We’ve been to Hammerhead a couple of times now, and each time it’s been a weirdly good experience. I say ‘weirdly good’ because, on paper, it doesn’t seem much like our kind of show. It’s first-past-the-post rather than open format, it’s a gaming show with requisite gaming categories, and it’s in the middle of nowhere several hours’ drive from home with no bar on-site.
And yet, each time we go we end up having a pretty enjoyable time. We’ve made friends with some of the other regulars (who we now also see coming along to other UK shows) and we’ve found a really good pub only a few minutes’ drive from the show. It is still a small competition, though, and could do with some more determined marketing. It’s one of the shows we tell a lot of people about because we think it has potential. It fills the same niche as GD or Salute, but it’s not held down by being bound to a single manufacturer like GD, and it actually makes efforts to improve, unlike Salute.
Anyway, more musings after the ritually terrible photos:
I think the actual turnout was a little down on last year, but the quality level has only gone up – aided in no small part by the influx of some of our painter friends from elsewhere in the UK. This notably included David Soper, who went on to win Best of Show, surprising absolutely no one.
I mentioned earlier that the competition was making efforts to improve. To start with, the trophies this year were actually very nice, and they even had certificates for second and third – previously, there was nothing unless you came first (and in the first year we attended, you only found out if you came second or third when you collected your models – not even a mention during prize giving). Secondly, they streamlined the entry process a little. It’s not a massive change, but it did seem much less chaotic than previous years.
And finally, they accepted some support from Fen Model Show in the form of some our display stands to use for the table of prize-winning entries. This just gave the winners a bit more attention, which I think is important: it helps everyone see what the standard is for winning. If you just call out names, it’s not always obvious what’s won and, if you’re new to competitions, it’s really valuable to be able to see what the winning standard is.
We’d actually offered stands and lights for the whole competition, but they were wary of having open stands and decided to stick with their very strange circular cabinets. It’s understandable that you don’t want someone’s model to be damaged or stolen, but in our experience it’s vanishingly rare, and in a small show like this, it would really obvious as soon as it happened.
One thing that did annoy me about the competition was the sudden appearance of a new category that I didn’t realise existed until they announced it at prize giving: dioramas and duels. I’d even brought one of my dioramas along to show some people who’d been keeping track of the build online, so I could have entered the category! Oh, well. I’ll know for next year.
In retrospect, I think this makes a good case for having labels on each category at the show – I’d assumed the various dioramas I saw were in the miscellaneous category. Because the categories aren’t labelled, the dioramas and miscellaneous all blended together, and it was occasionally difficult to tell if a model was in the right category because there was no defined border between them.
The other thing that annoyed me – probably more than anything else, but it’s really my own fault – was that Warsmith Motherfucker won his category. I’d brought him along to pad out the show, figuring that in a popular category like that, he’d never get anything. All I can say to Liam and Ben is ‘for shame’, you were bested by a work of pure spite.
Fet Paints 