Xenithal

A community painting competition for all skill levels

  • 1000models
  • 400painters
  • 8Champions
  • 1Winner

It’s free to put your name down, no payment, no commitment, just your email address. When the roster is filled, all competitors shall be notified with further instructions.

Your Journey

Seven steps from the roster to the crown.

  1. Join the roster

    Register your email. No cost, no commitment.

  2. Claim your place

    When the roster fills, pay £20 to secure your entry.

  3. Receive and paint your miniatures

    Two arrive at random: pristine, glued, painted or battered. The Xenithal Gods decide. You have two weeks to bring your best work.

  4. Send them back

    Use the prepaid, tracked packaging.

  5. Find your tier

    Peers judge your first model and position you in the Skill Pyramid.

  6. Qualify for the knockouts

    Your second model is ranked within your tier. The best 16 go through to one-on-one knockouts, judged in person by our panel, with additional miniatures posted each round.

  7. Crown the champions

    One champion per tier. The top tier’s winner becomes Xenithal Prime.

Why enter

A fair fight

Placed among painters of your own standard. Every tier crowns a champion.

Judged in person

Our panel examines the model, not the professionally touched up photograph.

Make history

This is the inaugural tournament. Eight champions will be crowned. Legends written.

  • Join a community · collaborate with peers
  • County standings · paint for your tribe
  • Every entry spotlighted · photographed and showcased
I shall compete!

Free to join the roster. No payment, no commitment.

Image is decorative, and not representative of supplied miniatures

Costs

Join the roster

Free

Enter your name at no cost and no obligation. Four hundred names and Season One will commence.

Entry

£20

Covers two miniatures, with return, tracked postage, judged and ranked.

Knockout rounds

Return post

We post subsequent tournament miniatures to you. You pay the return postage (tracked, and signed for the finals).

Prizes

  • Tier champions

    Eight, one for every tier of the pyramid.

  • Historic county champions

    The best painters in their corner of the UK.

  • Xenithal Prime

    Champion of the highest tier, overall winner of Season One and UK champion.

Prize pool

£1,000 in cash or prizes of equal value, expected to be shared among the champions.

More prizes and awards may be given during the season.

About us

The box of miniatures as it was found, in the corner of a charity shop

It all started with a box…

Painting is a solitary hobby. Xenithal started from one question: how do you make it sociable, competitive and exciting without anyone leaving the house?

Thinking outside the box.

We three co-conspirators of Xenithal, Brother-Sergeant Alexis Robonus, Master Chaplain Hathius and Inquisitor Bezantine XXXVI, have over a century of combined involvement in the ever expanding world of miniature collecting, painting and gaming. While we share the same passion, we each have a different personal preference. One chases every new release. One hunts obscure manufacturers. One reveres the classics, and that one found the box.

It was in a dusty corner of a charity shop: a plain cardboard box holding a thousand sci-fi miniatures, all rank and file.

So what do you do with a thousand marines?

You raise an army of painters.

  • A smiling man in black-framed glasses and a dark T-shirt, against a pale wallA man in glasses wearing ornate blue and white armour, cathedral spires behind him
    Brother-Sergeant Alexis Robonus
  • A bald man in a grey T-shirt, sitting in a caféA bald, bearded man in dark robes seated with a staff, candles and old books around him
    Master Chaplain Hathius
  • A smiling man with a short grey beard and a navy shirt, in front of an old wooden doorA man in red robes raising a gauntleted hand, a great cog-shaped halo behind him
    Inquisitor Bezantine XXXVI

The Miniatures

These are the real models, straight from the box. Hover or tap one to see it rendered.

There are a thousand 28mm power-armoured infantry and a handful of heavier-armoured veterans. All are assembled and all arrive complete with bases.

Some models are primed and most are bare. Some are old, some are simple, some are not. A rare few arrive thick with someone else's paint and glue, you would have cursed luck indeed to receive one of these. The Gods of Xenithal are benevolent to some and malevolent to an unlucky few.

Community

Xenithal is more than a painting competition. Every competitor becomes part of a growing record of painters, models, victories and rivalries.

A map of the United Kingdom picked out in gold, with heraldic shields standing on the nations and regions.

But you are not only painting for yourself.

