This year, with Salute and Sword and Lance falling on the same date, I had to make my way up to Darlington solo because the rest of the Ely crew are still ensorcelled by Salute’s first-past-the-post silliness. It was an expensive reminder for me that British trains are awful for the price. The LNER, which took me between Peterborough and Darlington at least had seats available and was reasonably comfortable, but for the same price I could have flown to nearly anywhere in Europe, and for a lot of those destinations I could have flown business class.
On the plus side, being without the Ely crew meant I could book a decent hotel instead of defaulting to cheap above all else. The hotel was very nice, as was the wine bar a couple of doors down from it.
I’ve always maintained that Darlington is a lovely town and makes a good venue for a model show. However, being a good venue in general doesn’t mean you can plonk the show just anywhere and hope it works out. When we first went to Sword and Lance, the show was held at a college that seemed to be in a pretty convenient part of town. Sadly, that venue was no longer available, so post-Covid, it moved to a rugby club on the edge of town. It’s not an awful place (last year’s freezing trading area notwithstanding) and it does have a lot of parking, but it’s also missing some key elements – notably, access to show beers.
Last year, we drove to a pub that served absurdly northern portions. This year, I needed somewhere within walking distance. Lo and behold, Google presented me with an option that claimed to be only 10-15 minutes’ walk away. What a result! What Google failed to note is that the footpath itself would vanish halfway there. I’m used to this when you’re in little rural towns and the like, but this was literally on the edge of Darlington. Was it charming? Maybe. Was it rustic? I suppose so. It was certainly annoying having to keep track of traffic to make sure it wasn’t going to mow me down. On the plus side, the pub was quite nice.
Anyway, on with the usual torrent of abysmal photography:
Turnout for the show was alright. It wasn’t particularly large – I’d estimate about half as many models as last year’s show. The turnout only surprises me in that people actually turned up – the club appeared to do the absolute minimum of advertising online, so I can only assume any advertising was done by attending IPMS shows and the like. This is a valid form of advertising, of course, but it does mean that the only people you’re attracting are the people who already know the show exists. They’re the people who’ll come every year, even if you don’t bother doing anything to advertise. For a show that looked like it was entering a renaissance last year, it’s disappointing to see it eschew trying to reach a wider audience.
In line with that, the categories were the same as previous years – complete with my complaint last year that the ‘figure painters’ category explicitly stated ‘military models’. That sort of attitude, frankly, can get in the sea. There was no civilian category other than miscellaneous, and people with civilian entries ended up splitting them between the two categories. In the end, the civilians in miscellaneous ended up being moved to figure painters anyway, so obviously the organisers subconsciously intended the category to be broader anyway. They might as well update their category descriptions. I only had a few entries – a couple in fantasy and one in figure painters – but then they annoyed me.
They moved my Crowley bust to fantasy.
As you may know from reading my various rants on the topic, I think making a distinction between fantasy and historical modelling at shows is archaic and silly. It suggests there’s some reason they can’t be compared when they very clearly can be. In fact, the originators of the open judging format recognised that, fundamentally, all models should be judged under essentially the same criteria.
Sheperd Paine even made the very clear point that he felt historical accuracy should be ignored when judging (on the basis that, if you insist on historical accuracy, you then it’s impossible to put together a judging team that can appropriately assess every possible model).
All of this is, of course, adjacent to the key point that the judges were wrong to move the bust. I don’t know what their rationale for moving it was. Maybe they didn’t recognise Crowley as an actual historical figure. Maybe they disliked the presentation as ‘too fantasy’. Regardless, if you’re going to move something from one category to another, you should be absolutely sure you’re doing it for the right reason, and I could see no reason to move Crowley.
That sort of thing sours a show for me. I’ve said before that I’m not particularly hung up on prizes, but I am hung up on seeing that judging is done properly. To my mind, moving models between categories should only be done where the entrant is clearly mistaken – entering a tank into a figure category, etc. Anything else is essentially a small confusion at worst, and is really the fault of the organisers (as the confusion over what to do with civilians showed). If you cannot describe a category clearly enough, then the entrant should be given the benefit of the doubt and judged fairly regardless. And, if you’re going to insist on the notion that fantasy and historical figures cannot be compared, you need to be absolutely consistent in making sure that models are indeed in the right categories.
Maybe I’m being too charitable. I’m pretty sure what actually happened is that the judges couldn’t figure out how to google the name of the model on the ticket, which would have instantly told them who it was and probably brought up the photo that the bust is based on, and so they instead just assumed that because it was a bit odd it must’ve been fantasy. Crowley does often feel like a fantastical character, but he was, I can assure the judges, a very real person who did, in fact, wear that exact outfit.
Other than this, the judging did seem otherwise broadly fine. The bagworms, once again, got nothing (possibly another one of my cursed pieces?), but the other painters at the show did like them a lot, which is frankly worth a lot more than a bit of paper telling me I got something.
Overall results:
- Fet: Silver for Crowley and silver for the cyberpunk diorama.
- Martin, down at Salute: Silver in large scale/bust for his pig man.
- Kev, also down at Salute: Gold in fantasy monster for his fungus dude.
I may or may not make it to Sword and Lance next year. It’ll really come down to whether it competes with another show that the Ely crew want to head to. It’s a nice enough show in a pretty cool town, but it’s not worth the extortionate price of the rail tickets. (I’ve just checked and I could have flown to Iceland for the same price, or gone business class to Warsaw.)
Fet Paints 