A lot of things have changed recently with how WAMP will handle its reviews. Another change is that our reviews are no longer handing out numeric scores. That’s a pretty big change, I know, and it’s one I’ve been contemplating over the past few months.

The thought of departing from a standard numeric scoring system first occurred to me back when I reviewed AlexiZ’s painting tutorial from CMON. It scored extremely low because of a number of technical and production issues that diluted the quality of the presented lessons. I felt horrible assigning that score, not because I feared anything, but because I felt that the score would be inherently misleading.

Some of our readers actually read the article while some probably glanced at the score sheet and decided that the tutorial series must be terrible. The truth is that this particular tutorial series could have been an excellent resource for advanced painters. It had some problems, yes, but there was also a lot of value within those disks.

Another factor in my decision to drop the scores comes from John Bain. To the vast majority of people he’s better known as TotalBiscuit ( https://www.youtube.com/user/TotalHalibut ), a British gaming critic who specializes in first impressions of games. In a number of his videos he’s talked about his disdain for the traditional number based scoring system.

The problem isn’t that scores are bad, it’s that they’re arbitrary. The number itself doesn’t really tell you anything about the product. In some cases it can be very misleading- and I’m not talking about people giving a skewed review. In the case of the AlexiZ tutorial the score really let down the product. But, there are also a lot of products that get above average scores when they really don’t deserve them.

My review of Studio 38’s Brawl Pack 1 was given a score of 6.3 / 10 overall. Technically that’s a better than average review, except for the fact that our review score outlines that anything that has standard levels of mold lines and prep-related defects should be given a base rating of 7 points and then adjusted from there. This is why the Assembly section was granted a score of 8 even though the overall product is something I urged readers to stay away from.

My job as a reviewer is to provide my readership, the consumer, with the best information that they can use to make an informed purchase. I can no longer do that with a simplified numeric scoring system.

We will still hand out seals of approval to miniatures that impress in some way, but that will become a little rarer now they are no longer purely driven by score.

My hope is that this change will produce a more educated readership who are better able to utilize their disposable income to make wise purchases.