  1. Competitors also represent their historic county and nation, with historic county and national honours running alongside the eight main Championships. Your progress contributes another name to your historic county's story.

  2. Every submitted miniature is photographed and catalogued. Whether you become a Champion or fall at the first hurdle, your work becomes part of the Xenithal archive. The competition doesn't only remember the winners.

  3. Competitors also help judge the tournament. You won't simply submit a miniature and wait for somebody else to decide what happens — the painters themselves help shape the results.

As Xenithal grows, so will the community around it:

  • competitor profiles,
  • records,
  • achievements,
  • painting discussion,
  • guides,
  • rivalries
  • and future tournaments.

Questions

Who can enter?

UK addresses only. One entry per person.

When does it start?

When the roster fills. We'll publish dates when entries open, and we won't guess before then.

What if the roster doesn't fill?

Season One only starts once the roster reaches 400. Until then, nobody is charged.

Where does the £20 go?

Postage costs for the hundreds and hundreds of shipments, setting up fees, web-design costs, legal and administration fees, insurances and cover for abducted models, equipment, taxes and £1000 ring-fenced for prizes and awards.

What do I need to supply?

Paint, brushes and two weeks. We supply the miniatures and the packaging.

Who owns the models?

All models belong to Xenithal, and will be retained at the end of the competition. If a competitor decides to keep their model, they will miss the submission deadline and be eliminated from the competition.

How do you keep it fair?

Random stock. Everyone paints from the same pool of miniatures, issued randomly. No-one enters a centrepiece against a trooper.

Anonymous entries. Competitors see a designation. They never see names, socials or follower counts. Never judged on age, sex, or nationality.

No-one judges themselves. Every competitor gets a vote, but you never vote on your own work or your own tier.

Tiers, not a scoreboard. Placement sorts painters into tiers of similar skill. Within each tier, knockout pairings are seeded from the qualifying rankings, and every tier crowns its own champion.

What are the prizes?

We expect to share £1,000 in cash or prizes among the tier, historic county and UK champions. The breakdown is under Prizes. Manufacturers, producers and sponsors will be approached once the roster fills, and we hope some will join us on the adventure.

What's the future of Xenithal?

This is as new for us, as it is for you. If Xenithal proves a success, a second ‘season’ would be strongly pursued. While we will not have 1000 marines to offer, we hope the proven interest from the painting community will encourage manufacturers and producers to join us for the next tournament.

Scores, victories and rivalries would continue on, and the Skill Pyramid would take on a life of its own with promotions, relegations, heartbreak and drama.

Is Xenithal affiliated with any manufacturer?

No. Xenithal is independent and isn't endorsed by, or affiliated with, any miniature manufacturer or game publisher.

Have you used AI to create the website imagery?

Placeholder images on this site are AI-generated. We’re replacing them with work by human artists before the competition opens. Want your work featured? Get in touch →

Can I work with Xenithal?

Sponsors, retailers, sculptors, clubs and shops: if you'd like to be part of Season One, write to hello@xenithal.co.uk.

Deadlines, conversions, lost parcels and who votes in each round: every rule is on How it works.

A thousand models. Four hundred painters. One story.

Free, with no commitment. We'll email you when entries open.

Privacy notice

The short version: we ask for your email address and nothing else, and we only use it to tell you about Xenithal.

What we collect

Your email address, when you add your name to the roster. No name, no postal address, no payment details.

What we use it for

To email you when the roster reaches 400 and Season One entries open, or to tell you if Season One doesn't run. If there's a Season Two, roster painters hear first.

Why we're allowed to

You gave it to us for that purpose. That's your consent under UK GDPR, and you can withdraw it at any time.

Who sees it

The Xenithal team. We don't sell it, rent it or share it with sponsors or anyone else for their own marketing.

Where it's kept

On Cloudflare, in Xenithal's own account. It isn't copied into any mailing-list or marketing service.

Analytics

If you accept analytics cookies, this site uses Google Tag Manager to measure visits and how the page is used, and Google may set cookies to do this. If you reject them, or don't choose, it isn't loaded at all. You can change your choice at any time from ‘Cookie settings’ at the foot of the page.

Your rights

You can ask to see the data we hold on you, correct it, or have it deleted. Write to hello@xenithal.co.uk and we'll take you off the roster. If you're unhappy with how we've handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.