Cool Mini or Not has been a staple for mini painters for ten years now, and for me was the first step outside of Wargames and into miniature painting as a recreational hobby of its very own. They are well known for their 'hot or not' scoring system where people get to score what they see on the site from 1-10 and people build up a portfolio of their works and end up ranked against the other artists.

There are many great things that have come from CMON, my better half for one! So I have some really good friends and fond memories of that place. BUT there are some huge flaws to their voting mechanism which have a significant effect on the scoring. Whilst the score isn't the be all and end all, it can be a great motivational tool but it often ends up demotivating due to sniping of scores by anonymous voters and other people artificially inflating their score to get into the 'top ten'.

But now there is a new site on the scene, only a fledgling right now, but I have big hopes for it and am really interested in trying it out an investing some time in getting involved there. It is all about the eye candy - no forum, no shop and NI anonymous voting! All very interesting!

The name if this new site with great potential?

Putty & Paint - http://www.puttyandpaint.com/

Get over there and take a look