Don’t get me wrong, I find a lot of inspiration in seeing what you guys can do.
But as funblethump says, sport is usually divided into divisions for a very good reason. You don’t want a NFL team to play against a high school team, right?
This is also a problem which I’ve debated at length in my local wargames club. Do you thrash the noob to teach him the level of opposition he’ll encounter, or do you go easy on him for a while, letting him get used to the basic rules before hitting him with everything you’ve got?
I would actually like to hear how you veterans feel about it. Is it really interesting participating in a contest where most contestants are no threat to you? What do you get out of it? How does it help you grow as a modeller?
To be very blunt, I’m really hesitant about paying to enter a contest where I know, before even having opened the box, that I have very little, and most likely no, chance of getting any of the ‘loot’. Why should I? I could just as easily build the model for myself, at my own pace, rather than working under a deadline and against people whose skills are way out of my league.
I certainly don’t want Scott to feel that I’m ungrateful for all the hard work he’s done. But why shouldn’t I come with suggestions and input? Perhaps Scott wasn’t even aware that some of us were feeling like this. If so, then we ought to let him know so he can take this into consideration when planning future contests.
I honestly don’t think that any of us are doing this to critique Scott and the competition. Rather, we’re simply debating how we might make it even better...