy awarded for Best in Show and a Best of Warlord Games trophy (provided by sponsor Warlord Games). The Best of Warlord Games trophy will be awarded to the best Warlord Games entry in any category.

Manufacturers

Unless specified in a category, miniatures may be from any manufacturer.

Miniature scales

Unless specified in a category, miniatures may be up to 54mm in scale.

Bases and unit sizes

Models may be presented on appropriately sized gaming bases, and units presented in appropriately sized gaming units. We ask entrants to keep their units to a maximum of 15-20 models (5-8 for larger or mounted models).

Scenic display bases

Many people like to mount their models upon large scenic display bases or plinths. This is permitted as long as the display base or plinth is no more than 50% larger than the footprint of the model or unit it is displaying.

Judges’ decisions

In all cases, the judges’ decisions are final. The judges are all experienced painting competition judges and know what they are looking for. They reserve the right to move models into a different category if it is entered inappropriately, or to disqualify a model if they feel it breaches the rules of the competition. We will not enter into any discussion about the judges’ decisions.

Number of entries

You can only enter once in each category, but are welcome to enter all categories, as long as you meet any other restrictions (such as being 16 or under for the Youth Category).

Conversions

Converted miniatures are welcome. The quality of conversion work will be taken into account – a well-painted miniature will be brought down by poor conversion work – so make sure you are confident about your work.

Responsibilities

All entries must be personally handed in by their creator and registered at the Historicon Painting Competition booth on the day (Saturday, 19 July 2025). We will not accept any entries on behalf of competitors who are not in attendance at the event. Entries will be accepted from 9am until 12pm (noon). An entry form will be required to be filled out on the day for each entry presented.

All entries must be collected from the staff by the entrant in person. Models can be collected from 4pm until 5pm.

An entry should be the work of a single hobbyist. All work on models – including but not limited to painting, modelling, converting, after-market sculpting, and basing – must be performed entirely by the entrant.

All competitors will be fully responsible for the transport of their entries to and from the competition, and for storing their own transport and packing materials on the day. Please don’t ask us to look after carrying cases and cardboard boxes, we simply don’t have the space at the booth.

Once entries are booked in, we will, of course, undertake to look after them as carefully as we can. However, we can accept no responsibility for loss or damage to individual entries. Models are entered into the competition at the competitor’s own risk. Entry to any of the competitions gives Wargames Illustrated and HMGS the right to photograph and publish the details of models entered as we see fit.